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More "Impulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and impulsive about Gibberne at times. Before I could expostulate with him he had dashed forward, snatched the unfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was running violently with it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was most extraordinary. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... that the wife was grateful? Few—few women indeed are insensible to the power of continued kindness; they may have a heart of stone for the impetuous impulsive lover, but habitual tenderness-that seems so unselfish—touches the finest chords of their nature, and awakens affection that might have lain dormant through a long life, but for this one sweet influence. Thus it ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... wilderness of fine sand, hot and deep, its surface studded with the opaque blue of round pebbles and mussel shells. It looked too arid to support life, but sea-rocket with fleshy emerald stems and lilac flowers was scattered about. Nothing moved in the waste but an impulsive small butterfly, blue as a fragment of sky. The silence of the desert was that of a dream, but when listening to the quiet, a murmur which had been below hearing was imagined. The dunes were quivering with the intensity of some latent energy, and it might ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... in so startled, impulsive a manner that Hildreth and I laughed ... and she laughed a little, too ... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... was arrested, as you have heard, on the day after my arrival. Quick work; but you see the chief of police here telegraphed the police in London, and brought the detectives hither within twenty-four hours. You know the rest. I am dying here by my own hand. It was a mad, rash, impulsive act, for which I am deeply sorry; but—I am dying in expiation of my share in the tragedy ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... natives who occupy it. The men never appeared without their spears, shields, and assegais. They are fond of ornaments, the ordinary one being a tube of gourd thrust through the lower lobe of the ear. Their colour is somewhat like that of a rich plum. Impulsive and avaricious, they forced their way into the camp to obtain gifts, and thronged the road as the travellers passed by, jeering, quizzing, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... these walls have ears. I, too, am tortured, maddened by your questions. You are too imprudent—too impulsive, to trust with matters of such vital importance; I have revealed too much already. Try and forget the events of this morning; nor let your uncle discover by look, word or gesture, that you are in ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... social adaptation. Probably these innate feelings can be found in prisoners as generally as in other men. It is the lack of these qualities that often keeps men outside the jail. They "get by" where kindly and impulsive men fail. A large part of the crime, especially of the young, comes from the desire to do something for someone else and from the ease with which persons are ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... the proceedings were invalidated by the fact that the canons gave no authority for an election until the primatial seat was actually vacant. This technical objection was rendered more cogent by Bishop John Selwyn's impulsive act. His speech was undoubtedly a breach of the law, and undoubtedly ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... man, impulsive as a child, wearing his heart on his sleeve, crying before him like a little child, moved Innes's contempt as much as it did his pity. "All the same he is suffering, and it is clear that he loves her very deeply." So perforce he had to answer that Evelyn had gone to America ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... increased by the solemn warning which was given by the Prime Minister. Good heavens, to think that within a few hours I should myself have lost it!" His handsome face was distorted with a spasm of despair, and his hands tore at his hair. For a moment we caught a glimpse of the natural man, impulsive, ardent, keenly sensitive. The next the aristocratic mask was replaced, and the gentle voice had returned. "Besides the members of the Cabinet there are two, or possibly three, departmental officials who know of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the towns were well pleased with Bavarian rule, but the impulsive, ignorant, and superstitious peasantry were the glad instruments of Austrian emissaries. When they learned that war was inevitable and would soon be formally declared, they at once rose, seized Innsbruck, and held it against the Bavarian troops. When an Austrian garrison marched ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... she would ask him candidly what was the matter. But it was always the old, frank Billy that thought this; the impulsive Billy, that had gone up to Cyril's rooms years before and cheerfully announced that she had come to get acquainted. It was never the sensible, circumspect Billy that Aunt Hannah had for three years been shaping and coaxing into being. But even this ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... himself. On several occasions during the previous afternoon and evening he had meditated somewhat uneasily upon the domestic difficulties which might inhere in this impulsive engagement of Miss Winstock as a private secretary, but since waking up the affair had not presented itself to his mind. He had indeed ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... a gesture which showed from whom he had inherited his impulsive movements. "Really, my son—!" She folded her hands, and added after a pause of self-recovery: "If you mean that I ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... got up he would be more easily seen. Hermione would call out to him. If he pretended not to hear she might, she probably would, get out of the train at the San Felice station and come into the fair. She was impulsive. It was just the sort of thing she might do. She would do it. He was sure she would do it. He looked at the watercourse hard. The crowd of people was not very far off. He thought he detected the form of Gaspare. Yes, it was Gaspare. He and Amedeo were on the outskirts of the crowd ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... picturesquely ugly, with an amusing simplicity; like a child prematurely old and abandoned, full of vices, yet with a certain degree of innocence. The doors closed. She expected him no longer. She should not have counted on his impulsive and vagabondish mind. At the moment when the engine began to breathe hoarsely, Madame Marmet, who was looking out of ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... came of a Celtic father, gay, humorous, full of impulsive chivalry and intense Irish patriotism, and of a practical New England mother, herself of Revolutionary stock, clear of judgment, careful of the household economy, upright, exemplary, and "facultied." In the daughter these inherited qualities ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... trace, Thro' all the windings of its mazy race, And tell hew the rich purple tide bestows, Vigour, and kindly warmth where e'er it flows; By what contrivance of mechanic art The muscles, motions to the limbs impart; How at th' imperial mind's impulsive nod, Th' obedient spirits thro' the nervous road Find thro' their fib'rous cells the ready way, And the high dictates of the will obey; From how exact and delicate a frame, The channeled bones their nimble action claim; With how much depth, and subtility of thought The curious organ of the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... her?—the Captain knocking his pipe out, as Jacob knew, rising to go, stiffly stretching to pick up Mrs. Flanders's wool which had rolled beneath the chair. Talk of the chicken farm came back and back, the women, even at fifty, impulsive at heart, sketching on the cloudy future flocks of Leghorns, Cochin Chinas, Orpingtons; like Jacob in the blur of her outline; but powerful as he was; fresh and vigorous, running ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... him interested. Cosmo regarded everything from amidst associations of which they had none. In his instinctive reach after life, he assimilated all food that came in his way. His growing life was his sole impulsive after knowledge. And already he saw a glimmer here and there in regions of mathematics from which had never fallen a ray into the corner of an eye of those grinding men. That was because he read books of poetry and philosophy of which they had never heard. For the rest, he ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... was in haste, for his sister was waiting at Lebedeff's to consult him on an urgent matter of business. If he had anticipated impatient questions, or impulsive confidences, he was soon undeceived. The prince was thoughtful, reserved, even a little absent-minded, and asked none of the questions—one in particular—that Gania had expected. So he imitated the prince's demeanour, and talked fast and brilliantly upon all subjects but the one ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a sturdy boy, active, quick, strong of limb and of body. He had earnest, serious eyes of gray-blue, like those of his father. His mouth and chin were delicate, like his mother's. And he was thoughtful, rather than impulsive. ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... And in the picture she had of him, in the physical semblance she had made of him, was reflected his spiritual nature, reflected by her worshipful artistry in form and feature and expression—his bravery, his quick temper, his impulsive championship, his madness of wrath in a righteous cause, his warm generosity and swift forgiveness, and his chivalry that epitomized codes and ideals primitive as the days of knighthood. And first, last, and always, dominating all, she ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... was standing, nerveless, dazed, where Kathrien's impulsive opening of the door had disclosed him. Dully, he stared from one to another of the three who confronted him. It was Kathrien who first spoke. Pointing toward the photograph that still lay on the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... laid an impulsive hand on Patricia's arm and opened her pretty lips, but before the words came she evidently obeyed another differing impulse, for she underwent a subtle change, an imperceptible hardening that was so delicately veiled by her still ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... She felt it impossible to define her offence again without having the corners of her mouth give way; but she went close beside him and faced his vexation with earnest, upraised eyes the while that she laid one hand upon his arm with the sweet impulsive gesture ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... of runaway, twenty-five miles, and its objective my old home; not the lure of the sea nor the army, nor yet the adventures of the dime novel hidden in the hay mow. No, it was none of these, but strangely in contrast to them, an impulsive, passionate awakening of memory, an attempted escape from a future, which had been shown to me as in a vision, and from which I shrank in ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... excellent representation of a noted North American Indian. While a great breadth of the base of the brain indicates morbid susceptibilities, yet these, in the Indian, are opposed by a superior height of the posterior part of the skull. Consequently, he is restless, impulsive, excitable, passionate, a wanderer upon the earth. The basilar faculties, however, are large, and he is noted for instinctive intelligence. His habits alternate from laziness to heroic effort, from idleness and quiet to the fierce excitement ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... A shy, impulsive smile played about her red lips for a second, lighting up the delicate face with a radiance that amazed him. Then the shutter was closed gently, quickly. His first feeling of elation was followed instantly by the disquieting impression that it was a mocking smile of amusement ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... pile, Calling men brothers, crushing them the while; With air humane, a misanthropic brute; Ofttimes impulsive, sometimes over-'cute; Weak 'midst his choler, modest in his pride; Yearning for virtue, lust personified; Statesman and author, of the slippery crew; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... go free with a present of a thousand pounds. She could even have asked for more when that was gone, and I would not have refused her. I was a fool ever to marry her, but she was the handsomest woman I had seen at that time, and as you know I was some years younger, some degrees more impulsive than I am now. I was still more of a fool not to have put her out of the way, knowing what she did—but as I remarked, that was the mistake of a lifetime. She has told you such of my secrets as she ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... hand in the English fashion; "I hope it will not be your last. Remember that if ever you come here again my doors will open to you, and a welcome will await you. Only, let your next visit be a longer one. You see that I speak with the freedom of age; and if you think me impulsive in thus tendering hospitality to one hitherto unknown, I must answer that I have lived in the world, and make no mistakes. I believe also in a certain mental mesmerism, which rarely fails. When I saw you enter, something told me that I might come to you. Fare you well!—Sans ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... sang Their melancholy farewell to the sun— Rich in his loss, their sorrow glorified— Like gentle mourners o'er a great man's grave. Was it not there? No, no; 'twas where they sat Down on the bank, by one impulsive wish ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... "I think that an impulsive man is afraid of himself, and seldom carries out his first angry intentions. That is our chance of salvation. If, upon the receipt of your bomb-shell, M. Fauvel, unable to restrain himself, rushed into his wife's room, and cried, 'Where are your diamonds?' ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... affliction for you, Max. You were always such an impulsive, reckless sort of fellow—never quiet. You must miss ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... At his impulsive offer of help the quiver shook her lips again, and stooping over she did something which appeared to him quite unnecessary to one gray suede shoe. "No, it isn't as bad as that. I don't need to be carried," ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... Heedless, impulsive, Patricia had at least the gift of winning her way right to a child's heart; and without a moment's hesitation the child put a pair of clinging ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... Sequoia Bryce Cardigan and his father walked arm in arm, their progress continuously interrupted by well-meaning but impulsive Sequoians who insisted upon halting the pair to shake hands with Bryce and bid him welcome home. In the presence of those third parties the old man quickly conquered the agitation he had felt at this long-deferred meeting with his son, and when presently they left the business section ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... the least space. They are not always, for that reason, altogether entertaining reading. One would be glad, occasionally, to exchange their sonorous and rounded periods for any expression of quick, impulsive feeling. "I return you," he writes to Pendleton, "my fervent congratulations on the glorious success of the combined armies at York and Gloucester. We have had from the Commander-in-Chief an official report of the fact,"—and so forth and so forth; and then for a page or more is a discussion ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... her young mistress's head-dress for the birthday feast. Mary shyly offered her present, adding the best wishes of her heart for the young Countess's happiness. Amelia received the present with unaffected pleasure, and in an impulsive manner she warmly expressed her delight, as she viewed first of all the charming flowers with which the basket was filled, and examined more carefully the beautiful design of the ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... paused. For the second time that night I was going beyond myself—venturing out of what I looked on as my natural habits— speaking in an unpremeditated, impulsive strain, which startled me strangely when I halted to reflect. On rising that morning, had I anticipated that before night I should have acted the part of a gay lover in a vaudeville; and an hour after, frankly discussed with Dr. John the question of his hapless ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... closely fitted gown was a piece of exquisite hand-wrought lace. She stood before them, a vision from the old world, full of innate ladyhood, simple as a peasant, at once appealing and dominating, impulsive, yet shy. Her beautiful enunciation, her inverted and quaintly turned English, alive with poetry, was typical of her whole personality, a sweet and strange mixture of the high-bred aristocrat and the simple directness ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the prime of the year—a cheerful, prying, frisky creature, always going somewhere or doing something in a red-hot hurry, and always making a song of it—a veritable babbler. His love-making is passionate and impulsive, joyous ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... seemed to leap into her throat; there, almost close to her, was a hideous creature, which her startled imagination conjured up into something terrible to behold, snorting, growling, and bearing down upon her. Poor, impulsive, silly Mab: before she well knew what she was doing she had sprung aside, anywhere to be out of the way of the beast—a wolf she thought it was—and that anywhere was into the brook, the prankish brook, just ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... last there was a clapping of hands, and a burst of joyous cries; following the pointing of many fingers, he looked and saw upon the brow of a hill the templed gate of the consecrated Grove. The hymns swelled to louder strains; the music quickened time; and, borne along by the impulsive current, and sharing the common eagerness, he passed in, and, Romanized in taste as he was, fell to worshiping ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... masterfulness and pride, this center is steadily suppressed. The warm, swift, sensual self is steadily and persistently denied, damped, weakened, throughout all the period of childhood. And by sensual we do not mean greedy or ugly, we mean the deeper, more impulsive reckless nature. Life must be always refined and superior. Love and happiness must be the watchword. The willful, critical element of the spiritual mode is never absent, the silent, if forbearing disapproval and distaste is ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... excitement and much ado) the quieter waters from below, having rested and enlarged themselves, come lapping up round either curve, with some recollection of their past career, the hoary experience of foam. And sidling toward the new arrival of the impulsive column, where they meet it, things go on, which no man can describe without his mouth being full of water. A "V" is formed, a fancy letter V, beyond any designer's tracery, and even beyond his imagination, a perpetually fluctuating limpid wedge, perpetually crenelled and rippled ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... the missing girl I told you of—you remember, that day up on Lee's Creek—so I had to see; but, dear me, I should have been more considerate—I should have explained. The trouble is I'm a nervous man, and I get impulsive streaks on me sometimes that I can't control. I'm sorry I spoiled your dress, but I'll get you another—you ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... physical improvements wrought by man upon the earth's surface I conceive as at once preparations for, and causes of, the possible development of higher types of humanity, beings less strong in the impulsive parts of our nature, more strong in the reasoning and moral, more fitted for the delights of social life, because society will then present less to dread and more ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... she cried. "You know how to make yourself comfortable, Eric! Of course, the first cigarette I drop on your adorable grey carpet—you see how it matches my dress?—the first cigarette spoils it for ever. And the roses!" With a characteristically impulsive jerk she dragged the tulle band and artificial flower from her hair, tossed them to Eric and stretched her hand up for a red rose to take their place. "Ah! beloved celibate! not a mirror in the room! I shall ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... Majesty spoke with impulsive and unusual frankness, saying: "You English are as mad, mad, mad as March hares. What has come over you that you are completely given over to suspicions that are quite unworthy of a great nation? What more can ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... erratic, brilliant, and impulsive, had never fully harmonized with the politicians of Virginia in their political doctrines, but had been inclined to ridicule the rigid and non-progressive principles of her statesmen, who, always cautious, were now slow to receive ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... my inmost being I feel I never could be. I am too impulsive, too unrestrained, too shapeless in mind. If I wrote a book it might be interesting, human, heart-felt, true to life, I hope, not stupid, I believe; but it would be a chaos. You—how it would shock ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Sinclair had often told her mother that Gavin Grant had both the ability and the longing to be a minister, but he would never confess his desires, lest they trouble the Aunties. Perhaps he could understand her case and advise her, and in an impulsive moment, born of her great need, she told him all about the cloud that had been hanging over her ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... and inside all a quiver with shame, anxiety and grief. Even courageous Mrs. Lehntman, efficient, impulsive and complacent as she was and not deeply concerned in the event, felt awkward, abashed and almost guilty in that large, mild, helpless presence. And at her side to make her feel the power of it all, was the intense conviction ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... others unmistakable: the patient becomes silent at times; at times evinces a weakness for sentimental expressions; flushes easily; is easily depressed; will sit for hours looking at one person; and, if not checked, will exhibit impulsive symptoms of affection for the opposite sex. The strangest symptom of all, however, is the physical change in the patient, whose features and figure, under the trained eye of the observer, gradually from day to day assume the symmetry and charm of a beauty almost unearthly, sometimes accompanied ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... sometimes is that an impossibly simplified and inconsiderate regimen is proposed to mankind, altogether unrepresentative of their total interests. Spiritual men, in a word, may fall into the aristocrat's fallacy; they may forget the infinite animal and vulgar life which remains quite disjointed, impulsive, and short-winded, but which nevertheless palpitates with joys and sorrows, and makes after all the bulk of moral values ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... front of what had almost become an unreasoning mob, George and Ralph tried by their strength to resist the impulsive dash forward, at the same time that they shouted at the full strength of their lungs the reason why the work nearer the ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... torrent of words that would undeceive her. The strain of repression lent him added brusqueness when he strove to explain, and his coldness left her sorely hurt. His indifference filled her with a sense of betrayal; it chilled the impulsive yearning in her breast. She had battled long with herself before coming and now she repented of her rashness, for it was plain he did not need her. This certainty left her sick and listless, therefore she ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... to understand how a conversation pursued for hours in this vein would affect Archie. He was weak and impulsive, ready to suspect whatever was suggested, jealous of his own rights and honour, and on the whole of that pliant nature which a strong, positive woman like Madame could manipulate like wax. He walked his room all night in a frenzy ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... when life has settled into a self-satisfied present, with no past and no future; the most philistine, the most bourgeois, moment of existence. Better be elderly at once, as far as appreciation of all this goes." She rose and put her hand on his arm, and pushed him away in the impulsive fashion of her youth, across alleys of old trees toward a balustraded terrace in the background ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... information of friends, feels that he would scarcely discharge the duty he has assumed, without a few words of reflection upon the fitful career so slightly traced. For the useful purpose of life, it may well be doubted whether a dull, plodding disposition is not more certain of success, than lively, impulsive genius. Perseverance in any one calling, with a steady determination to turn aside for no collateral inducements, and a patience which does not become discouraged at the first disappointment, is necessary to the ultimate prosperity of every man. The newspaper business ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... more deeply grateful to you than you can imagine! I thank you heartily!" exclaimed Madeleine, extending her hand with impulsive frankness, but the action was checked almost as quickly as made. For a moment she had forgotten the difference of station which she wished him to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... of his voice Viola turned with an impulsive reaching of the hands. "Oh, Dr. Serviss, that would be heavenly! I love your sister ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Nile. The one constant and inconstant quantity with which man must deal is man. Human nature responds so far as we can see to the same magnetic pull and push that moved it in the days of Abraham and of Socrates. The foundation of government is man—changing, inert, impulsive, limited, sympathetic, selfish man. His institutions, whether social or political, must come out of his wants and out of his capacities. The problem of government, therefore, is not always what should be done but what can be done. We may not follow the supreme tradition of ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... signatories are such thoroughgoing friends of the Tirana Government that they rushed enthusiastically to their assistance, though their deep knowledge of affairs—without which, of course, they would never have signed—must have caused them to regard the Prime Minister's impulsive action with something more than misgiving. It is a minor point that the signatories sought to enlist the world's sympathy on the ground that a small "neutral State" had been wantonly attacked by the Serbs, because if this accusation ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... character is unmistakably revealed. No writer, ancient or modern, is more frank than he. He neither hides his own faults, nor desires his friends to hide theirs from him; [118] his verses are the honest spontaneous expression of his every-day life. In them we see a youth, ardent, unaffected, impulsive, generous, courteous, and outspoken, but indifferent to the serious interests of life; recklessly self-indulgent, plunging into the grossest sensuality, and that with so little sense of guilt as to appeal to Heaven as witness of ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... atrociously cruel, boastingly impious, and a scoffer at matters religious, his later descendants were generally tender of heart, soft of manner, and of great piety. Whereas, in early manhood he had been fiery and impulsive, quick of decision and immovable of opinion, his progeny were increasingly inclined to be deliberate in judgment and vacillating of purpose. So many of his descendants entered the priesthood that the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... in his broad beard, made him look older than his real age, which was forty-six. He stooped a little in the shoulders. His manners were usually gentle and grave; but a pair of large and very lively eyes and an occasional impulsive eagerness of speech, wherein he was ready and fluent at all times, showed that there was more fire and life in his character than appeared on the surface. Those who knew him well were aware that his temper was impetuous and precipitate, and on given occasions ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... to stare at him, his expression changed; the gray eyes grew less steely, and presently, clapping his hand upon my shoulder in his impulsive way— ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... stirred by a sense of pity which almost drove him to rash and impulsive speech; but ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... earlier centuries. Whatever the value of these views, they can scarcely have found favour among those who rallied to the Second Empire and who imagined that the Goncourts were a pair of firebrands: whereas, in fact, they were petulant, impulsive men of ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... which lay between that of Lens and that of Bethune. They obtained information at Ablain, and a statement of their route was left for Grimaud. About seven o'clock in the morning they set out. De Guiche, who was young and impulsive, said to Raoul, "Here we are, three masters and three servants. Our valets are well armed and yours seems ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... language of characteristic violence, and maintained to the last that Rodney never intended it, as every one now agrees was the truth. Nelson presumably also approved Howe's cardinal improvement, or even in his most impulsive mood he would hardly have called him 'the first and greatest sea officer the ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... by which you entered seems to have closed its ponderous jaws behind you, and shut you in,—there to remain till some supernatural power rend the mountains and give you egress. The mood of mind changes with the scene. The beauty soothed and softened you; now you grow impulsive and stern. The awful forms around you blend with the soul, as it were, and impart something of their own vastness to it. You feel yourself carried into the very presence of that Power which sank the foundations of the mountains ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... smaller squares and parks, all contributed to the holiday upliftedness which swelled their unaccustomed hearts. At each vista of green they made ready to disembark and were restrained only by the conductor and by the sage counsel of Eva, who reminded her impulsive companions that the Central Park could be readily identified by "the hollers from all those things what hollers." And so, in happy watching and calm trust of the conductor, they were borne far beyond 59th Street, the first ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... of his childish fancy. For he was a man now, with a university degree, and far removed from any such folly. Nevertheless there was something in the quick movement of his strong brown hands, and the look of impulsive daring in his bright eyes, that hinted that he might be just the lad to launch his canoe on life's waters and paddle away in haste towards the lure of a ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... at him kindly and shook his head. "Nein," he said. "It is not for the money I shall do it. It is because I have seen you before—when he played. You shall hear him and see him. Come." He put aside the youth's impulsive hand, and led the way up a winding, dark stairway, through a little door in the organ-loft. Groping along the wall he slipped back ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... imaginative impulsive temperament have had such moments, under the spell of some unusual inspiration, but their dreams are apt to vanish at contact with the earth again, as suddenly as a bubble breaks when some material object touches it. But with Mary the vision stayed. True, ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... as he had known him was the most generous, most quick-tempered of mortal men; in other words his anger would flare to a prodigious beacon, under almost no provocation, only to be quenched again under a gust of no less impulsive kindliness. Thus the moment Darcy had spoken, an apology for his hasty question was half-way up his tongue. But there was no need for it to have travelled even so far, for Frank laughed again with kindly, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... very, very slowly, upon the first scene of Barnard Haw's masterpiece of satire; and the lovely firing-line quivered, blue batteries opening very wide, lips half parted in breathless anticipation. And about that time Harrow almost expired as a soft, impulsive hand closed ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... had lost the timidity of his childhood, who, by nature, was very impulsive, and indeed endowed with a degree of volatility which is only witnessed in the south of France, and which never deserted him to his last hour, was no longer to be controlled. His conduct was decisive. He enclosed his poem to Dr. Johnson, with an impassioned ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... every way; feels, I say, that something new, something unexpected is really about to happen: something that will surely leave a deep mark on his imagination, and last through all his life. I mean that peculiar radiation of impulsive energy issueing from anything really great, vibrating and palpitating from afar, fitting the soul to emotion ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... if you can possibly give your own to a humbler person, to myself, dear Troubadour, I should very much like to know what is to happen next. Use fine words, if you must; even put it into verse, only tell me——" With an impulsive shove she flung open the door and stepped into the road. She could still see Driscoll's troop, or rather the cloud of dust, speeding toward Queretaro, but her arm swept the horizon impersonally. "Only tell me," she demanded, "what's happening ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... broached the subject of the phenomenal singer whom he had discovered in the streets of St. Giles and his scheme concerning her. The duke laughed at the poet's visions, but the duchess was fascinated. Anything of the unusual at once appealed to the warmhearted, impulsive, somewhat eccentric, lady. Her enthusiasm where she was interested always carried her away, and her impatience and energy would not let her rest until ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... take them. The satchel upon Miss Greatorex's lap was open, her own and Molly's purses lay within. To snatch them both up and rush away was her impulsive act and to scamper back across the deck, wherever she could find a passage, took but a moment longer. But she was ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... return to my father's house. We did not know what had become of him. But I, thinking over that impulsive, volcanic nature, took quick alarm. And I went in search of him; came on his track at last; and after many days found him in a miserable cottage amongst the most dreary of the dreary wastes which form so large a part of Cumberland. He was ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not the first time that he had found this dangerous ally of sure and swift service in bringing him up or down to that level of his dreary, sodden guests, so necessary to his trade. Jeff had not the excuse of the inborn drunkard's taste. He was impulsive and extreme. At the end of the four weeks he came out on the porch one night as Bill drew up. "You must take me from this place to-night," he said, in a broken voice scarce like his own. "When we're on the road we can arrange matters, but ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... did not realize was that this merry, reckless, impulsive young dare-devil, whose very talk, as he jumped from one theme to another, made him smile in spite of himself, could not be expected to bear in mind the record of his whole remarkable accomplishment. ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... about my attempts to dress her in burlap, and we concluded that a spray was the thing. Donald brought a nice antiseptic smelling mixture, and we put it on her with the rose sprayer. Probably we were too impulsive; anyway, the milk was very queer. Did you ever eat saffron cake in Cornwall? It tasted like that. The children declined it firmly, and I sympathized with them. After practice we managed to spray her in ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... teacher at school always described as "conservative." He lacked the impulsive sanguine disposition of Steve. At the same time he was no "croaker," and far from being ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... aspect of the subject that filled the girl's thoughts. She knew that Prescott loved her and she was glad of it; but here she stopped. She was sanguine, impulsive, courageous, but, with all that could be said for it, the change she must face if he claimed her was a startling one. Besides, he must clear himself of suspicion, and because the part of a mere looker-on was uncongenial, there was a course which ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... driven by a comparatively small mass of iron descending with great velocity from a considerable height—the velocity being in excess and the mass deficient, and calculated, like the momentum of a cannon-ball, rather for destructive than impulsive action. In the case of the steam pile-driver, on the contrary, the whole weight of a heavy mass is delivered rapidly upon a driving-block of several tons weight placed directly over the head of the pile, the weight never ceasing, and the blows being repeated at the rate of a blow a second, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... murmur swept upwards from the packed square. The Republic had been their plaything, the caprice of an impulsive people, and they were loth to own themselves in the wrong. Nicholas of Reist read their faces like a book. Now or never must he win his way from this people, or fall forever from their regard. His pale countenance was lit with a passionate earnestness. He leaned towards them, and his voice throbbed ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... no limit to what Rose could bear. She stooped forward suddenly and put her cheek against the horse's neck in an impulsive need to express affection, perhaps to ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... in those days, as students are apt to be in all countries and in all ages, were a very impulsive, and, in some respects, a lawless set. Whenever they deemed themselves injured, they pursued the object of their hostility in the most reckless and relentless manner. At one time a member of the University became so excited ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... rather impulsive young lady," said Miss Davis disapprovingly. "I wish she had taken a fancy to some one else than my pupil. You must try to forget her, Hetty. Girls like her, with wealth and power and nobody to control them, are apt to become capricious, and work mischief with people who have business to attend ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... cried impulsive Edith. "Even during our short acquaintance I have discovered that, in many things which I ought to know, her knowledge is superior to mine; that for keeping a secret she has no equal; and that with it all she is one of the dearest and sweetest ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... who could go before the masses "on the stump," and produce such a marked effect, and his personal magnetism won him many friends. One day the "Little Giant," going up to Beverly Tucker, a prominent Virginia politician, threw his arm on his shoulder, and said, in his impulsive way, "Bev., old boy, I love you." "Douglas," says Tucker, "will you always love me?" "Yes," says Douglas, "I will." "But," persisted Tucker, "will you love me when you get to be President?" "If I don't, may I be blanked!" says Douglas. "What do you want me to do for you?" "Well," says Tucker, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... and sick, and impulsive and mistaken in the nature of Harold's feelings for her; so judge her not too harshly, my prudish reader, if she at last did what Arthur would have called 'throwing herself at ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... admiringly upon the exposed beauties of her swelling bosom; he glanced at her regular and delicate features which were exceedingly girlish and pretty, for she certainly was not much over sixteen years of age. When it is remembered that Frank was a young man of an ardent and impulsive temperament, the reader will not be surprised that the loveliness of this young creature began to excite within his breast those feelings and desires which are inherent in human nature. In fact, he found himself being gradually overcome by the most tumultuous sensations: his heart ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... touch you. I will guard you with my life!" exclaimed the impulsive young man, feeling for the sword ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very foolish," Sir Charles muttered benignly. "Girls are so impulsive. Don't you think that those carnations would be improved by a little more foliage at the base? They strike me as being a little set and formal. Now, is not ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... it has nearly done it—a progress which is nothing compared to the miracles it has already wrought; it has only to find the means of directing through a mass of air a bubble of lighter air; it has already obtained the bubble of air, and keeps it imprisoned; it has now only to find the impulsive force, only to cause a vacuum before the balloon, for instance, only to burn the air before the aerostat, as the rocket does before itself; it has only to solve this problem in some way or other; and it will solve it, and do you ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... for some one to talk with, some one sympathetic to exclaim to; in fact, I wished I were driving up this magnificent, this appalling road, beside the Chauffeulier instead of in Prince Dalmar-Kalm's tonneau. I wondered that Aunt Kathryn—usually so impulsive—could restrain herself here, and expected at any moment to have her turn to me, our differences forgotten. But no, she neither moved nor spoke, and I realized how angry she must be with me, to visit her vexation upon herself, and ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Englishman, war is to the Prussian." Nietzsche, one of the greatest of modern apostles, has based many of his theories upon "a violent repudiation of any faith or tradition which recognizes a power of right and justice lying beyond our impulsive nature; an identification of self-restraint with degeneracy and of self-assertion with health; a search for happiness in the conquest of others rather than in self-conquest; a substitution of the Will to Power for the Darwinian Will to Live, with the consequent intensification ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... of course, a most unorthodox thing for Ingred to blurt out family affairs, and Father and Mother would have been justly indignant had they known, but she was impulsive, and without much worldly wisdom, and Mr. Hardcastle seemed sympathetic, so on the spur of the moment she told him the urgency of Athelstane's need, and how she was trying to meet it. He sat quite quiet for a short ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... said good Mrs. Moss, too impulsive to be prudent, "I'm thankful I'm come now to see you yourself again; I thought you'd never know ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... line between them, but it depends upon the degree of objectivity my feeling has attained at the moment whether I say "It pleases me," or "It is beautiful." If I am self-conscious and critical, I shall probably use, one phrase; if I am impulsive and susceptible, the other. The more remote, interwoven, and inextricable the pleasure is, the more objective it will appear; and the union of two pleasures often makes one beauty. In Shakespeare's LIVth ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... not discover myself to the slaves. I knew their impulsive natures, and that a scene would be the result. I should be the recipient of their salutations and entreaties, uttered loud enough to draw the attention ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... out of it as little harmed or hardened as David did. The language of the fiction reflects only faintly the narrative of the actual fact; and the man whose character it helped to form was expressed not less faintly in the impulsive impressionable youth, incapable of resisting the leading of others, and only disciplined into self-control by the later griefs of his entrance into manhood. Here was but another proof how thoroughly Dickens ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... train! You'll be left!" again came the shrill feminine appeals, and with them, approaching, unwelcome, unheeded footfalls. With sudden, impulsive movement she threw her arms about his neck and upraised her lips to his. One moment of silence, two seconds of bliss, then "Dad" Ennis's voice, barely a dozen yards away: "Come forth into the light, you wanderers!" There was barely time for ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... out the letter again, and ran down its impulsive staccato sentences, affecting to ignore what a gust of fresh air, high spirits, and good fellowship this flimsy bit of paper wafted into the jaded club-room. On reperusal, it was full of evil presage— 'Al scenery'—but what of equinoctial storms and October fogs? Every sane yachtsman was paying ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... arrived at Silverbel on the 22d of September, and was quickly conducted to Sibyl's room. She had not seen Sibyl for a couple of months. When last they had met, the child had been radiant with health and spirits. She was radiant still, but that quick impulsive life had been toned down to utter quiet. The lower part of the little body was paralyzed, the paralysis was creeping gradually up and up. It was but a question of time for the loving little heart to ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... Something in Dinah's speech had ruffled her. She was a little quick-tempered and impulsive; but she soon ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... from such cases, it is possible to understand how the power of impulsive feeling, the dominant factor in some natures, may, through a generous impatience, lead them to make some real attempt—and not imaginary like those which the police in all times and all countries prosecute in the courts—to spread terror among those ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... whether the dramatist has imagined more or less than the particular semblance of humanity exhibited by the actor on the stage. Othello, as portrayed by Signor Novelli, is a man devoid of dignity and majesty, a creature intensely animal and nervously impulsive; and if we had never read the play, or seen other performances of it, we should probably deny to Shakespeare the credit due for one of his most grand conceptions. On the other hand, when we witness Mr. Warfield's beautiful and truthful performance of The Music Master, we are ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... and her impulsive thought was that Mildred had taken few chances, and that as a matter of self-defense her carefulness might have been well founded. This Mr. Arthur Russell was a much more responsive ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... that he presently decided to keep him in Weimar, if possible, by making him a member of the Council of State. Goethe was the more willing to remain, since he detested his law practise, and his income from authorship was pitifully small. Moreover, he saw in the boyish, impulsive, sport-loving prince a sterling nature that might be led in the ways of wise rulership. For the nonce this was mission enough. He took his seat in the Council in June, 1776, with the title of Councilor of Legation. At first there was not very much for him to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... hand and took hold of his coat sleeve. The action was startlingly impulsive in Beatrice, who was always so almost plaintive, so restrained, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... their unexpected meeting, but the sunset light, their thrilling significances, were totally gone from them. Across each utterance some qualifying word or clause, quite overlooked till now, cast its morning shadow. Not so much as one fond ejaculation of his impulsive lips last evening but she could explain away this morning, and she felt a dull, half-guilty distress in the fear that her blissful silences had embarrassed him into letting several things imply more than he intended. Before she was quite dressed one of her fellow-students ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... rise, but it was only to slip forward and sink upon her knees by his side, her arms embracing him. It was like the fall of fair waters, so gracefully impulsive, so self-abandoning. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... together, they were commonly known, as the Morning and Eve, sometimes as Aurora and Eve. Never did daughter of the original Eve have deeper feminine guile than Mary Connynge. Soft of speech—as her friend, the Lady Catharine, was impulsive,—slow, suave, amber-eyed and innocent of visage, this young English woman, with no dower save that of beauty and of wit, had not failed of a sensation at the capital whither she had come as guest of the Lady ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... was frank and confiding. She was warm-hearted, impulsive, and quick to show gratitude. After the society of the Mowbrays, she found that of Little Dudleigh an inexpressible relief. What struck her most about him was his unvarying calmness. He must have some personal regard for her, she was sure, for on what other grounds would he ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... probably an older and more experienced rancher would have put up with a few losses for the sake of peace and quietness. But Bud, like most lads of his age, was impulsive. And, as he had said, the loss of even a few steers meant possible failure to him and his cousins, just starting in the ranch business ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... forget her impulsive, foolish speech,—"without him the music would fall upon unheeding ears,—he, who interpreted art for the multitude, the holder of the critical key that unlocked masterpieces." She had felt the banality of her compliment as she uttered it, and she knew the man who listened, his glance ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in that combination the patient, resolute quality prevailing in Holland and the more ardent, vivacious, and chivalrous character found with the French people. The Huguenot refugees belonged undisputably to the cream of that impulsive nation—intellectual, educated, and fearless—whilst both portions were pervaded with deep-rooted religious fervour and habituated ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... among the forty millions of this continent, unless there be something extraordinary in his character and achievements. Kit Carson was an extraordinary character. His wide-spread fame was not the result of accident. His achievements were not merely impulsive movements. He was a man of pure mind, of high morality, and intensely devoted to the life-work which he had chosen. His studies during the winter in the cabin of Kin Cade, had made him a proficient in the colloquial ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... up to report, but the impulsive Eva did not wait for details. She touched her mare and ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... once, a new element entered into the drama, the necessary semi-comic element without which everything would be so dull. This fresh factor was the infatuation, which possibly the reader may have foreseen, of the susceptible, impulsive little man, Stephen Layard, for Stella Fregelius, the lady whose singing he had admired, and who had been a cause of war between him and his sister. Like many weak men, Stephen Layard was obstinate, also from boyhood up he had suffered ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... ease, possibly because of the blandishments of Mrs. Artemas, who had openly singled him out to be her special prey, and discovered an attitude of proprietorship to which he could not be said to respond with the ardour of a passionate, impulsive nature. A youngish man, with a heavy body, a bit ungainly in carriage, Mr. Trego had a square-jawed face with heavy-lidded, tranquil eyes. When circumstances demanded, he seemed capable of expressing himself simply and to the point, with a sure-footed ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... by the affair of the Wangs, was dissipating; within two it was gone, for a character of such violent "downs" must have equally mercurial "ups"; within three he capitulated to argument and agreed to go back to Soochow and see Li. Impulsive and generous as ever, he then wished that Hart should say he (Hart) had induced him to come to Li. "That will give you immense influence with the Chinese," he declared. But Hart would not have it so; he preferred to tell Li that Gordon had come of his own free will, knowing that ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... Peggie, and once more held out an impulsive hand. But Selwood again pretended to see nothing, and he began another energetic assault upon the papers which Jacob Herapath would ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... impulsive and acted on the spur of the moment," Darrell replied; adding, in lower tones, "the mistake was in giving one so young and inexperienced a commission involving so much responsibility ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them. The year before they had spent part of the summer with their grandmother Pontellier in Iberville. Feeling secure regarding their happiness and welfare, she did ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... his close attention to detail; and his gift in speaking of clear common-sense and forcible expression, free from wearisome redundancy or the suggestion of an irony that might strike above the heads of the jury. He gained the confidence of clients of all sorts—some of curious, impulsive, and not over-strict character, who might, perhaps, have landed a weaker or less rigidly high-principled advocate in serious blunders; and I do not think that he ever lost a client whom he had once gained.' But the first step was not easy. His solitary ways, his indifference to the lighter pursuits ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... and his party were driven out, Perikles passed a decree that six hundred Athenian volunteers should sail to Sinope, and become citizens there, receiving the houses and lands which had formerly been in the possession of the despot and his party. But in other cases he would not agree to the impulsive proposals of the Athenians, and he opposed them when, elated by their power and good fortune, they talked of recovering Egypt and attacking the seaboard of the Persian empire. Many, too, were inflamed ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... husband London free lump empty liberty rational capital impotent reason Capitol impetuosity irrationality grave impulsive ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... ambition always to be calm, oracular, weighty; always to be sure of himself; but his temperament was incurably nervous, restless, and impulsive. He could not be still, he could not wait. Instinct drove him to action for the sake of action, instinct made him seek continually for notice, prominence, comment. These fundamental appetites had urged ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... doctrines of the Revolution, while the Marquis de St. Cyr and his family fought inch by inch for the retention of those privileges which had placed them socially above their fellow-men. Marguerite, impulsive, thoughtless, not calculating the purport of her words, still smarting under the terrible insult her brother had suffered at the Marquis' hands, happened to hear—amongst her own coterie—that the St. Cyrs were in treasonable correspondence with Austria, hoping to obtain the Emperor's support ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... a moment after this impulsive entrance, and the governess turned toward Mrs. Foss a face that, benign and enlightened though it was, called up the memory of faces seen in good-humored German comic papers. The expression of her smile said to the company that she was guiltless in the matter of this invasion. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... she probably gave him the warmest place in her heart, but she was a remarkably reserved, composed, and undemonstrative child, by no means addicted to caresses, and only in moments of deep feeling betrayed into an impulsive passionate gesture, or a ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the dark earth. This was followed by a wild, elfin passage in triple time—a sort of grotesque interlude, like the dance of spirits upon the lawn. Then came a swift agitato finale—a breathless, hurrying, trembling movement, descriptive of flight, and uncertainty, and vague impulsive terror, which carried us away on its rustling wings, and left us all in emotion ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... gentleman; "she's as gentle and biddable as a lamb. I've only to say a word, and she's off like a shot to do my bidding; and she does it with such a sweet smile too." There was a touch of pathos in the old trader's voice as he said this. He was a man of strong feeling, and as impulsive in his tenderness as in his wrath. "But that rascal Charley," he continued, "is quite different. He's obstinate as a mule. To be sure, he has a good temper; and I must say for him he never goes into the sulks, which is a comfort, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... King's agents, the ensuing adventure of the sea-fight, with Hamlet's daring act of hot-headed personal intrepidity, his capture and subsequent release on terms giving no less patent proof of his cool-headed and ready-witted courage and resource than the attack had afforded of his physically impulsive and even impetuous hardihood—all this serves no purpose whatever but that of exhibiting the instant and almost unscrupulous resolution of Hamlet's character in time of practical need. But for all that he or Hamlet has got by it, Shakespeare might too evidently have spared his pains; and for all ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... her poor little romance, builded upon so slight a foundation as an impulsive boy's ephemeral interest, was over. He would not come again—and she cared. She put her hand to her throat. It ached with the lump in it—yes, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... budding tastes, clamorous appetites, primitive likes and dislikes, varied interests; an idealist and hater of shams, a reservoir of nerve force, a bundle of contradictions, a lover of fun but a possible lover of the best, a loyal friend of his true friends; impulsive, erratic, impressionable to an alarming degree." Furthermore, the boy is maturing, traversing the path from boyhood to manhood, is unstable, not only in his growth, but also in his thought, is restless because of his natural instability, and sometimes suffers from headiness and independence. ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... as the old land-surveyor and finally head of the nation, Washington. Master Walsh was an Irishman by birth, though "caught young," as Dr. Johnson remarked, to account for any distinction acquired by natives of Scotland; and he displayed much of that impulsive temperament imputed to the people of Erin's Green Isle. He dressed in the old style, his gray hair gathered into a queue, and wearing top-boots to the last. He was an excellent classical scholar, as well as mathematician. The pupils he ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... be one of the pillars of the earth, one of those miraculous human beings who are mixed in just the right proportions, so that they aren't pulled two ways at once. Two ways! Most of us are pulled a thousand ways! It is one of the injustices of the earth that such people aren't loved as much as impulsive, selfish, brilliant natures like dear little Mark's. Paul has had such a restful personality! Even when he was a baby, he was so straight-backed and robust. There's no yellow streak in Paul, such as too much imagination lets in. I know all ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... gory." One governess after another was tried, But none of them stopped and one suddenly died. Then she went for a while to a wonderful school Which was run on the plan of the late Mrs. BOOLE; But no "ethical safeguards" could ever restrain So impulsive a heart and so fertile a brain; And a fire, for the kindling of which she was held Responsible, led to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... an extremely penetrating critic, as inferior in energy to the former. So far as our knowledge goes at present, what is popularly known as "energy" or "go" is just as likely to be a certain net preponderance of a varied miscellany of impulsive qualities over a varied miscellany of restraints and inhibitions, as it is to prove a simple indivisible quality transmissible intact. We are so profoundly ignorant in these matters, so far from anything worthy of the name of science, that one view is just as permissible and ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... make it dignified and hieratic, disguise from us how utterly natural and simple it all is. I do not think that reverence and tradition and awe have done us any more grievous injury than the fact that we have made the Saviour into a figure with whom frank communication, eager, impulsive talk, would seem to be impossible. One thinks of Him, from pictures and from books, as grave, abstracted, chiding, precise, mournfully kind, solemnly considerate. I believe it in my heart to have ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... regretted her rash act ... After all, an impulsive girl might bite a man in the arm in the excitement of the moment and still have a sweet, ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... the latter story reproduce the principal features of almost a score of other Australian novels published within the last few years. The love-affairs of a beautiful, impulsive girl, sighing for knowledge of the great world beyond the limits of her narrow experience; the influence upon her of a fascinating and gentlemanly Englishman, with aristocratic connections and a dubious past; ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... a beautiful girl about twenty years of age, her hair and eyes were black—in fact she was a decided brunette. She was fiery, impulsive and amorous. We had a thousand things to converse about, and in a few hours all our old friendship was reknit, and we became more intimate than ever. Of ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... of MONTAIGNE, written about a generation later, the spirit of the Renaissance, which had filled the pages of Rabelais with such a superabundant energy, appears in a quieter and more cultivated form. The first fine rapture was over; and the impulsive ardours of creative thought were replaced by the calm serenity of criticism and reflection. Montaigne has none of the coarseness, none of the rollicking fun, none of the exuberant optimism, of Rabelais; he is a refined gentleman, who wishes to charm rather than to electrify, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... take him with me. The obstinate Canadian refused, and I could clearly see that his tight-lipped mood and his bad temper were growing by the day. Under the circumstances I ultimately wasn't sorry that he refused. In truth, there were too many seals ashore, and it would never do to expose this impulsive fisherman to ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... cry of joy, she sprang into his arms, clasped her fingers tightly behind his neck, and rained impulsive ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... her Poems, which, though somewhat impulsive and overwrought, met with remarkable public favor. Such poems as "The Cry of the Children," which voices the protest of humanity against child labor, appealed tremendously to the readers of the age, and this young woman's fame as a poet temporarily overshadowed that of Tennyson and Browning. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the life of boys. However, it was a very mild form of runaway, twenty-five miles, and its objective my old home; not the lure of the sea nor the army, nor yet the adventures of the dime novel hidden in the hay mow. No, it was none of these, but strangely in contrast to them, an impulsive, passionate awakening of memory, an attempted escape from a future, which had been shown to me as in a vision, and from which I shrank ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... soon exposed this trick. Disguised as a pedler, he spread his goods, a shield and a spear among them, before the maidens. Then an alarm of danger being sounded, the girls fled in affright, but the disguised youth, with impulsive valor, seized the weapons and prepared to defend himself. His identity was ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... surface. They have not the pleasure of a long, deep gaze into immeasurable depths. And so they think her designing and clever, and (God save the mark!) even intellectual, when perhaps she has a wealth of love and devotion and heroism stored up behind that impulsive disposition and those dazzling black eyes which would do and dare more in a minute for some man she had set that great heart of hers upon than your cool-blooded, tranquil blonde would do in forty years. A ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... a step backward, then with an impulsive movement strode close up to him, his face unnaturally flushed and his eyes glittering with an ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... Benson this choice of name, he was rather sorry; it was like his sister's impulsive kindness—impulsive in everything—and he could imagine how Ruth's humility had touched her. He was sorry, but he ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... more impulsive, gave a cry when she read it, and, falling on her knees, thanked God for having heard her prayers, and saved her ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... meant for impulsive Jerry, just to notify him that under no conditions must he dream of making Frank's ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... friend, colaborer, and adviser of Luther. Luther was a resolute, energetic, impulsive man; Melanchthon was quiet, reserved, and conciliating. There is no doubt that these two men of such opposite dispositions exerted a salutary influence upon each other,—Luther stimulated and encouraged Melanchthon; ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... should kiss him, "before everybody"—the erratic and inconsiderate conduct of women in kissing boys was one of his trials. However, she was more judicious. She went on: "I knew I could trust you to be just, Oscar. Only you must remember that Ned isn't impulsive like you; it takes him a long time to get over things. You have made him unhappy and he may not be ready to forgive you at a minute's notice. But if you persevere, I am sure he will understand you and you will be ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... own lit up with renewed hope and he followed her in and touched her timidly on the arm. The girl turned, revealing a face rosy with cold, and a pair of warm gray eyes fringed in lashes of black, eyes that frankly offered a glimpse of a girl's impulsive heart brimming ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... just in time for dinner," he exclaimed, "so come in. There are others here who will rejoice to once more see you whom we thought dead long ago." And as these two dear, warm-hearted, impulsive friends dragged me in through the open window I became aware that the entire Mendouca family were in the drawing-room; and by them, too, I was very cordially welcomed, though, naturally, with a little more ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... the battle was fought, was one heap of dead bodies, and continued to be mentioned in the Arab chronicles under the name of Martyrs' Causeway. But the Arabs of Spain were then in that unstable social condition and in that heyday of impulsive youthfulness as a people, when men are more apt to be excited and attracted by the prospect of bold adventures than discouraged by reverses. El-Samah, on crossing the Pyrenees to go plundering and conquering in the country of the Frandj, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... was quite in accordance with his romantic, impulsive nature; and having made up his mind to save this black girl, he could not rest until the ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... name no names. The soul of delicacy and discretion, as of modesty and kindness, I name no names. But as for myself, that I am young I acknowledge. Those whom the gods love are ever young. Yet I am old enough, at least, to be capable of fresh, impulsive feelings. I am old enough to have cast the crude, harsh pessimism of inexperience. I am old enough to have outlived my disillusions. I am old enough to have learned that the good things of life are good, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... say, that something new, something unexpected is really about to happen: something that will surely leave a deep mark on his imagination, and last through all his life. I mean that peculiar radiation of impulsive energy issueing from anything really great, vibrating and palpitating from afar, fitting the soul to emotion ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Mr Walton, I am so sorry you have been so ill!" exclaimed the impulsive girl, taking my hand in both of hers, and sitting down beside me. "I haven't had a chance of coming to see you before; though we've always managed—I mean auntie and I—to hear about you. I would have come to nurse you, but it was no use thinking ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... you're my age, Sally dear, you'll see there are ways and ways of looking at things. Everything can't be wrapped up in a nutshell. We're not Ancient Phoenicians nowadays, whatever papa may say. But you're a dear, impulsive ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... business! Convinced of its reality, he yet could not see it. The thing existed in his mind, not as a picture, but as a piece of irrefutable evidence. Larry had not meant to do it, of course. But it was murder, all the same. Men like Larry—weak, impulsive, sentimental, introspective creatures—did they ever mean what they did? This man, this Walenn, was, by all accounts, better dead than alive; no need to waste a thought on him! But, crime—the ugliness—Justice unsatisfied! Crime concealed—and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in the sewing room until Katherine, followed by a maid, entered with tea and cakes. Some dress materials that rested on a gypsy table were swept aside by the impulsive Katherine, and the table, with the tray upon it, was placed at the right hand of Dorothy Amhurst. When the servant left the room, Katherine sidled to the long sewing table, sprang up lightly upon it, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... room and told him that he would have to go to bed two hours earlier than usual that night as a punishment for his misdeed. Now we all know that "the days of youth are long, long days," and the many events of that day had completely crowded out of the little boy's mind the trivial, impulsive act of the morning. The punishment could not arouse in him any feeling but that ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... true?" he insisted, giving her an impulsive little shake. She sat up on his knees, wide-eyed and wet-cheeked ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... been so petted, so feted, so adored. He might have been a pasha, had he been a Turk. The promising down on his upper lip—the object of his own secret solicitude and Olympia's gibes during the junior year—was quite worn away by the kissing he underwent among the impulsive Jeannettes of the village, who had a vague notion that soldiers, like sailors, were indurated for battle by adosculation. Jack may have believed this himself, for he took no pains to disabuse the maidens as to the inefficacy of ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... "Needs must with so impulsive a gentleman," the Bishop said. He had not moved, but at a signal from him The McMurrough, the O'Beirnes and two of the other young men had thrust themselves forward. "You must give up your sword, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... while Mr. Fortescue built up another rounded structure of words, had a likeness to each of her parents, but these elements were rather oddly blended. She had the quick, impulsive movements of her mother, the lips parting often to speak, and closing again; and the dark oval eyes of her father brimming with light upon a basis of sadness, or, since she was too young to have acquired a sorrowful point of view, one might say that the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... and questioned me with her glance. I gave her the word, but she was not satisfied and pointed to my eyes. I told her, and she repeated the word, making it sound like 'ice.' She pointed up to the sky, then to my eyes, then back to the sky, with movements so quick and impulsive that she distracted me, and I had no idea what she wanted. She got up on her knees and wrung her hands. She pointed to her own eyes and shook her head, then to mine and ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... meaning that probably it never can be recalled (compare BENEVOLENCE). The Revised Version uses love in place of charity in 1 Cor. xiii, and elsewhere. Love is more intense, absorbing, and tender than friendship, more intense, impulsive, and perhaps passionate than affection; we speak of fervent love, but of deep or tender affection, or of close, firm, strong friendship. Love is used specifically for personal affection between the sexes in the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... external nature in a way never known before. The physical improvements wrought by man upon the earth's surface I conceive as at once preparations for, and causes of, the possible development of higher types of humanity, beings less strong in the impulsive parts of our nature, more strong in the reasoning and moral, more fitted for the delights of social life, because society will then present less to dread ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... colour came into the clear delicacy of her cheeks, and the frank eyes moistened. She came up to him as he sat, and took his hand in both hers, pressing it warmly. "Ah, Mr. Chillingly," she said, with impulsive tremulous tones, "look round, look round this happy, peaceful home!—the life so free from a care, the husband whom I so love and honour; all the blessings that I might have so recklessly lost forever had I not met with you, had I ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lyonors' castle, what does each in turn typify? What does the poet mean by making the first three contests increasingly difficult? by the terror which the fourth knight inspires? by the easy victory over him? What does Lynette represent in her impulsive and persistent ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... She recoiled at the word, remembering how sorely her pride and feelings had been wounded by him she once held to be the best friend she had. She never could hold him as such any more. Her impulsive anger exaggerated even to wickedness the vanity of a man who fancied every woman was in love with him. She forgot all Major Harper's good qualities, his high sense of honour, his unselfish kindheartedness, his generous, gay spirit She set him down at once ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the elder woman in her childish, impulsive way, and thanked her with many little German phrases of gratitude. Von Rittenheim raised her hand to ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... find you want me when you get settled, I'll come," she answered, and, giving Leslie's little gloved hand an impulsive squeeze, she said, "Good-night," and ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... stirred with the stranger's manner and voice, with the tenderness of his idle touch, that instead of re-entering the house she turned back again and observed the pair from a screened nook. Really she argued (being little less impulsive than Anna herself) it was very excusable in Anna to encourage him, however she might have contrived to make his acquaintance; he was so gentlemanly, so fascinating, had such beautiful eyes. The thought that he was several years her junior ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... isolation would be at worst a group isolation, and there can be no doubt that my friend is right in pointing out that there is much more social toleration for an act committed under the sanction of a group than for an isolated act that may be merely impulsive misbehaviour ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... an impossible supposition," said the practical Barbicane; "unless that impulsive force had failed; but even then its speed would diminish by degrees, and it ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... organization of wonderful versatility and commands influence and wins applause in vocations calling for spirit and vigor displayed at short and frequent intervals, rather than for continued tension on the nerves and muscles. He is warm, enthusiastic, generous, impulsive, and deficient in the selfish propensities and in ambition. He loves display and would like to have power, but is inadequate to the continued effort and the endurance necessary to obtain it. He wields a more potent influence in the pulpit, on the rostrum or in journalism. ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... after her wonderingly, saw young Allyne standing near, his eyes turned wistfully upon herself. She flushed a little, and so did he; then, with an impulsive movement, he ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... not want you to take me under compulsion!" exclaimed the Spaniard, quickly. "I would like to go—as your friend!" and he threw out his hands in an impulsive, appealing gesture. "As a ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... Burroughs, with the heroism of perfect breeding, turned away his eyes, and suppressed the enthusiastic answer that had risen to his lips. He would not add to her confusion by accepting as extraordinary the impulsive expression of her feelings. So he simply said, after a moment ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... village of Ruthwell, on the 22d September 1818. Lewis was slender, and of low stature. His countenance was sharp, and his eye intelligent, though frenzied with excitement. He always expressed himself in the language of enthusiasm, despised prudence and common sense, and commended the impulsive and fanciful. He published, in 1816, a small volume, entitled "The African Slave; with other Poems and Songs." Some of his lyrics are not unworthy of a place in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... eyes were fixed upon him with a strange steadiness, as if perhaps they had been resting upon him for some minutes and she had forgotten herself. It was a little thing perhaps, but it was enough for his hot blood and swift-veering impulsive nature. He had just given the final stroke; he was panting, glowing. The people were shouting, rising in their seats, and repeating his name with caressing, applauding epithets attached to it. Chance had brought him near the seat in which she sat, with Jovita and Jose and ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... almost deceiving eagerness, for the opening of a door, a footfall, the sound of a voice that was young. Mrs. Ackroyd, Lady Archie Brook—they looked surely twenty years younger than she did. She had been a fool! She had been a passionate, impulsive fool! ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... tired arms refuse the axe to rear, And claim a respite from the sylvan war; But not till half the prostrate forests lay Stretch'd in long ruin, and exposed to day) Then, nor till then, the Greeks' impulsive might Pierced the black phalanx, and let in the light. Great Agamemnon then the slaughter led, And slew Bienor at his people's head: Whose squire Oileus, with a sudden spring, Leap'd from the chariot to revenge his king; But in his front he felt the fatal wound, Which pierced ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... of the lack of damask roses in her cheeks, she seemed a healthy child, and certainly showed great capacity of energetic movement in the impulsive capers with which she welcomed her venerable progenitor. She shouted out her satisfaction, moreover (as her custom was, having never had any oversensitive auditors about her to tame down her voice), till even the Doctor's dull ears were ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by a mere accident. He had chanced to be seated on her right hand at a formal dinner-party in town. Very little had passed between them then, but later, through the medium of his host, he had sought her out, and called upon her. Within a week he had asked her to be his wife. And Nan Everard, impulsive, dazzled by the prospect of unbounded wealth, and feverishly eager to ease the family ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... generous, impulsive old man. "Dorothy, Madge, and you are all in this world whom I love. Nothing shall make trouble between us. Whatever happens, ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... She had not turned her head away as had her sister. In fact, in spite of being two years younger than Ruth, Alice often showed more spirit. She was of an impulsive nature, and Mr. DeVere used to say she was very like her dead mother. Ruth was tall and fair, and of a romantic nature. Alice ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... Genevieve, that I make superhuman efforts; but no one is master of his thoughts. They are so impulsive and rapid that they seem to escape ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... its National Board. Every dollar subscribed has a definite channel designated for its expenditure and so there is no big treasury fund to quarrel over. There is always a sufficient number of experienced members to hold the younger and more impulsive recruits in check. Being one of the oldest women's organizations in existence it has accumulated a large store of wisdom and judgment. Even where people disapprove its purposes they cannot fail to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... subject, in a happy moment she took up this humble one lying at her own door and allowed her self to write naturally even as in her most intimate letters. This is the reason of the vitality of Our Tillage; it was simple, natural, and reflected the author herself, her tender human heart, her impulsive nature, her bright playful humorous spirit. There is no thought, no mind stuff in it, and it is a classic! It is about the country, and she has so little observation that it might have been written in a town, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... plan from seventeen on was to live in Italy. But it was I, after all, who went to Italy year after year, while John led Lord knows what thriftless life in Florida. From the last morning when he had wheeled, in our old big room, and dashed across it and thrown his arms around me in his own impulsive, irresistible way—since that morning I had never seen him. Letters, plenty. More money was needed always. John always thought that the world ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... gang aft agley'? Well, instead of proceeding, as originally intended, to the delightful environs of Glencaid, for a sort of a Summer vacation, I have, on the impulse of the moment, decided upon crossing the Styx. Our somewhat impulsive red friends out yonder are kindly preparing to assist me in making a successful passage, and the citizens of Glencaid, when they learn the sorrowful news of my translation, ought to come nobly forward ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... was a long report—sheet after sheet closely written. And in the middle of his work he broke off to read again the letter that he had written the night before. With a quick, impulsive gesture he kissed the name it bore. Then he ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... you injure your foundation by—branding it with his notoriety, in an impulsive and—and fruitless generosity. For it would be fruitless. You, of all people, must understand that the burden on the other side is—impossibly heavy. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... say piqued, by this curious reticence; he begged hard for names; but Medhurst was adamant. "No, no," he replied; "we detectives have our own just pride in our profession. If I told you now, you would probably spoil all by some premature action. You are too open and impulsive! I will mention this alone: Colonel Clay will be shortly in Paris, and before long will begin from that city a fresh attempt at defrauding you, which he is now hatching. Mark my words, and see whether or not I have been kept well informed of the ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... himself. Passionate, impulsive, and often unreasonable, his mind was singularly well-balanced and never before had it succumbed to obsession. He had taken the war as a normal episode in the history of a world dealing mainly in war; not as a strictly personal experience designed by ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... was no place in the world. And not only willing but anxious. I couldn't credit him with generous impulses. For it seemed obvious to me from what I had learned that, to put it mildly, he was not an impulsive person. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... hunting he was faint from hunger, and cast a greedy eye on some pottage that Jacob had prepared. But Jacob would not give his hungry brother the food until he had promised, by a solemn oath, to surrender his birthright to him. The clever man of enterprise, impulsive and passionate, thought more, for the moment, of the pangs of hunger than of his future prospects, and the quiet, plain, and cunning man of tents availed himself ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... was eminently a practical man, impulsive, as we learn from his imprudent marriage at nineteen, but with a strong sense of duty. His mother, who was Welsh, brought him up in habits of thrift and industry very unlike those of his ancestors, ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... gross breach of confidence, of which Mr. Adams, like other impulsive and confiding persons, often had been the victim, those letters were sold by Cunningham's heir in 1824, while the writer and many of the parties referred to were still alive. They were published as a part of the electioneering ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... to the prediction: "I dinna believe in sic things mysel', but, some way or ither, they aye come true." Lizzie's father and her whole family are said to have been highly respectable. Her truant and impulsive disposition led her, however, into conduct and habits that deprived her of the respect and help of her friends; and necessity at length appears to have constrained her to act the part of a fortune-teller, which she is known to have practised ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... would go down with sorrow to the grave. Still, what is glory without risk? Were he my own son, I should say, 'let him go.' Only, brother earl, caution thy noble son and heir, that the youngster is very much more likely to fail in discretion than in valour. He is one of those excitable, impulsive creatures who will, as I expect, fight like a wildcat, and ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... disguise themselves in order to pass from one cantonment to another. In a brief period, I created a feeling entirely different, and made the character of British officers respected and beloved. In the Gwalior territories the same result was obtained by the same means. However impulsive on other occasions, Lord Ellenborough behaved magnanimously after his victories over the Gwalior troops; but in sparing the State, he acted, I believe, against the feelings of his Council, amongst whom the doctrines of ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... confidence which should subsist between mother and daughter be once lost or disturbed; let the girl once fear to think aloud to her mother, and the charm is broken, and dangers encompass her around. No thoughtful woman can see a girl, thus alone, carried away by her impulsive feeling, devoting herself to the worship of some prominent man who dares to encourage or permit such tribute, without longing to step between and defend her, as Spenser's Britomart did the innocent Amoret from what she knows is the unseen, unfelt, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... disturbed by the noise of roysterers. It was the summer home of a number of quiet people from the south—fishing men chiefly, who loved to hear the water rushing about their legs on the edges of the deep salmon-pools of the Conquhar Water. There was Cole, Radical M.P., impulsive and warm-hearted, a London lawyer who had declined, doubtless to his own monetary loss, to put his sense of justice permanently into a blue bag. There was Dr. Percival, the father of all them that cast the angle in Glen Conquhar, who now fished little in these degenerate days, but instead told ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... cynical repudiation [cheers] of a solemn treaty on the avowed grounds that when a nation's interests required it, right and good faith must give way to force. ["Hear, hear!"] The war has been carried on, therefore, with a systematic—not an impulsive or a casual—but a systematic violation of all the conventions and practices by which international agreements had sought to mitigate and to regularize the clash of arms. [Cheers.] She has now, I will not say reached a climax, for ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... should first achieve an important and decisive victory. Grant very quietly folded up the letter, put it by for future reference, and proceeded with the plans of his campaign, saying nothing. To Rosecrans's open, impulsive, and honorable nature, engaged with all his powers in furthering the interests of the Government and the general welfare of his command, this letter was an insult, and he treated it accordingly. On March 6th he prepared his reply, and forwarded it to Washington. In this letter he informs ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... always telling Matilda so. She is so impulsive. But as you may have matters of business, Mr. Prosper, on which to speak to Miss Thoroughbung, I ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the impulsive reply. "I told you I didn't want the money. I have more than six hundred pounds a year, and never spend ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... man of earnest politics, of good company, wrapped in his own scheming, not impulsive, doing nothing beyond that which he intended, without abruptness, without hard words, discreet, accurate, learned, talking smoothly of a necessary massacre, a slaughterer, because ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... bells were chiming in the lofty dome. And then the lad—for he was Parsifal— Tight clutched his heart in sorrowful distress As King Amfortas groaned in bitter woe. He stood in utter anguish overcome, Breathing impulsive with deep sympathy, But spake no single word, nor gave one sign That he had understood the solemn feast, Or seen the glory of the Holy Grail. And when the last knight left the festal hall And all the doors were closed, then Gurnemanz Came to the ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... an impulsive man is afraid of himself, and seldom carries out his first angry intentions. That is our chance of salvation. If, upon the receipt of your bomb-shell, M. Fauvel, unable to restrain himself, rushed into his wife's room, and cried, 'Where are your diamonds?' Mme. Fauvel will ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... twenty miles distant from Carthage, and began a partial blockade of the capital. On the 15 th December Belisarius met the Vandals in battle-array. The fight was more stubbornly contested than that of Ad Decimum; but Tzazo fell in the thickest of the battle, and again the impulsive nature of Gelimer was so moved by the sight of a brother's blood that he renounced the struggle for his crown and galloped away from ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... which the results were very incommensurate. Pile-driving was, in Mr. Nasmyth's words, conducted on the artillery or cannon-ball principle; the action being excessive and the mass deficient, and adapted rather for destructive than impulsive action. In his new and beautiful machine, he applied the elastic force of steam in raising the ram or driving block, on which, the block being disengaged, its whole weight of three tons descended on the head of the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... the keys, and slips them into her pocket) A bunch of his keys; they are safer in my pocket than in Izod's—poor Izod is so impulsive. (she crosses to R. C., goes up the steps and calls at door. Calling) Squire! Squire! Here's Gilbert Hythe with two men. Don't let 'em ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... of anything for which their owner was not good enough. This impression upon him was so strong that he said, with blurting awkwardness, that she looked charming as she was, and needed not the slightest change. The value of this impulsive remark was fully appreciated by Dora, but she gave no sign of it, and simply said that if he were ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... pressure of the arm about her with an impulsive hug. "Oh, I knew you'd think of something perfectly lovely," she cried. "That would be much the best way, for she is so timid and quiet you couldn't keep her from being a wall-flowah at an ordinary ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to take a box, as in the small enclosure it was easier to keep an eye on the children, and make sure they did nothing they ought not to. For the little Maynards were impulsive, and though Pompton was wise and sensible, he was not entirely accustomed to their ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... commonly impulsive and inquisitive, the first to come forward was one of the two friends of Don Antonio's wife, and her question was, "Tell me, Head, what shall I do to be very beautiful?" and the answer she got was, "Be ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... crape fan and swayed it. In the dining-room my guests proceeded with their lonely salad toward a probable lonely dessert. At thought of that dessert and of that salad, a suggestion, partly impulsive and partly flavoured with some faint reminiscence, at once besieged me, and in it I divined ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... smiled sadly at the impulsive Irishman's remark. He could see that he had moved every fibre of his feeling heart and warm nature and that he was following every incident of his terrible story of atrocities and sufferings with an ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... doors were open and a cool breeze, making the circuitous route of the passage ways, swept through the room, bulging a newspaper which he held opened out in front of him. He was scanning the headlines to catch the impulsive moods of the world. The parlor was not far away, down the hall, and voices reached him. And then there came the distressing hack, hack, of a hollow cough. He put down the newspaper, got up, and slowly strode about the room, not shaking with joviality as he walked. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... fallen short of the standard. But even so he would seem a more natural personage to haunt the still quadrangles of the College than his antagonist, Mr. Gladstone, who was an honorary Fellow of the College, but whose impulsive, eager vivacity would harmonize ill with the spirit ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... part of the book it is remarked that voluntary movements are preceded, not only by reflex, but also by "impulsive movements," the ceaseless activity of young infants being due to purposeless discharges of nervous energy. Reflex movements are followed by instinctive, and these by voluntary. The latter are first shown by grasping at objects, which took place in Preyer's ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... that the young man did not think of laughing. He had thought it wiser to prepare his irascible friend, lest the Baron might make some allusion to the grand event during the course of the conversation, and that the other might not make some impulsive remark. ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... as they stood in the hall. "I was too hasty; the intense desire to save you dictated my impulsive question, and your prompt answer was called forth by the rashness of a man who, in all the heat of his fervent love, sought to avert an impending danger. But you shall not be compelled thus to resign your freedom. Tell me now calmly if you can love me a little; if otherwise, ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... notion of maternal and paternal instincts; but the children don't often seem in folk-tales, to have a similar impulsive affection for their ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... him by shutting our eyes. You misconceive me if you imagine I think him capable of coolly plotting his cousin's death; but it is not outside the limits of the possible that what has happened a thousand times may have happened once more. Men less impulsive than Richard"— ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... those from which Gypsy was entirely free, and to which she had a special and inborn aversion. On the other hand, many of Gypsy's failings were not natural to Joy. Gypsy was always forgetting things she ought to remember. Joy seldom did. Gypsy was thoughtless, impulsive, always into mischief, out of it, sorry for it, and in again. Joy did wrong deliberately, as she did everything else, and did not become penitent in a hurry. Gypsy's temper was like a flash of lightning, hot and fierce and melting ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... making him a member of the Council of State. Goethe was the more willing to remain, since he detested his law practise, and his income from authorship was pitifully small. Moreover, he saw in the boyish, impulsive, sport-loving prince a sterling nature that might be led in the ways of wise rulership. For the nonce this was mission enough. He took his seat in the Council in June, 1776, with the title of Councilor of Legation. At first there was not very much ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Aunt Ellinor—kind, busy, and impulsive, and always anxious to entertain the girls when they came for their fortnightly visit—pushed aside her papers and immediately gave her whole attention to the snapshots which ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... have obscured her attractions, there can be little doubt that she was so. What her character was, we can only conjecture from the tenor of our story: though we have reason to suspect that she was passionate, impulsive, and somewhat vain of her ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... really has a passionately affectionate nature and he would like to love Turgenieff in the warmest way possible; but unfortunately his impulsive feeling encounters nothing but a kindly, good-natured indifference, and he can by no means reconcile himself ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... but it sounded rather as an invitation to continue the siege in a less impulsive manner. So did Desmond construe what she had said, and his spirits reflected the satisfaction which the belief afforded him. When she joined them at lunch Kathleen found the two as full of spirits as if they had been children. Their laughter and jests were an offence to many who were ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... at the post who had real power were the garrison physicians. One of these, Dr. John Emerson was a giant in body and impulsive in spirit. On a certain day in early winter when the quartermaster was distributing stoves to the officers, Dr. Emerson asked for one for his negro servant. This the quartermaster refused, saying that there were not enough in store; whereupon the doctor insinuated that the ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... the boys, had seen from the first this danger. Quicker witted than the others, he had thought of the hill that lay before the runaways. But his shout of warning to Teddy had come too late to stop that impulsive youth, and ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... man of thirty. There were paragraphs cut from newspapers, telling of his genius as a soldier, his prowess as a mountaineer and hunter of big game, with dramatic anecdotes of his haughty courage in time of danger, his impulsive charities, his well thought out schemes for the welfare of his subjects ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... citizen of the antecedents, ardent patriotism, and impulsive nature of Rutherford B. Hayes would enter the army in the war for the Union, was to be looked for as a thing of course. He had been in the habit of obeying every call of duty, and could not therefore disobey when duty called loudest. He regarded the war waged for the ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... a comfort to him afterward to recall that he submitted to her impulsive caress without ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... words merely give my imagination a letter of introduction to my reason. They burrow among the foundations of my life and being. At least—you have done me no wrong...." He knew the words were wild, impulsive, yet he could find no better. Above all things he wished to ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... to Rhuddlan and this present visit to Carnarvon, Joanna had grown from a child to a woman, and was no longer able to run about with her brothers at will, though she still retained her old fearless, independent spirit and impulsive generosity of temperament, and was a universal favourite, despite the fact that she gave more trouble than ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hand!" cried impulsive, honest old Forty-nine. "That's enough. You're hungry. Sit down there. And quick, Carrie, pour us the California wine. Here's a gourd, there's a yeast powder can, and there's a tin cup. Thank you. Here's to you. Ah, that sets a fellow all right. It warms the heart; and, ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... of sight until he saw his father leave the chapel, followed closely by Ann and Gwilym. The bent head and subdued appearance of the old man went straight to the sailor's warm, impulsive heart. With a single step he was at his father's side, taking his arm and linking ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... unkind;—she evidently intends to perform all her own duties punctually and faithfully, and expects others to do the same. I often look at her with wonder, her nature is so different from mine,—never impulsive, always cool and steady,—full of ceaseless activity, yet never hurried, and seemingly never perplexed. I sometimes think she sees the whole of her life mapped out before her, and takes up every event in order. With the exception of the servants, we are the only occupants of the house, Eleanor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... greeting, that afternoon. Then, on a sudden, she rested both hands upon my breast. When she did that you tingled all over, in an agreeable fashion. "It was uncommonly decent of you to remember", said this impulsive young woman. "It was dear of you! And ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... envelope and read—a blurred, scrawled, miserable letter; the words erased with passionate strokes, and blotted with hot tears, and scored out in impulsive misery. It was long, yet at a glance he scanned its message and its meaning; at the first few words he knew its whole as well as though he ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Anura among the Amphibia are saltatory, but their leaps are usually single, or repeated only a few times, not sustained gallops. The exceptions among the Mammalia still more tend to prove the close correspondence between the 'impulsive' mode of progression and the dislocation of the male gonads. In the Monotremata there is no scrotum, the testes are in a position similar to that which obtains in Reptiles, and they are the only Mammals in which these organs are anterior to ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... sympathized with this impulsive act. The heads of the dead, borne on the points of spears, were shown the garrison, and at once the gates were thrown open, the hungry troops supplied with food, and a general fraternization took place. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... time, and with our colder Northern temperament, to comprehend the romantic feelings of attachment subsisting between Schubert and some of his friends,—feelings which, however, are by no means rare among the impulsive youth of South Germany,—but his naive simplicity, cheerful and eminently sociable disposition, insensibility to envy, and incorruptible modesty, were qualities calculated to transform the respect due to his genius into a strong personal liking. ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... General Grant was never impulsive, and always met his officers in an unceremonious way, with a quiet "How are you" soon putting one at his ease, since the pleasant tone in which he spoke gave assurance of welcome, although his manner was otherwise impassive. When the ordinary greeting was over, he usually waited for his ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... eminent, and successful Roman, who devoted most of his leisure to moral philosophy, than as a real philosopher by habit and profession. And in this point of view his very inconsistencies have their charm, as illustrating his ardent, impulsive, imaginative temperament. He was no apathetic, self-contained, impassible Stoic, but a passionate, warm-hearted man, who could break into a flood of unrestrained tears at the death of his friend Annaeus Serenus,[57] and feel a trembling solicitude for the welfare ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... unnecessary collision with the privates, but to take the responsible officer aside and make him privately understand that he must answer for such lack of instruction or of discipline among his men. An impulsive man is too apt to meddle with details, and so to weaken the sense of responsibility in the intermediate officers, who hate to be ignored or belittled before the soldiers. But if Rosecrans's method was not an ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... task, my dear," he replied with a smile, gently stroking her hair the while, "and I do not think we are justified in undertaking it. How many times during our travels, Mary Louise, has your impulsive and tender heart urged you to assume the burdens of other people? You seem to pick up a trail of sorrow or unhappiness with the eagerness of a bloodhound and I have all I can do to call you off the scent. One small ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... considered, the woman from whom even J. Rodney Potts must flee in terror would not be of a sort to excite the imagination pleasurably. A less impulsive man than Solon Denney might have found cause for misgiving in this circumstance of Potts's prompt exodus. In the immediate flush of his triumph, however, the editor of the Argus had no leisure for negative reflections, and when ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... a rather impulsive young lady," said Miss Davis disapprovingly. "I wish she had taken a fancy to some one else than my pupil. You must try to forget her, Hetty. Girls like her, with wealth and power and nobody to control them, are apt to become capricious, and work mischief with people ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... arises from the fact that a man so many-sided, so impulsive, so progressive, so modern—one might almost say so American—should have altered so little either in character or policy during quarter of a century. This is due to what we have called his mediaeval nature. He is ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... me, I speak as one gentleman to another, but—you must have noticed that Americans are unpopular with our troops. Eh? They are impulsive, these troopers; accidents cannot be prevented. Suppose something should happen to you? There is the trouble. You came to Cuba to enjoy its climate; you cannot be expected to remain indoors. Of course not. Well! Among our soldiers ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... lined. The success of these informal Scripture lessons led him to establish a religious paper for young people called The Youth's Companion, in which some of our hero's early verses appeared. His wife, Hannah Parker, is described as a charming woman, lively, impulsive, and emotional. Her son, Nathaniel, whose devotion to her never wavered, used to say, 'My veins are teeming with the quicksilver spirit my ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... There is no sharp line between them, but it depends upon the degree of objectivity my feeling has attained at the moment whether I say "It pleases me," or "It is beautiful." If I am self-conscious and critical, I shall probably use, one phrase; if I am impulsive and susceptible, the other. The more remote, interwoven, and inextricable the pleasure is, the more objective it will appear; and the union of two pleasures often makes one beauty. In Shakespeare's LIVth sonnet are ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... given herself up to her daughter's education; but the same moderation which she had had in her love, held in check the impulsive and morbid quality which is sometimes in motherhood, when the child is the only creature upon whom the woman can expend her jealous need of loving and being loved. She loved Minna much, but was clear in her judgment of her, and did not conceal any of her imperfections any more than she ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... I going to?" I ejaculated in a delirium of entrancing sensations—"Ah oh! oh!—what's going to happen, I'm bursting!" and my head fell on her shoulder as I lay nearly lifeless, all the extatic emotions of the impulsive gushes throbbing from me, as her grot seemed to grip and suck every drop of my life, so as to mingle the very essence of our being in the recesses of what I now ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... strength; and the ship was just entering the narrow passage between the island and the point that formed one termination of the bay, heading, of course, toward the tree to which the warp had been secured. It was an impulsive feeling, rather than any reason, that made me give the vessel a sheer with the helm, so as to send her directly through the passage, instead of letting her strike the rocks. I had no eventual hope in so ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... not without friends, who helped him as far as they could, and advised him as much as they dared; but he seems to have been a man who could not be assisted, because in matters of art he allowed no outside interference, and he was naturally impulsive. Money ran through his hands like water through a sieve, though it is only fair to point out that he was very generous, and could not lend a deaf ear to any ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels
... theory cannot fail in any such way, because all I have been able to find out hitherto regarding the vibration of vortices,[2] whether cored or coreless, does not seem to imply the liability of translational or impulsive energies of the individual vortices becoming lost in energy of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... "You are very impulsive, Rosy—in spite of your years," said Oliver, with his usual quietness. "I assure you I do not wish to interfere; and you must set it down to brotherly affection if I sometimes feel inclined to wonder what you mean ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Englishy tricks an' trokin's," said she, settling the white muslin band which she wore across her brow wrinkleless and straight, where it had been disarrayed by the onslaught of her impulsive granddaughter. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... two races (the Israelites and the Edomites) that they respectively represent. Of the two brothers, Esau is in many ways the more attractive. He suggests the open air and the fields, where he loved to hunt. He is easy-going, ingenuous, and impulsive. His faults are those of not being or doing. As long as he had enough to eat and was comfortable, he was contented. He is the type of the world's drifters. Since Aram was far distant he disregards the wishes of his parents and marries one of the daughters of the land. No ambition stirred him ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... a moment, thinking of Roger, blunt, loyal, impulsive Roger, hoping that nothing serious ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... you, I'd go to bed," continued Wally, all gentle solicitude. She took an impulsive step ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... nor yet so pure, as it had been up to this moment. It often happens that certain actions of human life seem, literally speaking, improbable, though actual. Is not this because we constantly omit to turn the stream of psychological light upon our impulsive determinations, and fail to explain the subtile reasons, mysteriously conceived in our minds, which impelled them? Perhaps Eugenie's deep passion should be analyzed in its most delicate fibres; for it became, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... determined new kind of womanhood over night. Her adventurous spirit worried him. One day he had sat in his office reading a letter announcing her homecoming. The letter seemed no more than a characteristic outburst from an impulsive girl who had but yesterday fallen asleep at evening in his arms. It confused him to think that an honest ploughmaker should have a letter from his little girl talking of the kind of living that he believed could only lead a ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... a beautiful building with arcades, and having flower-gardens; statues, and a splendid fountain in the centre. To see this extraordinary scene to the greatest advantage, the first visit should be by night, and the impulsive coup-d'oeil tempts the beholder to imagine that he has around him the realization of some gay dream of a fairy palace, the immense glare of light glittering on the falling waters, the brilliance of the illuminated shops; ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... with some people," negatived Dick, "but Darry is there, and he's impulsive. He might half kill us before he discovered ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... it happened that Ellen discovered Abby in tears at the window of the class-room. Ellen, although quick-tempered and impulsive, was kind-hearted. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... father and mother died, leaving her to the care of a grandfather. She was soon placed in the school of the author, Rev. J.S.C. Abbott, of New York, and here some of her happiest days were passed. She grew to womanhood, frank, merry, impulsive, brilliant in conversation, and ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... obstinate Canadian refused, and I could clearly see that his tight-lipped mood and his bad temper were growing by the day. Under the circumstances I ultimately wasn't sorry that he refused. In truth, there were too many seals ashore, and it would never do to expose this impulsive fisherman to such temptations. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... was, of course, hardly the friend my parents would have chosen for me; they had, in the end, decided that the tears which he had shed on hearing of my grandmother's illness were genuine enough; but they knew, either instinctively or from their own experience, that our early impulsive emotions have but little influence over our later actions and the conduct of our lives; and that regard for moral obligations, loyalty to our friends, patience in finishing our work, obedience to a rule of life, have a surer foundation in ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... in the impulsive little touch which was to be a lasting reminder to Sadie Hansen that Elizabeth Hunter responded to the things which were making of her life a different story. They had found common ground, where neither scoffed at ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... office with a premeditatedly formal air toward Steve. She had taken a New Year's resolution to refrain from letting an impulsive expression of sympathy assume false meanings in her heart. On the other hand, Steve felt a boor for having sent the books. He was so used to being called cave man and told not to do this or say that that he now ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Duca di Rienzi, had a strain of stern asceticism in his nature, and even the impulsive, warm-hearted American mother could not wholly redeem from gloom the cold palace in Rome and the dark fourteenth century castle at Monte Della Robbia. Each of these natures had given something to Vanno, and the differences were so strongly ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... parks, all contributed to the holiday upliftedness which swelled their unaccustomed hearts. At each vista of green they made ready to disembark and were restrained only by the conductor and by the sage counsel of Eva, who reminded her impulsive companions that the Central Park could be readily identified by "the hollers from all those things what hollers." And so, in happy watching and calm trust of the conductor, they were borne far beyond 59th Street, the first and most popular entrance to the park, before ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... army sympathized with this impulsive act. The heads of the dead, borne on the points of spears, were shown the garrison, and at once the gates were thrown open, the hungry troops supplied with food, and a general fraternization took place. Joy in the fall of the tyrant was universal throughout the empire, the two new emperors ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... to him," Katya went on with impulsive haste. "He wanted to repay it me. He wanted to, that's true; but he needed money for that creature, too. So he murdered his father, but he didn't repay me, and went off with her to that village where he was arrested. There, again, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Minister. Good heavens, to think that within a few hours I should myself have lost it!" His handsome face was distorted with a spasm of despair, and his hands tore at his hair. For a moment we caught a glimpse of the natural man, impulsive, ardent, keenly sensitive. The next the aristocratic mask was replaced, and the gentle voice had returned. "Besides the members of the Cabinet there are two, or possibly three, departmental officials who know of the letter. No one else in England, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with an impulsive rapidity. O'thodoxy had always 'ipelled her,—always. She had felt herself confronted by the most insurmountable difficulties, and yet whenever she had gone away from Christianity—she had gone away from Christianity, to the ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... and while fat law-makers whitewash the unpleasant from the sight of the well-to-do. In her helplessness they saw, unknowing it, their own helplessness, saw in her Humanity wronged and suffering and in need. Those who gave gave to themselves, gave as an impulsive offering to the divine impulse which drives the weak together ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... up my mind to leave the Navy. It was a wilful, and perhaps a too hasty, impulse. But I am impulsive by nature; and now that my father was dead, I fancied myself to a certain extent my own master. I knew moreover, by my father's will, that I should not be dependent upon a profession. Knowledge of such a fact has been the ruin of many a better ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... her, in astonishment, almost in awe. Could this be the sensual, passionate voluptuary he had known two days since?—the strange, unprincipled, impulsive being, who yielded like the reed, to every gust of passion—this deep, clear, vigorous thinker! It was indeed a change to puzzle sager heads than that of Arvina! a transformation, sudden and beautiful as that from the torpid earthy grub, to the swift-winged etherial butterfly! ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... arose, naturally enough, through too careless, too inquisitive, and too impulsive a temperament. But of late, it is a rare thing that I sleep soundly at night. There is a countenance which haunts me, turn as I will. There is an hysterical laugh which will forever ring within ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... he went on, "that you will pardon me if I say that in England custom does not sanction certain freedoms which in the colonies seem to be regarded as of no moment. I am not of this opinion. Miss Peniston is, I hope, to be my wife. She is young, impulsive, and—well, no matter. Some men take these things coolly; I do not. I am sure you will have the good sense to agree with me. When a woman is pledged to a man, it is fit that she should be most guarded in her relations ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... sacred feeling to all that pertains to her. You are quite correct in stating that measles were the cause of her death. My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When lying very still, her mother asked her if there was anything she wished: 'Oh yes! if you would just leave the room door open a wee bit, and play 'The Land o' the Leal,' and I will lie and think, and enjoy myself' (this is just ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... an end for ever to all friendly intercourse between the uncle and nephew; Mrs. Ogilvie, on her part, lifted her eyebrows again and said, 'The commercial mind is very droll!' But just for one moment she locked her hands together with an impulsive movement that had a whole life's ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... who had never but once, and that was during the war, lacked the luxuries of life, could not understand why his grief should be so overwhelming; but they could understand that they had been deceived, and even the gentle-spirited Bert was indignant over it. The impulsive Don could scarcely restrain himself. He walked angrily up and down the floor, thrashing his boots with his riding-whip and cracking it in the air so viciously that the ponies danced about ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... remarks about the inequality of fortune amongst mankind, and instanced himself as a striking example of the fate of those men, who, according to all the rules of right, ought to be near the top, instead of at the foot of the ladder of fortune. "But," said he, springing to his feet with impulsive energy, "I have now the means at my command of rising superior to fate, or of inflicting incalculable ills ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... first, a clear comprehension of them, and then a calm, quiet, and gentle, but still inflexible firmness in maintaining them. Unfortunately, however, such qualities as these, simple as they seem, are the most rare. If, instead of gentle but firm consistency and steadiness of action, ardent, impulsive, and capricious energy and violence were required, it would be comparatively easy to find them. How seldom do we see a mother's management of her children regulated by a calm, quiet, gentle, and considerate ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... one's surprise, far from being displeased, Mrs. Payton seemed rather to enjoy her daughter's impulsive outburst, merely cautioning her not to overheat and overexcite herself too much, as the day gave promise of ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... as thine, scarce can it bear love's name, Deaf to the pleading notes of his sweet lyre, A frank, impulsive heart I wish to claim, A heart that blindly follows its desire. I wish to embrace a woman full of flame, I want to kiss a woman ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... never impulsive, and always met his officers in an unceremonious way, with a quiet "How are you" soon putting one at his ease, since the pleasant tone in which he spoke gave assurance of welcome, although his manner was otherwise impassive. When the ordinary greeting was ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... fear anything unfriendly. If there should be any exhibition of the sort, it's a comfort to feel that I can depend upon my grown-up daughter to set an example of dignity and self-restraint. My nature is like Dreda's, so much more impulsive, that you will be a great strength ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... her tongue, Stella widely proclaimed her opinion that Mr Hesketh's engagement to Miss Milburn was the most suitable thing that could be imagined or desired. We know the youngest Miss Murchison to be inclined to impulsive views; but it would be safe, I think, to follow her here. Now that the question no longer circles in the actual vortex of Elgin politics Mr Octavius Milburn's attitude toward the conditions of imperial connection has become almost as mellow as ever. ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... we apply the third test to this problem of political secrecy, the case is even clearer and even more funny. Surely no one will say that the purchase of peerages and such things are kept secret because they are so light and impulsive and unimportant that they must be matters of individual fancy. A child sees a flower and for the first time feels inclined to pick it. But surely no one will say that a brewer sees a coronet and for the first time suddenly ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... Her boy's impulsive sympathy touched Kate greatly; altogether she was very much moved that day. When Wolfgang walked beside her again, she looked at him sideways the whole time with deep emotion: oh, he was so good, so good. And her heart sent up burning hopes ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... suffering, subject to galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, arbitrary prohibitions and taboos, and to customary duties equally galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, and arbitrary. They endure painful mutilations, they submit to painful sacrifices.... How are these wild, unstable, wayward, impulsive, passionate natures brought to submit to such a rigorous and cruel discipline? By education; by the inculcation from infancy of these ideals. In these ideals they have been brought up, and to them they cling with the utmost tenacity." One might as well contend that it was easy to teach all ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... gazing at it as if he expected it to open, and a loved hand to beckon him within. But it remained pitilessly shut, and the little boy had to accommodate himself as well as he could to a new phase in his mental history—the being excluded—left out in the cold. After making an impulsive step toward the door he turned, plunged his hands into his pockets as if to keep them from attacking the handle of that closed door, and walking to the window, gazed out, silent and motionless. I watched; ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... unexpected happened. With a quick little impulsive movement, Genevieve stepped to the new boy's side, and held out a frankly ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... this impulsive temperament and associated with some of the most cherished affections of the human heart is the spirit of war, developed by thousands of generations of ancestral conflict and passed on to us as a heritage to be rooted out of our nature before we shall realize in its fullness the ideal for which we ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... the thought of marriage had vanished now from my mother: she had, it sometimes seemed to me, no other wish than that I should be restored to health. I fancy she almost hated the memory of that brief time when the words of Mr. Floyd made her color deepen, her lip tremble and the glad impulsive tears ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... herself up to her daughter's education; but the same moderation which she had had in her love, held in check the impulsive and morbid quality which is sometimes in motherhood, when the child is the only creature upon whom the woman can expend her jealous need of loving and being loved. She loved Minna much, but was clear in her judgment of her, and did not conceal any of her imperfections any more than she tried ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... his life, by betraying the designs of his confederacy, and thus proving himself, as it would have been termed, a traitor to the people, and to the cause of his country. Such, in truth, are the multifarious evils that result from illegal conspiracies among our impulsive and unreasoning countryman. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... ministered to that in his twisted traceries, and deep-wrought foliage, and burning casements. The dead Renaissance drew back into its earthliness, out of all that was warm and heavenly; back into its pride, out of all that was simple and kind; back into its stateliness, out of all that was impulsive, reverent, and gay. But it understood the luxury of the body; the terraced and scented and grottoed garden, with its trickling fountains and slumbrous shades; the spacious hall and lengthened corridor for the summer ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... lovely, Miss Helen," cried Olive; "especially the letters;" and Sara ran to give her sister an impulsive hug. ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... removed the debris of breakfast, Madame, alone, consults her mirror, which reflects her rose-pink gown (the reds in all shades being her colour), which fits her embonpoint figure like a glove; slightly over the medium height, black browed, determined, daring and impulsive; a woman who will have her way where her appetites are concerned; easy-going when steering her own way with her own crew down life's current, while with a coldly cruel smile her oar crushes the life-blood from any obstacle ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... were bright, her cheeks were flushed, and it was plain that her impulsive nature was flaming with determination. The shadows were deep in the corners of the saloon, and the man in the stateroom door was not noticed by the three who stood there in the patch of light cast by the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... yield; and the soft zephyr of freedom will then fan the fair fields of Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas; Louisiana will feel its refreshing influence; and the Lone Star, (Texas), cannot long stand alone, in her opposition, to the rights of man, and the impulsive calls of humanity. The shades of Washington and Clay will then hover over the states of Virginia and Kentucky, and around them will cluster, a convoy of angels, and the spirits of the fathers of American freedom; all watching with intense interest the ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... stretching out her hand with a quick, impulsive little movement. "I am here in Henry's house, his wife, the mistress of his household. All the years we've been married I have never thought of another man. I have never indulged in even the idlest flirtation. And ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... returned from her call on Mrs. Procter, that impulsive call made on the wings of an impulsive, quixotic thought. There still remained sharp in her memory the picture of the little home; the busy mother, washing out small woolen garments. She had gone unconsciously prepared to patronize and had returned ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... A quick impulsive wave of indignation swept over Kit, and she rose from her seat, passing straight down the aisle without even being aware of the curious glances which followed her. She took Marcelle ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... not wish to force herself on him, it was quite evident that he did not wish to see her; she was deeply hurt, and she never thought he would repay with such cruelty all her kindness. Her letter was touching, and Philip thought he saw marks of her tears on the paper; he wrote an impulsive reply saying that he was dreadfully sorry and imploring her to come; but it was with relief that he received her answer in which she said that she found it would be impossible for her to get away. Presently when her letters came his heart sank: he delayed opening them, for he knew ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the result of impressions and sensations that came to him from without, but rather of thoughts and reflections germinating from within. Though morbidly sensitive to changes in his physical surroundings, he would be slow to act upon such sensations, would not prove impulsive, not because he was sluggish, but because he was merely irresolute. It could be foreseen that morally he was of that sort who avoid evil through good taste, lack of decision, and want of opportunity. His temperament was that of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... grown twenty years older in ten days. Those impulsive Southern natures, rich as they are in enthusiastic outbursts, in irresistible spurts of flame, collapse more utterly than others. Since his rejection by the Chamber the poor fellow had remained shut up in his own room, with the curtains drawn, refusing ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... shrank back lest she should kiss him, "before everybody"—the erratic and inconsiderate conduct of women in kissing boys was one of his trials. However, she was more judicious. She went on: "I knew I could trust you to be just, Oscar. Only you must remember that Ned isn't impulsive like you; it takes him a long time to get over things. You have made him unhappy and he may not be ready to forgive you at a minute's notice. But if you persevere, I am sure he will understand you and you will be ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race in America notices that the emancipation of the thirteen American colonies, which constituted so many states and an independent nation, instead of being the result of the alleged political grievances, was rather the impulsive force of expansion, which encountered insuperable obstacles while the states were colonies subordinate to a European nation. They were retarded in their advances by relations and compromises with other nations. The Anglo-Saxon, when translated to the wilds ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... his hand toward the door, and then for a moment or two he looked startled, for in a quick, impulsive way the boy darted forward and ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... curriculum as compared with the contents of the child's own experience. It is as if they said: Is life petty, narrow, and crude? Then studies reveal the great, wide universe with all its fulness and complexity of meaning. Is the life of the child egoistic, self-centered, impulsive? Then in these studies is found an objective universe of truth, law, and order. Is his experience confused, vague, uncertain, at the mercy of the moment's caprice and circumstance? Then studies introduce a world ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... of six or seven-and-thirty, powerfully built, and with that solidity of gesture and firmness of tread sometimes so marked with strong men. A mere glance at him showed he was a cold, silent, somewhat haughty man, not given to hasty resolves or in any way impulsive, and it is just possible that a long acquaintance with him would not have revealed a great deal more. He had served in a half-dozen regiments, and although all declared that Henry Lockwood was an honourable fellow, a good soldier, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... might perhaps guide this enormous impulsive energy toward the maintenance instead of the destruction of marriage and the family. But up to the present time, education with respect to this moral issue has commonly lacked any such constructive method. The social standard and the individual impulse have simply collided, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... their elders, yielded to the fascinations of these gatherings. The unwonted excitement of meeting, the sound of music, playing upon the capacity for motor reactions in a people living and laboring outdoors, inflamed beyond control by rum and hard cider, soon led to lively, impulsive activities and physical exertions, both in immoderate excess and in disregard of all the inhibitions of tradition and of conscience. That there was a close relation of these "frollicks" with the sexual immorality ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... the thousandth time he concluded that he was about to take a course of which his father and mother would approve, and in which they would be interested, so that at last he and they might get on more sympathetically than heretofore. He therefore wrote a gushing impulsive letter, which afforded much amusement to myself as I read it, but which is too long for reproduction. One passage ran: "I am now going towards Christ; the greater number of my college friends are, I fear, going away from Him; we must pray for them ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... The gate of rock by which you entered seems to have closed its ponderous jaws behind you, and shut you in,—there to remain till some supernatural power rend the mountains and give you egress. The mood of mind changes with the scene. The beauty soothed and softened you; now you grow impulsive and stern. The awful forms around you blend with the soul, as it were, and impart something of their own vastness to it. You feel yourself carried into the very presence of that Power which sank the foundations of the mountains in the ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... him: he was a man incapable of forming plots, because his head would not hold them. He was an impulsive man, who could impale a character of either sex by narrating fables touching persons of whom he thought lightly, and that being done he was devoid of malice, unless by chance his feelings or his interests were so aggrieved that his original haphazard impulse ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said this to herself when out upon the sunny stillness rang a sharp, lamentable cry, such as a child might utter in an extremity of fear or pain. The sound seemed to strike a sudden horror upon the day's bright face, and Jane shivered. She made an impulsive step out into her corn-field, hardly knowing what she meant to do. And then she saw the doctor alighting from the wagon, and pausing to speak to a man who ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... and confusion, the agitation of the pressing need of haste, all betrayed the business in hand. John Cather was packing up: he was rejected of Judith—he was going away! It hurt me sorely to think that the man would thus in impulsive haste depart, after these years of intimate companionship, with a regard so small for my wishes in the matter. Go to sleep like a babe? I could not go to sleep at all; I could but lie awake in trouble. ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... was kind and tender. In conversation he was brilliant and polished. His voice was his chief charm, and was a great element in his success as a reader of his own works. In his actions he was impulsive as a child, sometimes even erratic; indeed, his intimate friends almost looked upon him as a spoiled boy. He was always delicate in health. Temperamentally, he belonged to that class of poets who Taine says ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... Hollister asked him, not only as a matter of courtesy but with a genuine feeling that he wanted this man to break bread with them. He could not quite understand that sudden warmth of feeling for a stranger. He had never in his life been given to impulsive friendliness. The last five years had not strengthened his belief in friendships. He had seen too many fail under stress. But he liked this man. They sat outside after supper and Doris joined them there. Lawanne was not talkative. He was given ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... admit the pick of the artisans to the electoral privileges of the middle class woke the panic-stricken vehemence of Robert Lowe. "If," he asked, "you want venality, ignorance, drunkenness, and the means of intimidation; if you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where will you go to look for them—to the top or to the bottom?" Well might Bishop Wilberforce report to a friend, "It was enough to make the flesh creep to hear Bob Lowe's prognostications for the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... hamlet Priscilla dropped suddenly from nowhere, trailing with her thunder-clouds of impulsive and childish ideas about doing good, and holding in her hands the dangerous weapon of wealth. It is hard to stand by and see one's life-work broken up before one's eyes by an irresponsible stranger, a foreigner, a girl, a young girl, a pretty girl; ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Dick's impulsive answer with a quick snatch at his elbow. He looked his questioner ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... dinner on his outstretched hands. He is a very learned little man, who started his career by obtaining the first place at the famous Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris. But Stephen Radi['c] happens also to be very much interested in politics and extremely impulsive, so that his wife and daughter have often had to look after the bookshop, since the Government—that of Austria-Hungary and afterwards that of Yugoslavia—had consigned him to prison. He probably expected nothing else, for his eloquence—and he is ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... personality in the chair was so charming, so magnetic, so genial. He was a young man, between thirty and forty, with a long nose, a mobile mouth, dark gray-blue eyes full of fire and humour, and a massive head. It was a face of extraordinary power and intellect, but lit up by a spirit so audacious and impulsive and triumphant that it was like a leaping flame of dazzling brilliancy in some forbidding fortress. He was smiling with a delighted expression of good fellowship; but North experienced a profound conviction that the man was weighing ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... known limits of human nature: surely "majesty and sanctity" are not inconsistent with many weaknesses. But our judgment concerning a man's motives, his temper, and his full conquest over self, vanity and impulsive passion, depends on the accurate knowledge of a vast variety of minor points; even the curl of the lip, or the discord of eye and mouth, may change our moral judgment of a man; while, alike to my friend and me it is certain that much of what is stated is ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... the strong light, Mrs. Loring started to her feet with a scream, echoed by an exclamation of "By God!" from one of the officers, while the three or four glasses at Howe's place were noisily swept into a jumble by the impulsive swing of the general's arm as he threw himself backward and rested ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... love you for that!" exclaimed the impulsive girl, and jumping out of her seat, she ran around the groups to the stone chair. "I do, Miss Salisbury, for I did so want to hear all about ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... had said, probably an older and more experienced rancher would have put up with a few losses for the sake of peace and quietness. But Bud, like most lads of his age, was impulsive. And, as he had said, the loss of even a few steers meant possible failure to him and his cousins, just starting in the ranch ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... Justice), Charles Pepys (afterwards Lord Chancellor), Launcelot Shadwell (afterwards Vice-Chancellor), Walford (afterwards Solicitor to the Customs), and Paley, a son of the archdeacon. A good singer, an amusing companion, and a clever, impulsive, eccentric creature, he was nicknamed by his friends "Don Hyperbolo" for his humorous extravagances. Some of his letters, together with a sketch of his life, are given in the 'Life of the Rev. Francis Hodgson', ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... narrate here the story of Sigismund's journey, though it abounds with illustrations of his impulsive character and of the attitude of the western states toward the imperial pretensions. It furnished conclusive proofs, if any were needed, that however the council, for its own ends, might welcome the authority of a secular head, national sentiment was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... difficult to spoil a human being, entirely, who has spent the first ten years of life under pure domestic influences. Chester's daughter had carried a heart of gold to the Alms House, and she brought all this wealth away; but she was an impulsive, sensitive girl, and if Mrs. Farnham had no influence strong enough to pervert her nature, she had the power to thwart and annoy her beyond her capacities of ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... was a very nice little girl indeed, truthful, trustful, generous, and affectionate. But she was by no means without some spicy little faults of her own. She was impulsive to rashness, and decidedly self-willed. She was given to odd little romantic fancies and secret schemes, which sometimes got her into trouble, when she attempted to carry them out. She was an only child, and much petted and indulged in a happy and luxurious home, ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... military tactics, the manners and customs of the Turks. He excelled in military exercises, and was passionately devoted to the art of war. In all respects he was the reverse of his brother—energetic, frank, impulsive. The two brothers, so dissimilar, had no ideas in common, and were always involved ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... was despair and there was hope in it. It implied that she had set him up in her impulsive way as a sort of oracle who alone could help her out of her difficulty. In presence of that look his own conventionality fell away from him, and he spoke the plain, direct ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with me! " she exclaimed. "You would have told me, and I wouldn't let you! Oh!" with an impulsive flinging out of her hand to him, "you ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... covered one eye, giving her the look of a crazy old woman in a Sydney slum. Meanwhile, the calf stood looking on, a little perplexed, and seemed to be saying: "Well, now, is this life? It doesn't seem as if it was all it was cracked up to be. And this is my mamma? What a very impulsive lady!" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rushes of the pond, a pair of fussy moorhens built their nest on an islet of decayed vegetation clustered round a stone. At all hours of the day, the birds sailed gaily hither and thither, or wandered, happy and impulsive, along the margin of the pool. No care had they, and the solitude of their retreat seemed likely never to be disturbed, till, one moonlit night, the fox, that last year had killed the baby hedgehog ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... last, 'and answer me. Let me see that your morals are not yet utterly corrupt, and that you are still capable of listening to the voice of reason. Impulsive folly I can overlook, but stubborn obstinacy—never! My son...' there was a catch in his breath... 'Mihail Semyonitch has promised to marry you? Hasn't he? Answer me! Has he ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... toward him with impulsive friendliness, then remembering her other suitor paused and tried to ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... artistic sense, made all triumphs seem possible to this young man. Evidently there was great power in the new actor—power untrained, vigor ill directed. But what was plainest to be seen, was the nervous, impulsive temperament, which would leave him no rest save in achievement. He might come back to us a robustious, periwig-pated fellow, the delight and wonder of the galleries. He might come back the thorough artist, great in repose ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... John Hinckman was a delightful place to me, for many reasons. It was the abode of a genial, though somewhat impulsive, hospitality. It had broad, smooth-shaven lawns and towering oaks and elms; there were bosky shades at several points, and not far from the house there was a little rill spanned by a rustic bridge with the bark on; there were fruits and flowers, pleasant people, chess, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... Bridget should have overheard it. But Bridget was at the other end of the room. How foolish it had been of her—just because she was so happy, and wanted to be nice to everybody!—to have asked Bridget to stay with them! She was always doing silly things like that—impulsive things. But now she was married. She must think more. It was really very considerate of Bridget to have got them all out of a difficulty and to have settled herself a mile away from them; though at first it had seemed rather unkind. Now they could see ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... spoken with an enthusiasm which grew in measure as he saw its effect upon his hearer. For though he did not immediately respond, Nehal Singh's face had betrayed emotions which a natural dignity was learning to hold back from impulsive expression. He answered at last quietly, but with an ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... time I was beginning to think my impulsive action to be more than a little foolish, but in order that my journey should not be altogether wasted, I determined to run on to Cromer, lunch there, and afterwards proceed to Sheringham, near which delightful village my home ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... voice Viola turned with an impulsive reaching of the hands. "Oh, Dr. Serviss, that would be heavenly! I love your sister and ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... this attempt to scold the telephone girl is often an impulsive, angry response on her part—which she may be sorry for later on—and if the service is more prompt for that time it reacts later to what appears to be ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... Six on the screen was infinitely welcome after the arid desolation and stinking swamplands of the inner planets, an airy jewel of a world that might have been designed specifically for the hard-earned month of rest ahead. Navigator Farrell, youngest and certainly most impulsive of the three-man Terran Reclamations crew, would have set the Marco Four down at once but for the greater caution of Stryker, nominally captain of the group, and of Gibson, engineer, and linguist. Xavier, the ship's little mechanical, had—as was ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... these remarks, let CD (Fig. 32) represent the section of a fault and EF that of the surface of the earth, and suppose the rock-mass A to slip slightly and suddenly downwards. Then the particles of A at the surface of the fault will, by impulsive friction, be drawn sharply upwards, and those of B correspondingly downwards; so that the earth-waves in the two rock-masses will start in opposite phases of vibration. Along the line of fault, every particle of rock, being urged upwards and downwards almost ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... do you turn against your craft?" said Wallace, under the impulsive feeling which induces all loyal men to have a distaste for treachery of every sort, "the seaman should love the very planks ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... the King irritably, "the girl must have a name. You must marry her, Francis—she shall be Lady Tunnell-Penge." Then the impulsive monarch stooped, and, opening a locket on the unconscious woman's breast, read the name Sarah in blue diamonds on an opaque background. "But," he added softly under his breath, "I shall know her only ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... because of his sporting enthusiasm than because of any evidence he had yet given of his powers, and the latter merely because he desired to go. For the same reason he was permitted to arm himself with his blunderbuss. Rivers carried a heavy double-barrelled fowling-piece. He was a stout active impulsive young fellow, with the look ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... a great one; in short, he is, at least for the present, narrow and provincial; moreover, he is of an impulsive temperament that is likely to lead him into untrodden and dangerous paths. Our best hope lies in the fact that Mr. Grayson, who has not shown himself intractable, may be brought to see this, and will rely upon the advice of those who are fitted to lead rather than upon the reckless ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... daughter!" was all he said. But his admiration for her energy was manifested by the impulsive way in which he took her hand. I moved over to the door. I was going to bring Sergeant Daw; and from her look of approval, I knew that Margaret—Miss Trelawny—understood. I was at the door when ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... York came but one Republican, William Laimbeer, a man of high character and large business experience; impulsive, but always for right against wrong; kindly in his nature, but most bitter against Tammany ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... and irremediable, one of her regulated temperament and high principles, struggled to endure with Christian submission. It was only in after-life that I came to know how intense and absorbing had, in truth, been her passion for the gay, high-spirited, ill-educated, and impulsive ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... length that moonlight meetings between two untrained, impulsive youths, had a natural result, and they were now doubly earnest in their endeavours to compel ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... would revere her memory. Constance Bride he esteemed as a loyal friend; never would he fail in gratitude to her; she should have his confidence, and he would often seek her counsel; a good, able girl of the best modern type. Last of all there came into his mind the visage of a small, impulsive woman, with freckled oval face, and hair the colour of an autumn elm-leaf, Iris Woolstan; to her, too, how much he was beholden. Good, foolish, fidgetty Iris Woolstan! Never again could he be impatient with her. Of course he must pay ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... home. As I approached to gratify my curiosity, I met several of my companions, who were returning and who implored me not to go nearer. An old Mexican, ignorant, rough, and callous as he was, begged me, with tears streaming down his face, to retrace my steps. Alas, when would impulsive youth ever listen to wise counsel and take heed! I entered the ruins and saw a dark telltale pool oozing forth from under the door of a cellar. Oh, had I but then overcome my morbid curiosity and fled! But no! I must needs open the door and look in. I saw—I saw a beautiful ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... the difficulties in the way of the poet's success, in an age devoted to forms and superficialities, by reason of his muscular originality, impulsive grasping at the infinite, and resolute disdain of popular and conventional models; but expressing opinion that, as he turns round on the pivot of his own individual idiosyncrasy, he will come ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... upon their attainments, and the question is everywhere vexed when a noble nature is commended, whether the man is not better who strives with temptation. But there is no merit in the matter. Either God is there or he is not there. We love characters in proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues the better we like him. Timoleon's victories are the best victories, which ran and flowed like Homer's verses, Plutarch said. When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... were such as pleased him and engaged his attention. He made no attempt to analyze his feelings towards her. He was not one to probe his own heart, nor had he the resolution to break away from temptation, even when recognized as such. Easy-going, good-natured, impulsive, with a spice of his mother's selfishness in his nature, he allowed himself to follow his inclinations without consideration whither they might lead him, and how they ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... appear for some time, and Vinicius knew not at last what to think of his absence. In vain he repeated to himself that searching, if continued to a certain and successful issue, must be gradual. His blood and impulsive nature rebelled against the voice of judgment. To do nothing, to wait, to sit with folded arms, was so repulsive to him that he could not be reconciled to it in any way. To search the alleys of the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... not mistaken. But certain it is that they thought the Will whom they knew capable of the works which were attributed to him. Therefore he cannot possibly have been the man who could not write, of the more impulsive Baconians; or the bookless, and probably all but Latinless, man of Mr. Greenwood's theory. The positions already seem to me to ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... within the covered shrine, While bells were chiming in the lofty dome. And then the lad—for he was Parsifal— Tight clutched his heart in sorrowful distress As King Amfortas groaned in bitter woe. He stood in utter anguish overcome, Breathing impulsive with deep sympathy, But spake no single word, nor gave one sign That he had understood the solemn feast, Or seen the glory of the Holy Grail. And when the last knight left the festal hall And all the doors were closed, then Gurnemanz Came to the lad and ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... his running mate, and plays a lone hand through Arizona and Nevada, up as far as Reno again, and there he stacks up against a kid—a little tenderfoot kid so new he ain't cracked the green paint off him—and skins him. And the kid, being foolish and impulsive-like, pulls out a peashooter. It was a twenty-two," said Bunt, solemnly. "Yes, the kid was just that pore, pathetic kind to carry a dinky twenty-two, and with the tears runnin' down his cheeks begins to talk tall. Now what ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... more masculine part of life and character; for is it not to most of us an easier thing to fling ourselves in vehemence against an evil in others than it is to sit calmly and patiently under a false accusation, as our Lord Himself did? At least it must be left an open question as to whether the impulsive and domineering vigour of the West is preferable to the "mildness" ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... part after they have become crystallized into precepts and commands, and by this articulating process become much more firmly entrenched. Then from the existence of miscellaneous maxims and prohibitions, taught by the elders and linked with whatever impulsive and haphazard punishments are customary, to the formulation of legal codes, with definite penalties attached to specific infringements, is an easy transition. With the invention of written language these laws could become still better fixed and more clearly known. The appointment of certain ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... both he and Jack had their head-phone harness attached, and could thus exchange words when they pleased, Perk broke loose in his usual impulsive fashion, seeking the light which he somehow had reason to believe ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... uncontrollable passion, pressing his hand with impulsive energy against her mouth. "Not another word of that, or I shall forget you are a woman or that I have ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... Afterwards they could join him there. As for Frank Morton, he was an inch taller than his friend Stanley, and equally powerful; fair-haired, blue-eyed, hilarious, romantic, twenty-two years of age, and so impulsive that, on hearing of the proposed expedition from one of his comrades, who happened to be present when Stanley was reading the dispatches, he sprang from his chair, which he upset, dashed out at the door, which he banged, and hurried to his friend's quarters ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... in her teens who gives her love and herself may find full satisfaction in her marriage; but blind self-confidence and impulsive inexperience may lay up a store of sorrow for the future. No man is wise to hurry a ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... Francke was naturally an impulsive man, and his ardent temperament led him sometimes into unintended vagaries. An extravagance of his once caused Spener to remark, that "his friends gave him more trouble than all his enemies." But he was not more erroneous than most men of the same ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... The fear of cowardice had sapped incessantly at his heart. He had walked about with it; he had taken it with him to his bed. It had haunted his dreams. It had been his perpetual menacing companion. It had kept him from intimacy with his friends lest an impulsive word should betray him. Lieutenant Sutch did not wonder that in the end it had brought about this irretrievable ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... become less ardent since he had witnessed the unqualified success of the beautiful colonial girl in London; noted how men, illustrious in various walks of life, grave diplomats, stately ambassadors, were swayed by her light charm and impulsive frankness of youth. And to have her who could have all London at her feet, including his distinguished self, show a predilection, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... he reiterated patiently. "It isn't the love of a friend, or a comrade, or a sister, that Freckles wants from you; it is the love of a sweetheart. And if to save the life he has offered for you, you are thinking of being generous and impulsive enough to sacrifice your future—in the absence of your father, it will become my plain duty, as the protector in whose hands he has placed you, to prevent such rashness. The very words you speak, and the manner in which you say them, prove that you are a mere child, ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... seventeen, lately returned from Europe, was considered eminently beautiful. It was in my second summer that she visited my father's house, where he was living with his servants and my old nurse, my mother having but recently left him a widower. Laura was full of vivacity, impulsive, quick in her movements, thoughtless occasionally, as it is not strange that a young girl of her age should be. It was a beautiful summer day when she saw me for the first time. My nurse had me in her arms, walking back and forward on a balcony with a low railing, upon which opened the windows ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... glory without risk? Were he my own son, I should say, 'let him go.' Only, brother earl, caution thy noble son and heir, that the youngster is very much more likely to fail in discretion than in valour. He is one of those excitable, impulsive creatures who will, as I expect, fight like a wildcat, and show ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... money to players. They demand outrageous interest, and they must be paid soon, or there are anxieties. Knowing the good income from the scheme of the hotel, one of these birds of prey took advantage of Monsieur Moore's impulsive nature. The results ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... kiss the point of her little tan shoe or the hem of her dress for those impulsive words, and tried to tell her so with my eyes—breath was too precious just then. Whether she understood or not I won't be sure, but I fancy she did from the way her ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... that other personality that had marred his fair hopes in his mine—that perverse, impulsive, overweening inner spirit that took the helm at each crisis of his life—was a rage to make the gods above weep if they did not laugh at the jest. And this blind, drunken self that rose up within him to sit leeringly in judgment on his acts, it judged not so ill, if the truth must ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... of her conduct in checking him so peremptorily; and went to her bedroom in a mood of dissatisfaction. On looking in the glass she was reminded that there was not so much remaining of her former beauty as to make his frank declaration an impulsive natural homage to her cheeks and eyes; it must undoubtedly have arisen from an old staunch feeling of his, deserving tenderest consideration. She recalled to her mind with much pleasure that he had told her he was staying at the Black-Bull Hotel; so that if, after waiting a day or two, he should ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Roger was hasty and impulsive, but his nature was kindly, after all; and when his skates were fairly on, the ice tried, and the first excitement of the pleasure over, he thought of his unfeeling speech, and the pale, sad face of ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... Jan. The man of business gave his consent, but he implored his "impulsive friend," as he termed the artist, not to ruin the lad by indulgence, but to keep him in his proper place, and give him plenty to do. In conformity with this sensible advice, Jan's first duties in his new home were to clean the painter's boots when he could ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... best and truest of them are only fragments of the perfect friendship. They bring us only little cupfuls of blessing. Their gentleness is marred by human infirmity, and sometimes turns to harshness. Their helpfulness at best is impulsive and uncertain, and ofttimes ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... looked enquiringly at his daughter; Bent-Anat's eyes met his with a glance of intelligence, and with all the simplicity of an impulsive child, she took from her head the wreath that had decorated her beautiful hair, went up to Pentaur, and crowned him with it, as it was customary for a bride to crown ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... at times in a violent and impulsive manner. If I were his uncle, and so qualified by relationship to give him the advice he frequently gives me, I should recommend him to cultivate repose of manner and leisurely dignity of action. He is a peer of this realm, and has, besides, been selected by his fellow peers to ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... a thorough knowledge of self, but also possesses it, has for some time almost blindly followed his instinctive impulses?" Of what use is self-knowledge if at the first commotion of the nerves it hides in a remote nook of the brain and remains there, a passive witness to impulsive acts? To investigate things post factum? I do not know of what use this can be to me, but as I have nothing else to do, let us investigate. Why did I act as I did? It must be because though I am an intelligent man, very ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
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