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Irresistible impulse   /ˌɪrɪzˈɪstəbəl ˈɪmpəls/   Listen
Irresistible impulse

noun
1.
An urge to do or say something that might be better left undone or unsaid.  Synonym: compulsion.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Irresistible impulse" Quotes from Famous Books



... and-he began to shiver. An irresistible impulse took hold of him. It was like the half-smothered fear which makes guilty men go to sit at the inquests on their ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter, the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his arms aloft, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... trust, why it is that the child or youth of this sort has the characteristics which he has. It is a familiar principle that attention to the thought of a movement tends to start that very movement. I defy any of my readers to think hard and long of winking the left eye and not have an almost irresistible impulse to wink that eye. There is no better way to make it difficult for a child to sit still than to tell him to sit still; for your words fill up his attention, as I had occasion to say above, with the thought of movements, and these ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... wheeled suddenly toward the west as though by turning his back upon the fast disappearing plane he might expunge thoughts of its passengers from his memory. At the edge of the clearing he paused; a giant tree loomed directly ahead of him and, as though actuated by sudden and irresistible impulse, he leaped into the branches and swung himself with apelike agility to the topmost limbs that would sustain his weight. There, balancing lightly upon a swaying bough, he sought in the direction of the eastern horizon for the tiny speck that would be the British plane bearing away from him the last ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... day he shook like a man in the palsy. On another day he felt a fire within his breast. It is difficult to understand how he survived sufferings so intense, and so long continued. At length the clouds broke. From the depths of despair, the penitent passed to a state of serene felicity. An irresistible impulse now urged him to impart to others the blessing of which he was himself possessed. [254] He joined the Baptists, and became a preacher and writer. His education had been that of a mechanic. He knew no language but the English, as it was spoken by the common ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay


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