Best 176 quotes in «impulse quotes» category

Poetry arises from the desire to get beyond the finite and the historical—the human world of violence and difference—and to reach the transcendent or divine. You're moved to write a poem, you feel called upon to sing, because of that transcendent impulse. But as soon as you move from that impulse to the actual poem, the song of the infinite is compromised by the finitude of its terms.

Mastery of impulse is achieved through taking pauses during life’s contrasting situations. Mastery of impulse is about developing strong willpower that can be used to redirect the flow of energy in any situation. Mastery of impulse is about responding to the world with a sense of reason and peace.

My impulse is to perform for men I obey their dreams

One word love: curiosity. You long for freedom. You long to do what you want to do because you want it. To act on selfish impulse. You want to see what it's like. One day you won't be able to resist.

Outside, under the marquee of the hotel, he stood a moment as he did each night beneath the marquee of the Hotel Hyperion, while he decided what direction to take, what to do. And suddenly, realizing it was not the Hotel Hyperion, that the circumstances were quite different, he felt loneliness spring up like a dark forest all around him. The odd thing was, he felt no impulse to hurry after her, to find her somehow. What would he have to offer her except the history of weakness, loneliness, and inadequacy, the decline and fall of himself? He himself was the core of the loneliness around him, and its core was inadequacy. He was inadequate even in love.

People would be so much more at ease if they acted on impulse rather than reason. That’s why drugs are so effective in curing mental illness—because they impair our judgment. Don’t try to think too much.

Nature is impulsive. To be impulsive is to be fully alive.

Six days and six nights I was writing in a paranoid impulse. Full of fear, that the commenced metamorphosis – the reincarnation of the spirit of a dead – might have been disrupted.

Sexuality with all its attendant yearnings and pains, jealousies and taboos, is the most disturbing impulse humans have.

She did it without thinking--At that moment she was pure Gilly again: red-haired, with fury for blood, perfect aim, and nothing to lose.

Swallowing, he entered the second code. Then there was a sound like a marble dropping on the floor - bouncing slowly, gradually getting faster as it dropped lower and lower… The thing was toying with him! Where was it? He strained his hearing, but all was again silent. He wanted to shout and scream obscenities at it, but he fought the impulse. It might not really know his location after all - and that would've led it right to him. It must be coming for him! It must be by the door by now, looking for a way in. Time was running out. He hastily keyed in the third and last code. Death the destroyer never is late!

So I flirt with disaster once or twice. Who doesn’t?” He snorted. “You don’t just flirt with disaster, you have intercourse with it.

The life of a writer is directed by a mad impulsive muse, that can tell them to cancel all their storyline: a creative divergent devil.

THE IMPULSE IS TO SQUEEZE AND FONDLE BABY WILD ANIMALS BUT THEN THEY'D BE BROKEN AND WHAT GOOD WOULD THEY BE?

[T]he institution that human cultures build up upon the hints presented by the environment or by man's physical necessities do not keep as close to the original impulse as we easily imagine. These hints are, in reality, mere rough sketches, a list of bare facts. [...] Warfare is not the expression of the instinct of pugnacity. Man's pugnacity is so small a hint in the human equipment that it may not be given any expression in inter-tribal relation. [...] Pugnacity is no more than the touch to the ball of custom, a touch also that may be withheld.

There is a deep and perennial and profoundly human impulse to approach the world with a DEMAND, to approach the world with a PRECONDITION, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE FOUNDATION OF ALL BEING, is some powerful and reassuring and accessible image of OURSELVES... and that, more than any of their particular factual inaccuracies - is what bothers me the most about them. It is precisely the business of resisting that demand, it is precisely the business of approaching the world with open and authentic wonder, and with a sharp, cold eye, and singularly intent upon the truth, that's called science.

There's an old Talmudic belief that you build a fence around an impulse. If that's not good enough, you build a fence around the fence.

Those who study life know less about it than those who act impulsively and live by their whims.

The seed of all impulse is a feeling bursting to express itself in action.

The way most people use and are used by their minds gives substance to the belief that we are barely evolved apes.

We are tossed about by external causes in many ways, and like waves driven by contrary winds, we waver and are unconscious of the issue and our fate.' We think we are most ourselves when we are most passionate, whereas it is then we are most passive, caught in some ancestral torrent of impulse or feeling, and swept on to a precipitate reaction which meets only part of the situation because without thought only part of a situation can be perceived.

To change any behavior we have to slow down and act intentionally rather than from habit and impulse.

We are punctual, a stressed, marked characteristic. We need order around us, in the house, in the life, although we live by irresistible impulses, as if the order in the closets, in our papers, in our books, in our photographs, in our souvenirs, in our clothes could preserve us from chaos in our feelings, loves, in our work. Indifference to food, sobriety; but this, we admit, is the part of the war against a threatening fragility.

We all know what we have to do what the inkling provokes us. We have to do the right thing. We have to make that extra push out of bed, or off the sofa. We must just do it.

Your mind is a book; God is the pen.

Wenn wir unsere Projektionen auf andere Menschen erkennen werden wir feststellen, dass unsere Wahrnehmungen als auch unsere Einstellungen gegenüber unserer Mitwelt all jene Impulse und Ideen sind, die wir einst abgelehnt oder verdrängt haben und die trotzdem immer noch in uns schlummern.

What is GRACE?An individual, inspiring and virtuous impulse, that streams the spirit with life!

When there is silence, Give your voice. When there is darkness, Shine your light. When there is desperation, Offer hope.

You know you love something if you're willing to die for it, and you know it means nothing if you walk away from that which is dying.

What is GRACE? an individual, inspiring and virtuous impulse, that streams the spirit with life! An elegance and divinity of one's beauty!

Adolescence is when the very worst and best impulses in the human soul struggle against each other for possession.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.

All through my writing life I've had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

A lonely impulse of delight

Alteration is a constructive act, not a destructive one, and it's the opposite of most of our impulses.

And my music is always such a release of what I feel inside, an impulse.

But what was possible or practical had been replaced by a far baser impulse. Hope.

Character is the impulse reined down into steady continuance.

Civilized life has altogether grown too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting.

Choosing not to act on an angry impulse and to feel the pain that lies beneath it is a very courageous thing to do.

Every dog has like me the impulse to question, and I have like every dog the impulse not to answer.

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

Conditions of thought, memory, and desire, persuaded by impulse and irrationality, are influenced as well by personal aesthetics and private meanings.

De Tocqueville considered the impulse toward well-being as one of the strongest impulses of a democratic society. He can't be blamed for underestimating the destructive powers generated by this same impulse.

Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.

Having started out in theatre, I feel an impulse to do it as much as I can

Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy.

Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is--and a woman too, I guess.

Films exhaust me, they do, and I often want nothing more to do with them, but I'm continually surprised at the resurgence of the impulse to come back and do it all over again.