impulses Quotes

“Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.”

“When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often.”

“Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to them the Wild was the unknown, the terrible, the ever menacing and ever warring. But to him, in appearance and action and impulse, still clung the Wild.”

“George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her.”

“A half-second’s more hesitation, and I would have been the one bleeding out on the floor. They turned out to be Chechens, Muslims apparently recruited for a holy war against the West. (We found their passports after searching the house.)”

“We don’t know how to be women because we were taught it was not OK to be girls. Our most natural impulses were thwarted and distorted.”

“Spontaneity isn’t random.”

“Either we are rational spirit obliged for ever to obey the absolute values of the Tao . . . or else we are mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for the pleasures of masters who must, by hypothesis, have no motive but their own ‘natural’ impulses.”

“At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’ – to their irrational impulses.”

“You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. ”

″... the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.”

“A person whose desires and impulses are his own- are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture- is said to have character.”

“Yet, desires and and impulses are as much a part of a perfect human being, as beliefs and restraints;”

“I am a Saturn who dreams of being a Mercury, and everything I write reflects these two impulses.”

“We can only speculate why, but physically abusive parents seem to share certain characteristics. First, they have an appalling lack of impulse control.”

“Your first impulse is to share good news, your second is to club someone with it.”

“Impulsively, Wilson drew aside the curtain. He did not know, immediately, if he would survive. [...] Imprisoned in this swollen mass, his heart pulsed strickenly, threatening to burst its case as Wilson sat, paralyzed. Only inches away, separated from him by the thickness of a piece of glass, the man was staring at him.”

“Of course, weakness is strong. It’s the primary impulse. You’d probably prefer to sit in your little room and cry. Live in your finite collection of memories, carefully polishing each one. Half a life set behind glass and pinned to cardboard like a collection of exotic insects. You’d like to live behind that glass, wouldn’t you?”

“You are entitled to know that two entities occupy your body. One of these entities is motivated by and responds to the impulse of fear. The other is motivated by and responds to the impulse of faith. Will you be guided by faith or will you allow fear to overtake you?”