Impulse

Famous quotes containing the word impulse:

    Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is “All striving is vain,” will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him.
    William James (1842–1910)

    It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, love can be no more than an orgy of the common man.... Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardour and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.
    Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

    There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness—to bring him down to the miserable level of “good” men i.e., of stupid, cowardly and chronically unhappy men.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)