Natural Impulse Quotes & Sayings

But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii has yielded to modern research, was that grand figure of a Roman soldier, clad in complete armor; who, true to his duty, true to his proud name of a soldier of Rome, and full of the stern courage which had given to that name its glory, stood to his post by the city gate, erect and unflinching, till the hell that raged around him burned out the dauntless spirit it could not conquer. We never read of Pompeii but we think of that soldier; we can not write of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant to him the mention he so well deserves. Let us remember that he was a soldier
not a policeman
and so, praise him. Being a soldier, he staid,
because the warrior instinct forbade him to fly. Had he been a policeman he would have staid, also
because he would have been asleep. — Mark Twain

I suspect it was ... the old story of the implacable necessity of a man having honour within his own natural spirit. A man cannot live and temper his mettle without such honour. There is deep in him a sense of the heroic quest; and our modern way of life, with its emphasis on security, its distrust of the unknown and its elevation of abstract collective values has repressed the heroic impulse to a degree that may produce the most dangerous consequences. — Laurens Van Der Post

I am instructed by the Home Secretary to read out the following. . . . It is a prayer devised by the Ministry of Propaganda. . . . 'It is conceivable that the forces of death which at present are ravaging the esculent life of this planet have intelligence, in which case we beseech them to leave off. It we have done wrong--allowing in our blindness natural impulse to overcome reason--we are, of course, heartily sorry. But we submit that we have already suffered sufficiently for this wrong and we firmly resolve never to sin again. Amen. — Anthony Burgess

Human beings are innately loving beings. When we fail to love, it is because an element of ignorance has intruded into our experience, submerging our natural impulse to love. — Nhat Hanh

When one speaks of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something which separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation: "natural" qualities and those called truly "human" are inseparably grown together. Man, in his highest and noblest capacities, is wholly nature and embodies its uncanny dual character. Those of his abilities which are terrifying and considered inhuman may even be the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity can grow in impulse, deed, and work. — Friedrich Nietzsche

People don't actually stay still, you know - when their area is a disaster, they go somewhere else, right? And that's just a natural human impulse. — Paolo Bacigalupi

There are many who occasionally attend church and who are trying experimentally to be Christians, yet are unable to identify well or define accurately the central truths of Christian teaching. The knowledge they have of the Christian tradition may have come chiefly through hymns. Their strong and sincere feelings are not matched with serious biblical or historical reflection on those feelings. Religious feelings are, indeed, crucial to the deeper learning of Christian truth, but they easily become superficial and narcissistic if the mind of Christ is not a mentor to natural religious impulse. The loss of center in Christian education is arguably due to a serious default of pastoral leadership; when the teaching elder does not teach, the effect is felt throughout the entire Christian congregation. — Thomas C. Oden

If you're lucky enough to live without want, it's a natural impulse to be altruistic to others. — Moutasem Algharati

Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travelers. They are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length accompany their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore at their invitation the interior of continents. — Henry David Thoreau

Herzen is terrified of the oppressors, but he is terrified of the liberators too. He is terrified of them because for him they are the secular heirs of the religious bigots of the ages of faith; because anybody who has a cut and dried scheme, a straitjacket which he wishes to impose on humanity as the sole possible remedy for all human ills, is ultimately bound to create a situation intolerable for free human beings, for men like himself who want to express themselves, who want to have some area in which to develop their own resources, and are prepared to respect the originality, the spontaneity, the natural impulse towards self-expression on the part of other human beings too. — Isaiah Berlin

The impulse to share anything is a new one, the impulse to hide as natural as breathing — Veronica Roth

In our plan, the state has only to pass labor laws (nothing else?) by means of which industrial progress can and must proceed in complete liberty. The state merely places society on an incline (that is all?). Then society will slide down this incline by the mere force of things, and by the natural workings of the established mechanism. But what is this incline that is indicated by Mr. Louis Blanc? Does it not lead to an abyss? (No, it leads to happiness.) If this is true, then why does not society go there of its own choice? (Because society does not know what it wants; it must be propelled.) What is to propel it? (Power.) And who is to supply the impulse for this power? (Why, the inventor of the machine
in this instance, Mr. Louis Blanc.) — Frederic Bastiat

The vital force that drives men to throw away their lives and those of others in the pursuit of an imaginative impulse, reckless of its apparent effect on human welfare, is, like all natural forces, given to us in enormous excess to provide against an enormous waste. Therefore men, instead of economizing it by consecrating it to the service of their highest impulses, grasp at a phrase in a newspaper article, or in the speech of a politician on a vote-catching expedition, as an excuse for exercising it violently, just as a horse turned out to grass will gallop and kick merely to let off steam. The shallowness of the ideals of men ignorant of history is their destruction. — George Bernard Shaw

While an impulse toward wholeness is natural and exists in everyone, each of us heals in our own way. Some people heal because they have work to do. Others heal because they have been released from their work and the pressures and expectations that others place on them. Some people need music, others need silence, some need people around them, others heal alone. Many different things can activate and strengthen the life force in us. For each of us there are conditions of healing that are as unique as a fingerprint. Sometimes people ask me what I do in my sessions with patients. Often I just remind people of the possibility of healing and study their own way of dealing with them. — Rachel Naomi Remen

So long as men are compassionate to such a degree that they cannot hear a fly struggling in a spider's web without emotion it can never be reasonably maintained that it is their natural impulse to wound and kill the dumb animals, or to butcher one another in what is called the field of honour. — John Newton

The natural impulse of men is to follow and whoever has the strongest sense of purpose will always dominate. — Robert Harris

I believe that the creative impulse is natural in all human beings, and that it is particularly powerful in children unless it is suppressed. Consequently, one is behaving normally and instinctively and healthily when one is creating - literature, art, music, or whatever. An excellent cook is also creative! I am disturbed that a natural human inclination [creative work] should, by some Freudian turn of phrase, be considered compulsive - perhaps even pathological. To me this is a complete misreading of the human enterprise. One should also enjoy one's work, and look forward to it daily. — Joyce Carol Oates

In the secret recesses of man's nature the grace is given disposing and enabling him to yield. Though the will must at last act from its own resources and deliberate impulse, it is influenced through the feeling and the understanding in such a manner as to give it strength. It is utterly hopeless to penetrate this mystery: it is the secret between God's Spirit and man's agency. There is a Divine operation which works the desire and acts in such a manner as not to interfere with the natural freedom of the will. The man determines himself, through Divine grace, to salvation: never so free as when swayed by grace. — William Burton Pope

A life which goes excessively against natural impulse is ... likely to involve effects of strain that may be quite as bad as indulgence in forbidden impulses would have been. People who live a life which is unnatural beyond a point are likely to be filled with envy, malice and uncharitableness. — Bertrand Russell

Is giving in to the photographer's presumably natural impulse to compose and light well sometimes okay and not okay other times? — David Byrne

However, in brief, I think the connecting of 'God' and 'Being' is one of these things for which there seems to be a natural impulse in human thinking but it can also lead to confusions. Religious believers mostly want to see God as the epitome of what is most really real and in some non-theistic contexts, people talk simply of 'Isness'. — George Pattison

Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral tradition, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life. (Will Durant, Story of Civilization, pg 1, vol. 1) — Will Durant

It is the natural and inherent impulse of life to seek to live more, it is the nature of intelligence to enlarge itself, and of consciousness to seek to extend its boundaries and find fuller expression. — Wallace D. Wattles

Revenge loses sight of the end in the means, but it's end is not wholly bad - it wants the evil of the bad man to be to him what it is to everyone else. This is proved by the fact that the avenger wants the guilty party not merely to suffer, but to suffer at his hands, and to know it, and to know why. Hence the impulse to taunt the guilty man with his crime at the moment of taking vengeance: hence, too, such natural expressions as 'I wonder how he'd like it if the same thing were done to him' or 'I'll teach him'. For the same reason when we are going to abuse a man in words we say we are going to 'let him know what we think of him'. — C.S. Lewis

In short, the Lord's Supper was the realization of new social and political arrangements, the embodiment of the social leveling seen in Jesus' ministry, most profoundly in his acts of table fellowship. Importantly, as we have seen, these new social arrangements could only be achieved if the emotions of social stratification were confronted, eliminated, or reinterpreted. In his body metaphor, Paul dramatically reframes these heretical emotions, the emotions of contempt, disgust, honor, and social presentability. Rather, than signaling exclusion and division - the natural expulsive impulse inherent in these emotions - Paul suggests that these emotions should signal just the opposite in the Kingdom of God: honor, care, and embrace. — Richard Beck

Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary. — Che Guevara

No matter how much you want to be self-sufficient and alone, there is a natural human impulse to need something more than that. — Jonathan E. Steinberg

The life of faith brings the two into a right relation. Common sense is not faith, and faith is not common sense; they stand in the relation of the natural and the spiritual; of impulse and inspiration. Nothing Jesus Christ ever said is common sense, it is revelation sense, and it reaches the shores where common sense fails. Faith must be tried before the reality of faith is actual. — Oswald Chambers

Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse. — Henry Van Dyke

I know whom we must fight ... it is the Church. For all its history, it's tried to suppress and control every natural impulse.That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling. — Philip Pullman

I love you, Jeremy."

He still felt it, that wince of doubt. The urge to push her away. She said it so simply. As though there was nothing easier, more natural in the world. The words themselves hung in the air, so tiny, so bare.

Jeremy felt as though she'd thrust a frail, delicate, birdlike thing into his big, clumsy hands, charging him to keep it safe. And God forgive him, his first impulse was to shove it away. He would destroy it, surely. In his desperation, he would grasp it so tightly it would break into a thousand pieces - and his own heart would break along with it. — Tessa Dare

Joan was nothing more than a friend. He was not in love with her. One does not fall in love with a girl whom one has met only three times. One is attracted, yes; but one does not fall in love.
A moment's reflection enabled him to diagnose his sensations correctly. This odd impulse to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love. It was merely the natural desire of a good-hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species. — P.G. Wodehouse

Be very focused. Do your homework so your research and claims are unassailable. Make sure it is bulletproof and then make sure you are really focused. The thing I find is that the issues are usually so large that you try to cover a lot of ground. That's a natural impulse. — Amy Ziering

It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy. — Aleister Crowley

Man must be doing something, or fancy that he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse; the mere basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man. — Henry George

Evolution

Idea
Perspective
Word

Breaks into our code
Per-mutating atoms
Of our evolutionary Self-s

Our sensory navigating device
Accepts or rejects the impulse
Creating realities of our choice

A natural drift takes us from an amoeba to a human
A very determined choice takes us further
Allowing us
To squeeze our way through
To awake-n
To God and his gift of
Aware-ness — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into a creative impulse. — Eric Hoffer

Many a one commits a reprehensible action, who is at bottom an honourable man, because man seldom acts upon natural impulse, but from some secret passion of the moment which lies hidden and concealed within the narrowest folds of his heart. — Napoleon Bonaparte

There is not a living man who does not wish to play the despot when he is stiff: it seems to him his joy is less when others appear to have as much fun as he; by an impulse of pride, very natural at this juncture, he would like to be the only one in the world capable of experiencing what he feels: the idea of seeing another enjoy as he enjoys reduces him to a kind of equality with that other, which impairs the unspeakable charm despotism causes him to feel. — Marquis De Sade

Here the contention is not just that the new Darwinian paradigm can help us realize whichever moral values we happen to choose. The claim is that the new paradigm can actually influence - legitimately - our choice of basic values in the first place. Some Darwinians insist that such influence can never be legitimate. What they have in mind is the naturalistic fallacy, whose past violation has so tainted their line of work. But what we're doing here doesn't violate the naturalistic fallacy. Quite the opposite. By studying nature - by seeing the origins of the retributive impulse - we see how we have been conned into committing the naturalistic fallacy without knowing it; we discover that the aura of divine truth surrounding retribution is nothing more than a tool with which nature - natural selection - gets us to uncritically accept its "values." Once this revelation hits norm, we are less likely to obey this aura, and thus less likely to commit the fallacy. — Robert Wright

We are pre-disposed for fantasy, there is a natural impulse for human beings to want to get off their heads or out of their heads in something in a substance or a drink or an idea or a religion which will comfort them and make life exciting. — Tom Baker

Like Disneyland, luxury retailers have long had to figure out how to overcome customers' natural inertia. Unlike less pricey stores, they tend not to attract idle browsers who make impulse purchases. — Virginia Postrel

It was already in place, without him seeing any of it, the web was spun and snug around the house, and while his first impulse, the natural impulse, was to press ahead anyway and see if he might beat out the odds, clear logic held him. — Ann Patchett

We have gratefully to receive from the hand of God the institution of the state with its magistrates as a means of preservation ... On the other hand ... by virtue of our natural impulse, we must ever watch against the danger which lurks for our personal liberty in the power of the state. — Abraham Kuyper

When you act on an intuitive impulse, you are celebrating one of the thoroughly joyful aspects of life on this planet. That calm, guiding inner voice is a natural part of you and deserves to be honored. What is not natural is ignoring it. — Jodi Livon

We, and the universe we live in, produce and operate in a sea of natural and unnatural electrical and magnetic fields. The earth, for example, pulses at about 10 Hz, like a small engine. Our bodies, as you may remember from chapter 1, are really electromagnetic machines. We simply can't move a muscle or produce a thought without an electrical impulse - and wherever there is electricity, a magnetic field is also produced, which is why we link the two together into one word: electromagnetic."



Ann Louise Gittleman — Ann Louise Gittleman

When something horrible is done to you, the natural impulse is to strike back. — Laurence Yep

I wanted to show off - a simple impulse or drive; in much the same way as some kids wanted to play football, I wanted to show off. Not complicated in that sense, very natural; it just depends on how you want to show off. — Dylan Moran

It had been years since Melora listened to a symphony. She had been struck by how natural and organic the music was. She found herself thinking about how the instruments were all human powered - not one electrical impulse among them. Maybe that was why it was so easy to get transported by the music - to find oneself thinking about vast outdoor landscapes when the music played. — Marie Zhuikov

Natural emotion is the soul of poetry, as melody is of music; the same faults are engendered by over-study of either art; there is a lack of sincerity, of irresistible impulse in both the poet and the, composer. — Edmund Clarence Stedman

The gospel shows us that our spiritual problem lies not only in failing to obey God, but also in relying on our obedience to make us fully acceptable to God, ourselves and others. Every kind of character flaw comes from this natural impulse to be our own saviour through our own performance and achievement. On the one hand, proud and disdainful personalities come from basing your identity on your performance and thinking you are succeeding. But on the other hand, discouraged and self loathing personalities also come from basing your identity on your performance and thinking you are failing. — Timothy Keller

So what Chiropractic does, is that it simply "takes the handcuffs off Nature", as it were. By finding the particular vertebra that had shifted and restoring it to its natural position, the adjustment thus releases the natural flow of nerve impulse. When the maze of nerves, or Nature's communication system, supplies the body with the energy it needs for well being, you have health. — B. J. Palmer

Natural writers will often try to force themselves into a form - novel, story, screenplay, or poem - that is not necessarily the appropriate form for the way they see the world ... if, in fact, they are writing from the artist's impulse, which is a deep, inchoate vision of some sort of order behind the apparent chaos of life on planet earth, they'll be driven then to express that vision in the creation of the object - the art object. — Robert Olen Butler

One of the fundamental demonstrations of our natural instinct to Bond with each other is a will to give. Rather than domination, our most basic urge is to reach out to another human being, even at a cost to ourselves. Giving to others-the urge to empathize, to be compassionate, and to help others altruistically-is not the exception to the rule, but our natural state of being. Our impulse to connect with each other has developed an automatic desire to do for others, even at personal cost. Altruism comes naturally to us. It is selfishness that is culturally conditioned and a sign of pathology. — Lynne McTaggart

What to Accept
The fact of mountains. The actuality
Of any stone - by kicking, if necessary.
The need to ignore stupid people,
While restraining one's natural impulse
To murder them. The change from your dollar,
Be it no more than a penny,
For without a pretense of universal penury
There can be no honor between rich and poor.
Love, unconditionally, or until proven false.
The inevitability of cancer and/or
Heart disease. The dialogue as written,
Once you've taken the role. Failure,
Gracefully. Any hospitality
You're willing to return. The air
Each city offers you to breathe.
The latest hit. Assistance.
All accidents. The end. — Thomas M. Disch

The teens are emotionally unstable and pathic. It is a natural impulse to experience hot and perfervid psychic states, and it is characterized by emotionalism. We see here the instability and fluctuations now so characteristic. The emotions develop by contrast and reaction into the opposite. — G. Stanley Hall

We are beginning to play with ideas of ecology, and although we immediately trivialize these into commerce or politics, there is at least an impulse still in the human breast to unify and thereby sanctify the total natural world, of which we are ... There have been, and still are, in the world many different and even contrasting epistemologies which have been alike in stressing an ultimate unity, and, although this is less sure, which have also stressed the notion that ultimate unity is aesthetic. The uniformity of these views gives hope that perhaps the great authority of quantitative science may be insufficient to deny an ultimate unifying beauty.
I hold to the presupposition that our loss of the sense of aesthetic unity was, quite simply, an epistemological mistake. — Gregory Bateson

Why does man regret, even though he may endeavour to banish any such regret, that he has followed the one natural impulse, rather than the other; and why does he further feel that he ought to regret his conduct? Man in this respect differs profoundly from the lower animals. — Charles Darwin

Man is endowed by nature with organic relations to his fellow men; and natural impulse prompts him to consider the needs of others even when they compete with his own. — Reinhold Niebuhr

If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulse of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life. — Luc De Clapiers

The commonest error of the gifted scholar, inexperienced in teaching, is to expect pupils to know what they have been told. But telling is not teaching. The expression of facts that are in one's mind is a natural impulse when one wishes others to know these facts, just as to cuddle and pat a sick child is a natural impulse. But telling a fact to a child may not cure his ignorance of it any more than patting him will cure his scarlet fever. (p. 61) — Edward Lee Thorndike

God's mark of approval, whenever you obey Him, is peace. He sends an immeasurable, deep peace; not a natural peace, "as the world gives," but the peace of Jesus. Whenever peace does not come, wait until it does, or seek to find out why it is not coming. If you are acting on your own impulse, or out of a sense of the heroic, to be seen by others, the peace of Jesus will not exhibit itself. — Oswald Chambers

Our greater beastliness lies not in a penchant for brute force,but in our greater corruption, nihilism, and decadence; in our servitude to the
overwhelming systems we create; in the sociopathic rationalism we adopt to master natural forces and to compete with the machines we build;and in the scientistic idolatry that co-opts the religious impulse. Of course the ancients resorted more to brute force: they lacked the infrastructure to punish their enemies and victims in a safer, more
sophisticated fashion, with advanced legal regimes and mass-produced, maximum security prisons; with engineered propaganda for social conditioning; and with economic, cyber, and drone warfare. We channel our aggression with more sophisticated instruments, but the use of those instruments doesn't ennoble us. — Benjamin Cain

When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains. ( ... ) The Conditioners, therefore, must come to be motivated simply by their own pleasure. ( ... ) My point is that those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse. ( ... ) I am very doubtful myself whether the benevolent impulses, stripped of that preference and encouragement which the Tao teaches us to give them and left to their merely natural strength and frequency as psychological events, will have much influence. I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently. — C.S. Lewis