C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Impulse
What persons are by starts they are by nature.
Calculation is of the head; impulse is of the heart; and both are good in their way.
All our first movements are good, generous, heroical.
A warm blundering man does more for the world than a frigid wise man.
Act upon your impulses, but pray that they may be directed by God.
The affection of young ladies is of as rapid growth as Jack’s bean-stalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night.
Women are far more impulsive than men; this is because they are more influenced by the heart than the head.
What reason would grope for in vain, spontaneous impulse ofttimes achieves at a stroke, with light and pleasureful guidance.
Impulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.
Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.
I venture to suggest that the most developed man is he who has the least reason for not simply obeying his impulses, or that perfect impulses mark the perfect man.
A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the results of sudden impulses and accidents than of that reason of which we so much boast.
The Indian who fells the tree that he may gather the fruit, and the Arab who plunders the caravans of commerce are actuated by the same impulse of savage nature, and relinquish for momentary rapine the long and secure possession of the most important blessings.
On great occasions it is almost always women who have given the strongest proofs of virtue and devotion; the reason is, that with men good and bad qualities are in general the result of calculation, while in women they are impulses springing from the heart.