#impulse

Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done. ↗

— James Fenton

#done #fine #fine thing #forgery #generous

The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war. ↗

— Stanley Crouch

#allows #because #civilization #deal #develop

The only difference was one of them was trying to make a perfect cake and one of them was trying to write a great book. But if we remove that from the equation, it's the same impulse and they are equally entitled to their ecstasies and their despair. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#cake #despair #difference #entitled #equally

The Christian churches were offered two things: the spirit of Jesus and the idiotic morality of Paul, and they rejected the higher inspiration... Following Paul, we have turned the goodness of love into a fiend and degraded the crowning impulse of our being into a capital sin. ↗

— Frank Harris

#capital #christian #churches #crowning #degraded

Without any formal orders to retreat, what was left of the several organizations yielded to a general impulse to abandon the field. Officers and men became controlled by the one thought of getting as far as possible from the enemy. ↗

— Henry Villard

#any #as far as #became #controlled #enemy

My deepest impulses are optimistic, an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect. ↗

— Ellen Willis

#deepest #impulses #intellectually #me #necessary

Anger is easier than forgiveness. ↗

— Ellen Hopkins

#impulse #life #perfect #poetry #young-adult

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances. ↗

— James Russell Lowell

#example #impulse #life #person #precept

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. ↗