Famous quotes containing the words recoil, energy and/or impulse:
“A man with your experience in affairs must have seen cause to appreciate the futility of opposition to the moral sentiment. However feeble the sufferer and however great the oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the blow should recoil upon the aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and it cannot be withstood.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Viewed narrowly, all life is universal hunger and an expression of energy associated with it.”
—Mary Ritter Beard (1876–1958)
“In benevolent natures the impulse to pity is so sudden, that like instruments of music which obey the touch ... you would think the will was scarce concerned, and that the mind was altogether passive in the sympathy which her own goodness has excited. The truth is,—the soul is [so] ... wholly engrossed by the object of pity, that she does not ... take leisure to examine the principles upon which she acts.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)