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impetus
in a sentence

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  • It's something physical like graffiti The impetus to engage in a certain kind of behavior is not coming from a certain kind of person but from a feature of the environment.†   (source)
  • He missed the bandanna, and the impetus of the movement sent him staggering a pace or two forward.†   (source)
  • stroll with the monster might slim me down, rev me up and offer the impetus to slip into my future, better equipped to deal with the mindless tedium that is my life.†   (source)
  • It was that impetus that drove him to give up his heart, just as I was driven to help him do it because it would cancel out my vote to execute him in the first place.†   (source)
  • The Taoiseach and I will meet again next spring in London, with key ministerial colleagues, to give this the necessary impetus and agenda, and will thereafter meet at least once a year to review progress.†   (source)
  • We, however, needed another impetus to motivate us.†   (source)
  • The tone and impetus of public speaking carried him that far and no farther.†   (source)
  • That insight created a major impetus for research in China but in the West as well.†   (source)
  • She gets pregnant sometimes and then the vicious cycle is given impetus.†   (source)
  • There was a technological and a logistical necessity embedded in the new directive, the impetus of which derived not from any sudden preservative concern on the part of the Germans for the Slavs and other "Aryan" non-Jewish deportees, but from an overriding obsession—springing from Hitler and amounting now to mania in the minds of Himmler, Eichmann and their cousin overlords in the SS chain of command—to finally get on with the Jewish slaughter until every Jew in Europe had perished.†   (source)
  • She ran in as far as the middle of the lobby as though from impetus.†   (source)
  • Hilbery had been gathering impetus from her recollections, and was now in high spirits.   (source)
  • If anything had been needed to give an impetus to Jack McMurdo's popularity among his fellows it would have been his arrest and acquittal.   (source)
  • Smiling, but somehow disillusioned, she jumped out, and her impetus carried her to the front-door.   (source)
  • Then he liquidated lands and animals and moved with new impetus and seventy thousand gold pesos to this ruined city and its moth-eaten glories, where a beautiful woman with an old-fashioned upbringing still had the possibility of being reborn through a fortunate marriage.†   (source)
  • What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus.†   (source)
  • What I longed for in my despair was life and resolution, action and reaction, impulse and impetus.†   (source)
  • Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept—and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small.†   (source)
  • I was poised for flight, but I was waiting for some event, some word, some act, some circumstance to furnish the impetus.†   (source)
  • It is the impetus of that shattering phalanx of iron—spread across the battlefront, inescapable, pulverizing, louder than drums, beating the earth.†   (source)
  • He might give the impetus to the falling building, but surely it had to be toppling on its own account before it fell?†   (source)
  • We begin to forget, as we go stolidly balancing along, that there could have been a time when we were young bodies flaming with the impetus of life.†   (source)
  • The impetus of the blow carried Gulden off his balance.†   (source)
  • 'Even this artistic impetus would at last die away—had almost died in the Time I saw.†   (source)
  • Smiling, but somehow disillusioned, she jumped out, and her impetus carried her to the front-door.†   (source)
  • The regiment, relieved of a burden, received a new impetus.†   (source)
  • The impetus of enthusiasm was theirs again.†   (source)
  • But the shock was insufficient to repel the impetus of the charge.†   (source)
  • He, meanwhile, felt the impetus of his indignation diverted toward Philip.†   (source)
  • CYRANO (stepping back, and enticing him further away): And then, the second way, To generate wind—for my impetus— To rarefy air, in a cedar case, By mirrors placed icosahedron-wise.†   (source)
  • It was one of those complicated fabrics that have since been called handling-machines, and the study of which has already given such an enormous impetus to terrestrial invention.†   (source)
  • And now, with a ringing, wild snort, he seemed to double up in muscular convulsions and to shoot forward with an impetus that almost unseated Venters.†   (source)
  • The rapid rushed in gigantic swells right upon the wall, boomed against it, climbed and spread and fell away, to recede and gather new impetus, to leap madly on down the canyon.†   (source)
  • What of my impetus and the stunning surprise, I clattered three or four steps along the deck before I could stop myself.†   (source)
  • Unexpected because Nastasia Philipovna, on her way to Pavlofsk, had thought and considered a good deal, and had expected something different, though perhaps not altogether good, from this interview; but Aglaya had been carried away by her own outburst, just as a rolling stone gathers impetus as it careers downhill, and could not restrain herself in the satisfaction of revenge.†   (source)
  • With the impetus of his rush the man drove straight on, his face suddenly gaping disfigured, with his hands open before him gropingly, as though blinded, and landed with terrific violence on his forehead, just short of Jim's bare toes.†   (source)
  • Of course it could heal sickness, but its first effect was greatly to enhance illnesses that everyone carried latent within them, because the impetus and stimulus this air gave the whole organism brought illness to exuberant eruption, so to speak.†   (source)
  • Swann deemed it wise to make allowance in his life for the suffering which he derived from not knowing what Odette had done, just as he made allowance for the impetus which a damp climate always gave to his eczema; to anticipate in his budget the expenditure of a considerable sum on procuring, with regard to the daily occupations of Odette, information the lack of which would make him unhappy, just as he reserved a margin for the gratification of other tastes from which he knew that…†   (source)
  • And when he stood erect again it seemed that the old earth had a stirring, electrifying impetus for his feet.†   (source)
  • For the moment, Dick was too shaken by the impetus of his newly recognized emotion to resolve things into the pattern of the holiday, so the women, missing something, lapsed into a vague unhappiness.†   (source)
  • As the impetus that carried Cherokee forward died down, he continued to go forward of his own volition, in a swift, bow-legged run.†   (source)
  • But Baby Warren wanted to talk to Dick, wanted to talk to him with the impetus that sent her out vagrantly toward all new men, as though she were on an inelastic tether and considered that she might as well get to the end of it as soon as possible.†   (source)
  • At this juncture Dale burst into the saloon, suddenly to check his impetus, to swerve aside toward the bar and halt.†   (source)
  • The Martian staggered with the violence of her explosion, and in another moment the flaming wreckage, still driving forward with the impetus of its pace, had struck him and crumpled him up like a thing of cardboard.†   (source)
  • The two duelers passed over the remark, but Hans Castorp had, as we noted, been keeping a worried eye on his cousin, and now departed with him in the middle of a rebuttal, leaving it to the remaining audience, consisting of Ferge and Wehsal, to provide sufficient pedagogic impetus for a continuation of the argument.†   (source)
  • Under the impetus of brain and of motor nerves extending from the spine, belly and rib cage stirred, the pleuroperitoneal cavity swelled and contracted; the breath, warmed and moistened by mucous membranes along the trachea and laden with secreted material, streamed out between the lips, now that oxygen had bonded with the hemoglobin in the blood deep in the air sacs of the lungs.†   (source)
  • Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment of war time has given impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens.†   (source)
  • I saw that in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing with him.†   (source)
  • …exhausting himself in attempts to get back to the mouth of the cove, in his weakness swimming several inches deeper than was his wont, keeping up his breathing entirely by his nostrils, turning upon his back a dozen times over, swimming en papillon, and so on, Troy resolved as a last resource to tread water at a slight incline, and so endeavour to reach the shore at any point, merely giving himself a gentle impetus inwards whilst carried on in the general direction of the tide.†   (source)
  • The impetus with which inclination became resolution was heightened by those little events of the day which had roused her discontent with the actual conditions of her life.†   (source)
  • In less than an hour he left the rudder and furled his sails, whilst the sledge, carried forward by the great impetus the wind had given it, went on half a mile further with its sails unspread.†   (source)
  • The French army pushed on to Moscow, its goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim, just as the velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches the earth.†   (source)
  • 'Halloa?' said a little ugly hump-backed man: opening the door so suddenly, that the doctor, from the very impetus of his last kick, nearly fell forward into the passage.†   (source)
  • Mr Flintwinch, who had spun backward some two or three yards under the impetus last given to him, brought himself up with a face completely unchanged in its stolidity except as it was affected by shortness of breath, and looked hard at Arthur.†   (source)
  • All I would say is, that I can go abroad without your family coming forward to favour me, — in short, with a parting Shove of their cold shoulders; and that, upon the whole, I would rather leave England with such impetus as I possess, than derive any acceleration of it from that quarter.†   (source)
  • In great republics the impetus of political passion is irresistible, not only because it aims at gigantic purposes, but because it is felt and shared by millions of men at the same time.†   (source)
  • At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at the advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the double view of retarding his rivals' way, and at the same time economically accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the backward toss.†   (source)
  • The wheel continued to revolve by its own impetus, and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that wheel, which merged in her memory with what followed.†   (source)
  • I felt veneration for St. John — veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me at once to the point I had so long shunned.†   (source)
  • "The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale's heart."†   (source)
  • But the news that Lydgate had all at once become able not only to get rid of the execution in his house but to pay all his debts in Middlemarch was spreading fast, gathering round it conjectures and comments which gave it new body and impetus, and soon filling the ears of other persons besides Mr. Hawley, who were not slow to see a significant relation between this sudden command of money and Bulstrode's desire to stifle the scandal of Raffles.†   (source)
  • This was evidently a point on which Mr. Tulliver felt strongly; and the impetus which had given unusual rapidity and emphasis to his speech showed itself still unexhausted for some minutes afterward in a defiant motion of the head from side to side, and an occasional "Nay, nay," like a subsiding growl.†   (source)
  • By impetus gained, the French army was still able to roll forward to Moscow, but there, without further effort on the part of the Russians, it had to perish, bleeding from the mortal wound it had received at Borodino.†   (source)
  • You will see what impetus would be given to your efforts and mine by our physical and mental union in marriage: the only union that gives a character of permanent conformity to the destinies and designs of human beings; and, passing over all minor caprices — all trivial difficulties and delicacies of feeling — all scruple about the degree, kind, strength or tenderness of mere personal inclination — you will hasten to enter into that union at once.†   (source)
  • Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by the whole campaign and by the battle of Borodino, the Russian army—when the strength of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push was received—assumed the position natural to it.†   (source)
  • Outside, beyond the walls, we'll dig a moat around the perimeter, to hold at bay their teams and men, and break the impetus of Trojans in assault.†   (source)
  • First, though, the Trojan impetus bent the Akhaian line back from the dead man, wavering, though not one could Trojan spearmen kill, for all their passion.†   (source)
  • Like a surging wave that comes inboard a ship when a gale blows— wind giving impetus to sea—the Trojans crossed the rampart with a mighty cry and whipped their chariots toward the sterns.†   (source)
  • Trojans massed and running charged them now, with Hektor in the lead in furious impetus, like a rolling boulder a river high with storm has torn away from a jutting bank by washing out what held it; then the brute stone upon the flood goes tossed and tumbling, and the brush gives way, crashing before it.†   (source)
  • …with all the cards in his hand and he had a capital opening to make a name for himself and win a high place in the city's esteem where he could command a stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a grand concert for the patrons of the King street house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming to kick him upstairs, so to speak, a big if, however, with some impetus of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped-up a too much fêted prince of good fellows.†   (source)
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