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compulsion
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  • Soon it became a compulsion.†   (source)
  • My compulsion to be always on the move began to fade.†   (source)
  • Almost at once he understood that Baboo didn't intend to follow Essay—he wasn't drawn by her vision, her compulsion, whatever had made her race to meet the pillar that roared at them from out on the water.†   (source)
  • Gave her compulsions.†   (source)
  • Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.†   (source)
  • And so he paid for his fastidious nature, his compulsion to keep things perfect.†   (source)
  • Whatever the truth, now that Piper knew Hedge was alive, she had a strong compulsion to save him.†   (source)
  • A compulsion to reach out and snatch the vial off the desk surged to the tips of her fingers, but Cinder withheld it.†   (source)
  • The obsessive: glove-wearing, germ-phobic, bundled year round with scarves, twitching and racked with compulsions.†   (source)
  • It's some weird compulsion.†   (source)
  • Among the men in Alpha Company, Rat had a reputation for exaggeration and overstatement, a compulsion to rev up the facts, and for most of us it was normal procedure to discount sixty or seventy percent of anything he had to say.†   (source)
  • But the inner compulsion to press on was irresistible.†   (source)
  • Centuries later, when I was in my satyr period, I felt that I finally understood poor don Balthazar's priapic compulsions, but in those days it was mostly a hindrance to keeping young girls on the estate's staff.†   (source)
  • I didn't realize you had this compulsion.†   (source)
  • For years, I felt no compulsion to settle down.†   (source)
  • The island had come under repeated assault, prompting a resurfacing of Olmsted's old anger about the compulsion of clients to tinker with his landscapes.†   (source)
  • He would have backed off before he even cleared Boulder if it hadn't been for his compulsion that the boy was in terrible trouble.†   (source)
  • I had the compulsion to open it.†   (source)
  • The imprinting compulsion is one of the strangest things I've ever witnessed in my life, and I've seen some strange things.†   (source)
  • And many boys had been drawn into the fighting themselves, usually by compulsion.†   (source)
  • From just having an interest in neurosurgery, the field soon intrigued me so much it became a compulsion.†   (source)
  • I knew Phillip would never approve of me writing things down, but I had this compulsion to get some things down on paper.†   (source)
  • It must have torn her apart to have this compulsion and yet be unable to act on it.†   (source)
  • Slowly, feeling the compulsions and unable to inhibit them, Paul put his hand into the box.†   (source)
  • Wendy often said Ruth should see a shrink about her compulsion with number counting.†   (source)
  • This book is the fruit of that compulsion.†   (source)
  • He was with her like a fever, a compulsion, an open door into her own possibilities, into what she believed was freedom.†   (source)
  • In many countries—China, Brazil, and most of sub-Saharan Africa—prostitution is widespread but mostly voluntary (in the sense that it is driven by economic pressure rather than physical compulsion).†   (source)
  • I felt adrift inside, as if I had a compulsion not to be myself.†   (source)
  • I did feel different: larger, fuller, more complete, no longer divided against myself—compulsion to comply against wish to refuse.†   (source)
  • Anyone who wrestles with compulsion knows that though self-control is an unwelcome friend, it may be the only friend.†   (source)
  • Whether it was her own desire or the strange compulsion of the Fair Folk, Clary wasn't sure, but with a murmured excuse she stepped away from the others and made her way to the edge of the forest, wending her way through riotous partygoers.†   (source)
  • Now he understood what made people (people he always pitied) happy when they took a job without feeling the compulsion of an internalEs muss sein!†   (source)
  • And I was flying in on business last night and saw an article in the airline magazine, the piece about you and your collectibles, and I felt a strong compulsion to get in touch with you and see these things.†   (source)
  • A crazy, frantic compulsion drove me.†   (source)
  • I have this strong compulsion to try to pull him out of this mood, to try to distract him.†   (source)
  • It's a compulsion with you, and now it's coming home to you—" She was on her feet, holding the back of the chair.†   (source)
  • For the first time, he'd awakened with a compulsion to treat this dream of Bangkok, this lucid fabrication in his mind, as real.†   (source)
  • He didn't feel any compulsion to make conversation, to break any ice.†   (source)
  • My throat swelled and I fought the compulsion to dry heave.†   (source)
  • For that reason she felt no compulsion to verify herself—be consistent with herself.†   (source)
  • This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion.†   (source)
  • I had discovered unrecognized compulsions of my being-even though I could not answer "yes" to their promptings.†   (source)
  • He had trusted an instinct-perhaps a compulsion-and had known what to say and how to respond.†   (source)
  • Since, at six, the nurse had been overcome with an overwhelming compulsion to take Fang's temperature right then.†   (source)
  • The question might be asked as to whether she participated in such encounters of her own free will or whether she was in a situation of uncontrollable compulsion.†   (source)
  • In morbid compulsion, the River Guard observed the steady decomposition of his body-from a distance.†   (source)
  • If you choose to deal with men by means of compulsion, do so.†   (source)
  • The compulsion ebbed suddenly and faded away.†   (source)
  • I thought of Lou Ann's compulsions in church.†   (source)
  • None of the baroque ecstasy, none of the grotesque compulsion.†   (source)
  • I never have learned the co-ordinates of Sanctuary, nor the name or catalogue number of the star it orbits — because what you don't know, you can't spill; the location is ultra-top-secret, known only to ships' captains, piloting officers, and such ....and, I understand, with each of them under orders and hypnotic compulsion to suicide if necessary to avoid capture.†   (source)
  • He was in the grip of a bizarre compulsion.†   (source)
  • I know my compulsion was flawed.†   (source)
  • And the deception must be obvious to justify forced compulsion.†   (source)
  • ROS: A compulsion towards philosophical introspection is his chief characteristic, if I may put it like that.†   (source)
  • Athletes have a strange but genuine compulsion to touch each other's asses.†   (source)
  • I was very tired, but sometimes fatigue can be a stimulant and a compulsion.†   (source)
  • That is he above the course of history and the compulsions of dialectic?†   (source)
  • Frodo clambered on to it, and then moved as if by some compulsion he turned slowly to face the East.†   (source)
  • At least, at times it became a compulsion, and one might as well salve one's notions of duty and free will by using the pleasanter term.†   (source)
  • I also realized that the momentum which had been building up in her memory all evening had not really diminished, and that despite her weariness she was under a compulsion to scrape out the rest of her appalling and inconceivable past to its bottommost dregs.†   (source)
  • Day after day, whether he was at home or off on one of his innumerable trips, he worked lunatic hours, often from eight in the morning until midnight, and when he asked himself why—there were many in the firm who felt no such compulsions—he could find no adequate reason, or, rather, found too many.†   (source)
  • Who would ever guess that he was a deviate with a compulsion to watch women dress and undress?†   (source)
  • (He looks from one to the other) On what compulsion†   (source)
  • His captivity, his dependence, were not different from other forms of compulsion in life, which are often equally invisible and intangible, and seem to be nonexistent and merely a figment of the imagination, a chimera.†   (source)
  • Reich radiated a burst of savage compulsion that made the peeper recoil.†   (source)
  • that spontaneous compulsion of the male to fight with or because of or over the partner with which he has recently or is about to copulate.   (source)
    compulsion = an urge, force, or requirement to do something
  • For ten days he did not see Tanis nor telephone to her, and instantly she put upon him the compulsion which he hated.   (source)
  • He kissed her with careless heartiness, he forgot the compulsion of her demands, he stretched in a large chair and felt that he had beautifully come home.   (source)
  • The compulsion grew, and I fought it uselessly, cringing on the ground where I was.†   (source)
  • It was a compulsion that I didn't fully understand.†   (source)
  • How a human mind could desire anything with such compulsion mystified him.†   (source)
  • He felt a surprising compulsion to engage the Scabs who bore down on Johan.†   (source)
  • He would have felt drawn back to the hotel by a compulsion he couldn't control.†   (source)
  • The compulsion or Jace's feelings for her?†   (source)
  • Driven by compulsion, I'd had no choice.†   (source)
  • "What is it about mundanes and their overwhelming compulsion to state the obvious?" he asked.†   (source)
  • Tanis felt an overwhelming compulsion to rush up the bridge, but he held firm.†   (source)
  • He knew now why he had felt the compulsion to buy them.†   (source)
  • The compulsion you placed upon him must have been stronger than you realized.†   (source)
  • As of its own compulsion, the car slowed as we passed the chapel with its low, sweeping eaves.†   (source)
  • When he died, this compulsion to make things right again, to fix the world, had only intensified.†   (source)
  • He had to get inside L'Arbalate: There was a compulsion within him to take the risk.†   (source)
  • As the months from the accident had increased, his compulsion to find me decreased.†   (source)
  • As with any compulsion, I couldn't stop.†   (source)
  • Under the compulsion of his extraordinary will she got into the car and closed the door.†   (source)
  • You have a compulsion to confess something?†   (source)
  • I don't know whether 'compulsion' is the right word.†   (source)
  • I couldn't concentrate—the compulsion to follow orders felt like puppet strings hooked into all of my muscles.†   (source)
  • It costs me dearly to resist those urges, and even more if I consciously cause someone discomfort, as I do by saying this...I cannot even sleep at night for the strength of my compulsion.†   (source)
  • Jessica wondered what compulsion had brought her to uncover those two things first — the head and the painting.†   (source)
  • The compulsion was far too powerful.†   (source)
  • Though he tried to pretend that he was still trying to figure Richard out, he knew his compulsion to watch had more in common with what people feel when they come across the scene of a grisly accident.†   (source)
  • Furthermore, I will lay upon you a compulsion to travel northward until you reach the elf city of Ellesmera, which stands deep in the heart of Du Weldenvarden.†   (source)
  • Eragon then removed as much of his curse as he could from the girl Elva, but she retained her ability to feel the pain of others, though she no longer felt the compulsion to save them from their misery.†   (source)
  • I'm shivering, almost uncontrollably, and instead of taking a warming shower, I have the odd compulsion to start a log fire in the family room hearth.†   (source)
  • They go crazy, spinning around like infinitesimal Ping-Pong balls trying to find tiny tunnels to explode through, drawn by their own inherent compulsions.†   (source)
  • He took it out and he—" Julian's breath skittered, and Clary could almost feel it, feel his horror at the recollection warring with the compulsion to tell it, to relive it.†   (source)
  • There wasn't much else I could do tonight—it was too dark outside—and the feeling was growing stronger, it was almost a compulsion now.†   (source)
  • In your torment you fantasize, you pretend to be people you are not; you seem to have a compulsion to be someone other than yourself.†   (source)
  • He didn't understand the compulsion, but before he realized what he was doing, he pulled out the photo.†   (source)
  • His chest rose and fell, closely shaved, smooth, and the briefest compulsion to reach out and touch it crossed her mind, chased away by fear.†   (source)
  • Compulsion?†   (source)
  • It is often rich Asians, particularly overseas Chinese, who are doing the buying—put a few of them in jail, and good things will happen: The market for virgins will quickly shrink, their price will drop, gangs will shift to less risky or more profitable lines of business, the average age of prostitutes will rise somewhat, and the degree of compulsion in prostitution will diminish as well.†   (source)
  • There's no mystique, no diabolical universities where we were trained, no driving compulsion to destroy.†   (source)
  • For one thing, I felt no compulsion to wander or to search; I was merely wandering out of habit, because that was what was usually expected of me here.†   (source)
  • Now the compulsion to activity, to filling up the time when he was not happily fishing on the riverbank, had dwindled.†   (source)
  • At least, from The Compassionate Friends, he had discovered that this bizarre compulsion, by which he was now seized, was not unique to him.†   (source)
  • They are the men of superlative ability who made their fortunes by personal effort, in free trade, using no compulsion, no help from the government.†   (source)
  • If it is compulsive, like it was the first time, whoever reaches her first will have to try to make her unconscious somehow, and the moment the compulsion breaks you must turn back and cover up as best you can.†   (source)
  • Then you may live in Argos, and work at the loom in another woman's house, or perhaps carry water for a woman of Messene or Hyperia, sore against your will: but hard compulsion will lie upon you.†   (source)
  • It really wasn't that simple," said Simon, and went on to explain about his two trips to the Dumort, one as a rat and the second under a compulsion so strong it had felt like a giant set of pincers holding him in their grasp and marching him exactly where they wanted him to go.†   (source)
  • He would not understand how I could take such a man seriously, he would not understand the compulsion.†   (source)
  • And what is it about Shadowhunters and their overwhelming compulsion to get themselves and everyone they care about killed?†   (source)
  • You cannot force intelligence to work: those who're able to think, will not work under compulsion; those who will, won't produce much more than the price of the whip needed to keep them enslaved.†   (source)
  • Chapter 18 Only my Bledsoe-trustee inspired compulsion to read all papers that touched my hands prevented me from throwing the envelope aside.†   (source)
  • Nevertheless, the desire to learn the truth, which had motivated him to come to Colorado, was the tiniest fraction as powerful as the wrenching need to find his younger daughter, which now raged in him to a degree beyond the measurements used to define mere compulsion or obsession.†   (source)
  • Alex had a childhood compulsion to cross his fingers somewhere out of sight, or his legs, or his toes, but no method came to him.†   (source)
  • She'd loved him, and all her life she had felt a compulsion to make up, somehow: for his inattention to his family; and for her mother's disappointment in having married a man so alien, finally, to herself.†   (source)
  • But he was under no such compulsion to claim as his own the nameless blade that rested upon his thighs.†   (source)
  • Could this compulsion to put invisibility down in black and white be thus an urge to make music of invisibility?†   (source)
  • Compulsion drove him.†   (source)
  • It would be a subconscious compulsion.†   (source)
  • Eragon may be able to remove this ghastly ability of mine and the compulsion that accompanies it, but he cannot return me to what I was, nor what I should be, not without destroying who I have become.†   (source)
  • It's all in the medical records, meticulous records that make clear the advanced state of your mental illness, your compulsion for violence and your obsessive rejection of your own identity.†   (source)
  • That a man who's willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards-never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy.†   (source)
  • Like an itch I couldn't reach, the compulsion to spy nagged at me, growing stronger as the hours rolled on.†   (source)
  • But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man's deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense.†   (source)
  • George P. was a sidestep from Geoffrey R., a man who had been eaten away by a compulsion that had its roots in escape-escape from identity.†   (source)
  • When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion-when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors-when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you-when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice-you may know that your society is doomed.†   (source)
  • But just as I'd been compelled to watch them for a year, the compulsion suddenly reversed itself and I knew I had to let them live in peace, without me spying on them.†   (source)
  • Priorities had become twisted; compulsion had replaced reason, the pull of the unknown had been so strong that for a moment or two he had nearly lost control.†   (source)
  • 2, was a journalist who wrote that it is proper and moral to use compulsion "for a good cause," who believed that he had the right to unleash physical force upon othersto wreck lives, throttle ambitions, strangle desires, violate convictions, to imprison, to despoil, to murder-for the sake of whatever he chose to consider as his own idea of "a good cause," which did not even have to be an idea, since he had never defined what he regarded as the good, but had merely stated that he went by "a feeling"—a feeling unrestrained by any knowledge, since he considered emotion superior to knowledge and relied solely on his own "good intentions" and on the power of a gun.†   (source)
  • He shook his head violently back and forth trying to suppress the compulsion, to still the screams that were all around him-screams that were his screams, his voice.†   (source)
  • The next day was significant for another reason, for it marked the very first time that Henry Piedmont felt the compulsion to set foot on Yamacraw Island.†   (source)
  • It lay like a compulsion upon me.†   (source)
  • There was dwelling somewhere in the inward part of my mind a compulsion to write about slavery, to make slavery give up its most deeply buried and tormented secrets, which was every bit as necessary as the compulsion that drove me to write, as I had been writing today, about the inheritors of that institution who now in the 1940s floundered amid the insane apartheid of Tidewater Virginia—my beloved and bedeviled bourgeois New South family whose every move and gesture, I had begun to realize, were played out in the presence of a vast, brooding company of black witnesses, all sprung from the loins of bondage.†   (source)
  • Perhaps there is something in your loathing that keeps you in subjection to him more than to any man whom you love of your own free will, without compulsion.†   (source)
  • The death compulsion struck.†   (source)
  • Though I rationed myself carefully, resisting the compulsion, the handy temptation, for as long as I could, I finally found myself down to my final pack of cigarettes.†   (source)
  • He was one of those rare World-Shakers whose compulsions might have torn down our society and irrevocably committed us to his own psychotic pattern.†   (source)
  • And from now on, the basis of life is to be that inspiration which the Gospel strives to make the foundation of life, contrasting the commonplace with the unique, the weekday with the holiday, and repudiating all compulsion.†   (source)
  • But he had no greater will of his own than a boat has when it is towed by a steam-ship; and he followed his cruel mistress through rough and smooth, on equally strong compulsion.†   (source)
  • If he daren't risk compulsion, why not call for voluntary help?†   (source)
  • "So," Pilar said and her voice was warm and friendly and there was no compulsion in it.†   (source)
  • It's not compulsion when it's for a good cause.†   (source)
  • I am reluctant to suffer that compulsion.†   (source)
  • The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion.†   (source)
  • Only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total freedom.†   (source)
  • What I mean is we ought to lose that bugaboo of being scared of the word compulsion.†   (source)
  • Whenever a new compulsion is imposed upon us, we automatically gain a new freedom.†   (source)
  • There's a great deal to be said for compulsion," stated Homer Slottern.†   (source)
  • In essence, freedom and compulsion are one.†   (source)
  • He did not know what it was that compelled him to say it, but it was compulsion greater than he could withstand.†   (source)
  • Home, he would be cajoled up the tall veranda stairs, enticed into his bed; or, resisting all compulsion, he would seek out his wife, shut usually in her room, howling taunts at her, and accusations of unchastity, since there festered in him dark suspicion, fruit of his age, his wasting energy.†   (source)
  • With his morbid compulsion for honesty he was too modest to pose coarsely and blatantly as a Henry Clay or James G. Blaine might pose.†   (source)
  • Was that the compulsion?†   (source)
  • He had come to it reluctantly, under compulsion, after he had made every feeble effort in his power to obtain deferment.†   (source)
  • Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion.†   (source)
  • She knew that a continuous struggle against the compulsion of a single desire was compulsion also, but it was the form she preferred to accept.†   (source)
  • to it in her apron pocket, hailed from the kitchen or the garden or even from the field since she and Clyde now did all the plowing which was done, now that Jones was gone too, having followed the demon within twelve hours on that same Sunday (and maybe to the same place; maybe they would even have a scuppernong vine for them and no compulsions now of bread or ambition or fornication or vengeance and maybe they wouldn't even have to drink only they would miss this now and then without knowing what it was that they missed but not often; serene, pleasant, unmarked by time or change of weather, only just now and then something, a wind, a shadow, and the demon would stop talking and Jone†   (source)
  • [Note: Example: "Comfort's catholicity of perception and image, strangely Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in aesthetic compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric accumulative hinting at a cruel, an inexorably serene timelessness...Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at simple bulls-eyes with precision†   (source)
  • And might not another feel also a compulsion, and pray night and day without ceasing, for the restoration of some other valley that would never be restored?†   (source)
  • It was as though she was aware of a rhythm, a tune, a compulsion, outside of herself, and devoutly followed it in its subtle and winding progression.†   (source)
  • How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-strings: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls.†   (source)
  • m4 Hence, too, the irresistible compulsion to make war: the impulse to destroy the father is continually transforming itself into public violence.†   (source)
  • But wrong or not, I did not put my surmise to the test, for if I myself was not truly aware of that rhythm and compulsion which bemused her, I was aware of her devotion to it, and could find every moment with her full enough.†   (source)
  • He lost count of the hours—he had no sense of time—no regular periods for sleep, work, or recreation, although he attended his classes faithfully, and ate with fair regularity by compulsion of dining-hall or boarding-house schedules.†   (source)
  • He had grown to manhood in the country, where like the unswimming sailor his physical shape and his thought had been molded by its compulsions without his learning anything about its actual shape and feel.†   (source)
  • Why was there a compulsion upon him to pray for the restoration of Ndotsheni, and why was there a white man there on the tops, to do in this valley what no other could have done?†   (source)
  • In the swirling, crumbling, darkened mind, , that one compulsion rallied the body and the brain like a standard.†   (source)
  • The big difference was this: Back in those days the Boss had been blundering and groping his unwitting way toward the discovery of himself, of his great gift, wearing his overalls that bagged down about the seat, or the blue serge suit with the tight, shiny pants, nursing some blind and undefined compulsion within him like fate or a disease.†   (source)
  • Now that we look at the tree together, it has a combined look, each branch distinct, and I will tell you what I feel, under the compulsion of your clarity.†   (source)
  • Now that I have reviled you for the blow that sent me staggering among peelings and crumblings and old scraps of meat, I will record in words of one syllable how also under your gaze with that compulsion on me I begin to perceive this, that and the other.†   (source)
  • For the voice of Tiny Duffy summoning him was nothing but the echo of a certainty and a blind compulsion within him, the thing that had made him sit up in his room, night after night, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, to write the fine phrases and the fine ideas in the big ledger or to bend with a violent, almost physical intensity over the yellow page of an old law book.†   (source)
  • You sit there among the elder gods, disturbed by no sound except the slight rale of the one who has asthma, and wait for them to lean from the Olympian and sunlit detachment and comment, with their unenvious and foreknowing irony, on the goings-on of the folks who are still snared in the toils of mortal compulsions.†   (source)
  • "THE BASIC trouble with the modern world," said Ellsworth Toohey, "is the intellectual fallacy that freedom and compulsion are opposites.†   (source)
  • Compulsion is a law of nature.†   (source)
  • Heller, the fighter against compulsion, was baffled by Roark, a man so impervious to compulsion that he became a kind of compulsion himself, an ultimatum against things Heller could not define.†   (source)
  • Either course taken would be taken under compulsion: she could leave her work, because he had made her want to leave it, or she could remain, hating it, in order to keep her life unchanged, in defiance of him.†   (source)
  • he knew that Heller was the star columnist of the Chronicle, a brilliant, independent newspaper, arch-enemy of the Wynand publications; that Heller came from an old, distinguished family and had graduated from Oxford; that he had started as a literary critic and ended by becoming a quiet fiend devoted to the destruction of all forms of compulsion, private or public, in heaven or on earth; that he had been cursed by preachers, bankers, club-women and labor organizers; that he had better manners than the social elite whom he usually mocked, and a tougher constitution than the laborers whom he usually defended; that he could discuss the latest play on Broadway, medieval poetry o†   (source)
  • In Vida's demands Carol felt a compulsion, but she was too listless to obey.†   (source)
  • He performed his diminishing duties under compulsion.†   (source)
  • They got out of the way, gave trail to the grown dogs, and gave up meat to them under compulsion.†   (source)
  • Mr. Highcamp was a plain, bald-headed man, who only talked under compulsion.†   (source)
  • None of the compulsion of the practical.†   (source)
  • The sad compulsion of the law, as he explained.†   (source)
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