"Instinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the elan de la vie, is thus dispersive; and if we are to interpret the evolution of mental on the analogy of physical life, we shall find, M. Bergson says, nothing in the latter which compels us to assume either that intelligence is developed instinct, or that instinct is degraded intelligence. If that be so, then, we may say, neither is there anything to warrant us in assuming either that religion is developed magic, or magic degraded religion. Spell is not degraded prayer, nor is prayer a superior form of spell: ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... we to associate one with the other. All the wild riotous singing, all the brave flashing of wings and tail, all the mad dashing in and out among the thickets or soaring upward above the tree-tops, are impelled by the perfectly natural instinct of mating and rearing young. And where, pray, dwells the soul so poor that it does not thrill in response to the appeals of the ardent lover, even if it be a bird, or feel sympathy upon beholding expressions of parental love and solicitude. Most people, ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... politics. It was gaining numbers and it was gaining votes. A new element had appeared at the polls and both of the old parties began to exhibit a certain degree of impressibility to the latest attraction. The slave-power with quick instinct recognized in the new comer a dangerous rival, and schemed for its destruction. Southern jealousy took on the character of insanity. Neither Northern Whigs nor Northern Democrats were permitted to show ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Some instinct told him he ought not to laugh, but he could not help it. The idea appealed to him as distinctly and clearly comic. "Well, but it is funny. Don't you see? High Jinks alone is such a funny expression—sort of—well, you know what I mean. Apart altogether ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... colorless, transparent, jelly-like substance, much like that found in the morning-glory seed, and which like that supplies nourishment to the young life, for the tadpole feeds upon it until he is able to seek other food. Moreover, instinct has taught the frog the need of extreme caution in the act of fertilization. Every egg must be fertilized. As the time draws near for the dropping of the few eggs into the water, the male frog so places himself that the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... Dr. Drake; and said he would himself suggest the application which that gentleman was no doubt withholding from true feeling, for he had been a favourite pupil of Joe Brownlow, and had been devoted to him. He was sure that Mrs. Brownlow's good sense and instinct were to be trusted, a dictum which not a little surprised her brother-in-law, who had never ceased to think of "poor Joe's fancy" as a mere child, and who forgot that she was fifteen years older than at ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... usually called instinct, that guides these wild animals; doubtless it is the law of nature given ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... the common man of science, must ultimately be traced to the senses. All moral, religious and aesthetic emotions are derived from physical needs, just as political ideas are based on that gregarious instinct which is simply the result of a desire to live long and to live in comfort. We obey the by-law that forbids us to ride a bicycle on the footpath, because we see that, in the long run, such a law is conducive to continued and agreeable existence, and for very similar reasons, says the ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Luzon have made greater progress in civilization and good manners than the Visayos of Panay and Negros. The Tagalog differs vastly from his southern brother in his true nature, which is more pliant, whilst he is by instinct cheerfully and disinterestedly hospitable. Invariably a European wayfarer in a Tagalog village is invited by one or another of the principal residents to lodge at his house as a free guest, for to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... had probably allured some young aristocrats into debauchery, when all young aristocrats were so allured. He had probably undergone some extremity of cold and hunger. In reading of these things the reader will know by instinct how much he may believe, and how much he should receive as mythic. That he was a fast young nobleman, brought up to know no scruples, to disregard blood, and to look upon his country as a milch cow from which a young ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... sanguine, energetic, and headstrong, astute withal, and full of ambition. A more vigorous agent for the execution of the proposed plan of conquest could not have been desired. The General Court of Massachusetts, contrary to its instinct and its past practice, resolved, in view of the greatness of the stake, to ask this time for help from the mother-country, and Vetch sailed for England, bearing an address to the Queen, begging for an armament ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... bankrupt law applicable to all banking institutions throughout the United States, and I strongly recommend its exercise. This would make it the irreversible organic law of each bank's existence that a suspension of specie payments shall produce its civil death. The instinct of self-preservation would then compel it to perform its duties in such a manner as to escape the penalty and preserve ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... people who can take losses beyond their means with perfect cheerfulness and composure. Some few are so imbued with the gambler's instinct that a heavy turn of luck, in either direction, is the salt of life. But the average person is equally embarrassed in winning or losing a stake "that matters" and the only answer is to play ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... again and again. Heaven pardon me if I did my best to awake an interest in her girlish heart! I told her stories of travel and adventure that stirred all the romance in her nature. With the keen instinct of love I understood her character, and played upon its weakness while I worshiped ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... Brace to his protege was simple, as it was also rational. The sword-fish had been charging into a shoal of albacores. Partly blinded by the velocity of its impetuous rush, and partly by its instinct of extreme voracity,—perhaps amounting to a passion, it had seen nothing of the raft until its long weapon struck the plank, piercing the latter through and through. Unable to withdraw its rostrum from the fibrous wood, the fish had instantly inaugurated that ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... meal and had risen. Even then he waited until they moved, together, to the trap door. Then, raising his arm, he let fly the first of his stones. It crashed through the window, shattering the glass. At once he threw another, and then still another. He had counted, and not in vain, on the instinct that would move the two Germans. With a single motion they leaped to the door. As they did so, even as they rushed out, he ran diagonally, so as to get away from them, toward the front of the house. As they stormed around in the direction from which he had thrown ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... discernible in her no soul which could be cleansed from guilt by any purgatorial process.... Her fault had not been moral, had not been sin, to be punished by pain inflicted on the soul; it was merely the uncounteracted primary instinct of self-preservation, and as such it is fitliest dealt with by the simple depriving her, without further penalty, of the very life which she had secured for herself at so ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... command our respect by an intellect that approaches the human, the Coccus tribe possesses only the lowest kind of instinct, and its females even pass the greater part of their lives in a mere vegetation state, without the power of locomotion or perception, like a plant, exhibiting only organs of assimilation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... condition of the weather which a man has who spends much of his time in the open air. He can hardly tell how he knows it is going to rain; he hits the fact as an Indian does the mark with his arrow, without calculating and by a kind of sure instinct. As you read a man's purpose in his face, so you learn to read the purpose of the weather in the face of ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... if he could be of any assistance. Dick, however, although he had never in his life before beheld anything approaching such a dreadful sight, quickly pulled himself together and, his professional instinct promptly asserting itself, ordered some hot water to be brought to him, and, while it was being prepared, opened his medicine chest and his case of surgical instruments, the rest of the inhabitants of the ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... student. Nor do they perceive that these aspirants possess much that is lacking in themselves—and that not particularly to their credit. Gorki knows that aspiration is not fulfilled without inward struggle and travail. And it is with a subtle psychological instinct that he endows the men who are struggling upward out of adversity with a deep craving for purity. Noble souls are invariably characterised by greater sensitiveness to delicacy, and this is equally the characteristic of those who are yearning to rise above their low environment. ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... rising up in every direction marked their progress. A horror came over me; for I observed that the fires were advancing in the direction where Eva lived. I marked the point on the lake where I had left the canoe, and then dashed down the hill towards it. I appeared to know the way by instinct. I had no fear of losing it. I rushed on, and finding the canoe, leaped into it. Just then shrieks and cries reached my ears coming across the tranquil water of the lake. I seized the paddles, and urged on the canoe faster than I had ever before made ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... good list—a very good! but unluckily I fear they don't dance any of those now. But if you have the instinct we may soon cure your ignorance. Let me see you dance ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... And this ignorance of anything that could possibly be useful to her was supposed in some mysterious way to add to her value as a woman and to make her a more desirable companion to a man who, either by experience or by instinct, was expected "to know his world." Unlike Susan (who, in a community which offered few opportunities to women outside of the nursery or the kitchen, had been born with the inquiring spirit and would ask questions), Virginia ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... in the air immediately over their heads. My anger knew no bounds. All hopes of security seemed annihilated by such direct disobedience to all order, and persistence in such a false principle as trying to frighten, which all black men, by a sort of natural instinct, invariably endeavour to do. I then assembled the men, and in presence of the intruders again proclaimed through the Balyuz my intention to punish with severity any person who might create a false alarm ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Inspiration. Since the illumination of Science, falsely so called, and the process of Common Sense, would seem to have resulted in the extinction of the deposit, I ask your patience while I try to shew, that common sense, informed by a somewhat loftier Theological Instinct, may give such an account of the matter as will enable us to preserve every word of the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... evidently a tall man, with the head and shoulders of an athlete, and a face of such precise and unusual beauty that one's instinct called out, "Here, then, God has ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... religious instincts of the human race point to no reality as their object, they are out of analogy with all other instinctive endowments. Elsewhere in the animal kingdom we never meet with such a thing as an instinct pointing aimlessly, and therefore the fact of man being, as it is said, 'a religious animal'—i.e. presenting a class of feelings of a peculiar nature directed to particular ends, and most akin to, if not ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... northern United States, most properly named the Butcher Bird. Like all tyrants he is fierce and brave only in the presence of creatures weaker than himself, and cowers and screams with terror if he sees a falcon. And yet, despite this cruel proceeding, which is an implanted instinct like that of the dog which buries bones he never seeks again, there are few more useful birds than the Shrike. In the summer he lives on insects, ninety-eight per cent. of his food for July and August ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... mud that bore the impress of the feet of many animals, among which he recognised those of antelope, wild pig, monkeys, and a jaguar or two. These last confirmed his theory as to the reason why the glade presented such an utterly forsaken appearance; a pair of jaguars, knowing by instinct that such a spot would be largely frequented by various kinds of game, had no doubt taken up their quarters in the cave, and had fared sumptuously every day until their repeated attacks had driven the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... conscience interpret it—appears to the scientific mind to require yet other terms and comparisons. These conceits and comparisons, drawn from the habits of innocent, though not to man agreeable, animals, who have no law but blind instinct, do not suffice to convey the Poet's idea of this human failing; and, accordingly, he instructs this gentle and noble man, whom this criticism best becomes, to complete this view of the subject, in his attempt to express the disgust with which this inhuman, this more ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... up when, only a few steps from here, I met a man who was formerly in the employ of the Duke de Penthieore, and to whom I had once rendered an important service. Believing that he had not forgotten it, I approached him and told him who I was. The wretch cursed me, and tried to arrest me. The instinct of self-preservation lent me fresh strength. I struggled with him and knocked him down, and while he was calling for help, I ran across the unoccupied ground near the house. A low wall suddenly rose before me. I leaped over it, ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... Her womanly instinct had read the message in the man's eyes; she was of interest to him, he cared; it was no mere ordinary friendliness which would bring him back; no! not even their mutual connection with the case of Frederick Cavendish. Her eyes brightened, and a flush of colour crept into her cheeks. She believed ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... not know that a pair of hands had lifted the tent flap ever so little, and that a pair of keen eyes were following them. The wonderful instinct of Henry Ware had warned him, and he had awakened the moment they looked in. But his eyes had not opened. He had merely felt their presence with the swish of cold air on his face, and now, after they had disappeared among the lodges, he wished to deepen the impression ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to inflict a wound for the mere satisfaction of witnessing the agony of her rival. Vane was dead and retribution had swiftly overtaken his assassin. What was left? Nothing. Sally had also found romance, and some tender womanly instinct—an instinct too often blunted by her life and temptations—sealed her lips. She had avenged the death of the only man she ever loved with anything ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... that, owing to the millions of years of struggle to which was due, in the first place, the evolution of man as a species, and, in the second place, the races of men in their existing stages of civilisation, the fighting instinct is, in the strongest of these races, inherent after a fashion in which the industrial instincts are not; and will always prompt numbers to do, for the smallest wage or none, what they could hardly, in its absence, be induced to do for the highest. This instinct, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... more work opened a passage large enough for a man to walk in, stooping. As if by a common instinct they all stepped aside and looked at me. I saw what they meant, and, turning the light of my lantern into the entrance, I walked back, a living man, into the grave where I had lain dead while ten generations of men had lived and died. I saw the place where I had lain, for a few mouldering scraps ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... known for generations, were proved. Probably the animal instincts, which have become so obtuse by civilization, that children in England eat the berries of the deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) without suspicion, were in the early uncivilized state much more keen. In some points instinct is still retained among savages. It is related that in the celebrated voyage of the French navigator, Bougainville, a young lady, who had assumed the male attire, performed all the hard duties incident to the calling of a common sailor; ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... her first visit to France, being accompanied on this journey by her husband, by Josiah Forster, and by Lydia Irving, members of the Society of Friends. True to her instinct, she found her way speedily into the prisons of the French capital, examining, criticising, recommending and teaching. She could not speak much French, but some kind friend always interpreted her observations. From her journal it seems that solemn prayer for Divine ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... public is as wayward and as fickle as a bee among the flowers. It will not long pause anywhere, and it easily leaves each blossom for a better. But like the bee, while impelled by an instinct that makes it search for sugar, it sucks in therewith its ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... Man, our Lord Jesus Christ? He was so pure in His life, stainless in motive, and unstained in character. And we—well, the nearer we get to Him the more instinctively we find Peter's lakeshore cry starting up within, "I am a sinful man." His very presence makes us feel the sin, the sin-instinct, the old selfish something within. How can we really follow? And the answer that comes is a real answer. ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... He sniffed the warm September night. "I think I shall sleep here, as a matter of fact. I'm a gipsy by instinct— ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... great knowledge of human nature, was well aware how easily one is transformed into the other, or how soon the noble but fleeting aspiration may return into the nature of the animal, while the lower instinct which is latent always remains. The intermediate sentimentalism, which has exercised so great an influence on the literature of modern Europe, had no place in the classical times of Hellas; the higher love, of which Plato speaks, ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... near a church a person soon contracts an attachment for the edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massy walls and its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm and meditative and somewhat melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands foremost in our thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant with a mind comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and small concerns ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of that time she emerged, smiling happily, her arm around the girl, with the girl's pledge to visit her soon and an earnest invitation to come again. Best of all, she had cleverly played upon the feminine instinct for fine raiment, slyly mentioned a trunk that she had brought with her from the East, packed to the top with substantial finery which was not in the least needed by her—an incumbrance, rather—and which, she hinted, might become the property of another, if suitable ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... I was cruel by nature, by instinct. I was a handsome, well-bred, gentlemanlike, gentle-looking little brute. My parents adored me, and I was good to them. They were so kind to me that I was almost fond of them. Why not? It seemed to me as politic to be fond of them as of anyone ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... questions. There are sights in Rome of grander and greater interest, but there is nothing in all the famous centre of the Catholic world more distinctively, essentially and exclusively Roman, more unlike anything that is seen elsewhere, more instinct with couleur locale, than these singularly picturesque ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... with great amusement at Fulkerson's access; "you call that congeries of advertising instinct of yours the human mind at its best? Come, don't be so diffident, Fulkerson. Well, I'm off to find Lindau, and when I come back I hope Mr. Dryfoos will have you under control. I don't suppose you'll be quite sane again till after the first number is out. Perhaps public ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... our custom has been to train our cavalry to fight on foot, and in the present war we have reaped the fruit of this wise policy. But the instinct which must be inculcated in the horse soldier to regard his horse as his chief reliance, must always disqualify him to some extent for the role which our cavalry were called upon to fulfil throughout the momentous issues in the history of the war of which this chapter treats. I may mention in passing ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... old master, while the latter —a pathetic, yet thorny and uncomfortable figure, as portrayed by his contemporaries—continued to belittle and revile his former pupil, while all the time he loved him, and longed for a reconciliation which never took place. La Touche had a quick instinct for discovering genius: he introduced Andre Chenier's posthumous poems to the public, and launched Jules Sandeau and George Sand. But he was soured by seeing his pupils enter the promised land only open to genius, while he was left outside himself. Sooner or later, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... held that 'to take refuge in the wildest and most desert places is an instinct common to all feeling and suffering beings, as if rocks were ramparts against misfortune, and Nature's calm could appease the sorrows of the soul'[14]; but he differed in caring for Nature far more for her own sake, and not in opposition to culture and ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... he had no desire to betray his hiding-place by the glint of steel. It was also possible that he might have crawled away beyond the reach of discovery into the shadows, but that was not his intention, for, though he could never decide afterwards whether he acted from instinct or reasoned his course out, he was bent on waiting for, and not escaping from, his pursuer. Nor did he know how long he waited, but it seemed a very long while before he saw a shadowy object move round and afterwards into the opposite side ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... she calmed my agitation; led me back to the time of our parting; spoke to me of Emily, whom she had visited, in secret, many times; spoke to me tenderly of Dora's grave. With the unerring instinct of her noble heart, she touched the chords of my memory so softly and harmoniously, that not one jarred within me; I could listen to the sorrowful, distant music, and desire to shrink from nothing it awoke. How could I, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Spaniards. They are not sufficiently enterprising or progressive to originate any such scheme for the public good. They even dislike the railroads, though they are compelled to use them; dislike them because they force them to observe punctuality, the native instinct being of the Chinese school, retrospective and retrograding. Everything is exotic in Madrid; nothing is produced in or near the city which its daily consumption demands. Strawberries, butter, cheese, fruits, meats, each comes from some special region far away to this human hive located in ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... force in the slavery question was the primitive instinct in man to keep all he has got; the instinct of the man who lives at another's expense to keep on doing so. That underlay all the fine theories about differences of race, all the theological deductions from Noah's curse upon Canaan. Another great and ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... their bringing forth? For to know the time only was easy, and had nothing extraordinary in it; but the circumstances had something peculiarly expressive of God's providence, which makes the question proper in this place. Pliny observes, that the hind with young is by instinct directed to a certain herb called Seselis, which facilitates the birth. Thunder also (which looks like the more immediate hand of Providence) has the same effect. Ps. xxix. In so early an age to observe these things, may style our ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... at once appeared venerable as soon as it was built; but even at the present day the work looks as fresh as ever, for they bloom with an eternal freshness which defies time, and seems to make the work instinct with an unfading ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... moments in the execution of our duties when it is terrible for us to face a man, terrible on his account, too! The moments of contemplating that animal fear, when the criminal sees that all is lost, but still struggles, still means to struggle, the moments when every instinct of self-preservation rises up in him at once and he looks at you with questioning and suffering eyes, studies you, your face, your thoughts, uncertain on which side you will strike, and his distracted mind ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Divining with the peculiar instinct of the guild the character of the fish now nibbling at the naked hook, the cheat resolved to risk a little bait, and accordingly sent by return mail a genuine one- dollar note, with a written invitation both for a reply and ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... of man in his lowest and most savage state. One's mind hurries back over past centuries, and then asks, could our progenitors have been men like these? — men, whose very signs and expressions are less intelligible to us than those of the domesticated animals; men, who do not possess the instinct of those animals, nor yet appear to boast of human reason, or at least of arts consequent on that reason. I do not believe it is possible to describe or paint the difference between savage and civilized man. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... confederacy did not at all times contain the same towns, as some may afterward have perished and others may have been added. In such political developments there is at work an instinctive tendency to fill up that which has become vacant; and this instinct acts as long as people proceed unconsciously according to the ancient forms and not in accordance with actual wants. Such also was the case in the twelve Achaean towns and in the seven Frisian maritime communities; for as soon as one disappeared, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... dry grass was burning in a hundred places. The herd, sweeping on, was snorting its terror, yielding absolutely to the blind instinct of flight. And steadily the thunderous murmuring sound from the hoof-smitten earth rose and swelled. Closer and closer they came. Terry could distinguish ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... usual small boy's instinct of destruction, he once sallied out down to the "karsey" (causeway) to spear frogs with a weapon made by his brother. It was a sharpened nail in the end of a broomstick. Stepping on a log and making a stab at a "pull paddock," he slipped and fell head foremost ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... the other Clemenses claim that they have made the examination and that it stood the test. Therefore I have always taken for granted that I did help Charles out of his troubles, by ancestral proxy. My instincts have persuaded me, too. Whenever we have a strong and persistent and ineradicable instinct, we may be sure that it is not original with us, but inherited—inherited from away back, and hardened and perfected by the petrifying influence of time. Now I have been always and unchangingly bitter ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... accompanied by such a relapse into unbridled savageness. If therefore the propensity of a young poetical mind to remove its object to a wonderful distance has had an influence on the style in which Henry the Sixth and Richard the Third are conceived, Shakspeare has been rightly guided by his instinct. As it is peculiar to the heroic poem to paint the races of men in times past as colossal in strength of body and resolution, so in these plays, the voices of a Talbot, a Warwick, a Clifford, and others, so ring on our ear that we imagine we hear the clanging ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... period. It is due to them that the Romans of the day are living figures to us, and that Cicero, in spite of, or rather in virtue of his frailties, is intensely human and sympathetic. The letters to Atticus abound in the frankest self-revelation, though even in the presence of his confessor his instinct as a pleader makes him try to justify himself. The historical value of the letters, therefore, completely transcends that of Cicero's other works. It is true that these are full of information. Thus we learn much from the de ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... This may have been partly due to the aristocratic spirit of at least idealised feudalism, which gave the king no semi-divine character, but merely a human primacy inter pares; partly also to the literary instinct of the Middle Ages, which had discovered that the "biggest" personage of a story is by no means that one who is most interesting. In Arthur's very first literary appearance, the Nennius passage, his personal prowess is specially dwelt upon: and in those parts of the Merlin ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... upon Van Cleft, who dropped limply into a chair, his eyes dark with terror. The psychological ruse had won. Selfish cowardice, which temporarily threatened to ruin his campaign, now gave way to the instinct of a ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... instinct for her art, disfigured though her later writings are by what Madame de Stael called her triste utilite. Her first story is her most artistic production. Castle Rackrent is simply a pleasant satire upon the illiterate and improvident ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... little with political affairs; in the first place, because her doing so would have given offence to Napoleon; and next, because her natural frivolity led her to give a preference to lighter pursuits. But I may safely affirm that she was endowed with an instinct so perfect as seldom to be deceived respecting the good or evil tendency of any measure which Napoleon engaged in; and I remember she told me that when informed of the intention of the Emperor to bestow the throne of Spain on Joseph, she was seized with a feeling of indescribable ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... not the full greatness of his own enterprise. He underrated the vastness and the subtlety of nature. He overrated his own appliances to bring it under his command. He had not that incommunicable genius and instinct of the investigator which in such men as Faraday close hand to hand with phenomena. His weapons and instruments wanted precision; they were powerful up to a certain point, but they had the clumsiness ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... America with my mother, neither of us dreaming that she would settle down and give me an Englishman for a stepfather. As for Phil, she has no memories outside her native land—except early ones of Paris—and, though she has a natural instinct for the preservation of her young life, I don't doubt that every motion of the big boat in the night made her realize how infinitely more decorous it would be to drown on the "Batavier 4" than in a newfangled motor thing on an ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... was attacked in its march, and charged by a numerous body of Skipetars. Its destruction seemed imminent, but instinct suddenly revealed to the ignorant mountaineers the one manoeuvre which might save them. They formed a square, placing old men, women, children, and cattle in the midst, and, protected by this military formation, entered Parga in full ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... may be that one grows too critical as the years go on and possesses too little healthy instinct. And I consider instinct the best guarantee of ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... priests riding roughshod over a mass of herdsmen, cultivators and artisans. These ruling castes are imbued with pride of colour. The Aryans' fair complexions differentiated them from the coal-black aborigines; varna in Sanskrit means "caste" and "colour". Their aesthetic instinct finds expression in a passionate love of poetry, and a tangible object in the tribal chiefs. Loyalty is a religion which is almost proof against its ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... good taste. We then rose with an English bow, placing the hand on the heart while saying adieu, and there was a complete uniformity in the ceremonial, for whatever I did, Mtesa in an instant mimicked with the instinct of a monkey. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... up and examining the cruel weapon. The sharp points of the nails were stained with blood, and morsels of skin and flesh adhered to them. Dermot felt a strong inclination to thrash the brutal mahout with the unarmed end of the bamboo, but, restraining himself, he turned to the elephant. With the instinct of its kind it was scraping a little pile of dust together with its toes, snuffing it up in its trunk and blowing it on the bleeding ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... his short life had Benjamin Blair met a girl. The ethics of sex was a thing unknown to him, but nevertheless some instinct prevented his returning the insult. Except for the red mark upon his lips, ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... become a commander, until after he becomes free. A man who is subject to his own animal desires, cannot command the animal nature of others. A muscle becomes developed by its use, an instinct or habit is strengthened in proportion as it is permitted to rule, a mental power becomes developed by practice, and the principle of will grows strong by exercise; and this is the use of temptations. To have strong passions and to ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... to-day mountaineers, they tell me, were once, nor long ago, great sailors. In instinct and habit, they were true to the old Iberian stock, to which they were as the last green leaf on a dying tree. They were of a world-conquering race, and they sailed the seas of the world, seeking profit fearlessly. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... If you mean "Calvinistic," no woman could ever be such, for Calvinism is logic, and no woman worth the name could ever live by syllogisms. Woman charms a higher faculty in us than reason, God be praised, and nothing has delighted me more in your new story than the happy instinct with which you develop this incapacity of the lovers' logic in your female characters. Go on just as you have begun, and make it appear in as many ways as you like,—that, whatever creed may be true, it is not true and never will be that ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... was some time before Nick ceased to view it as perhaps on the awkward books that, to complete his education as it were, Gabriel would wish him to converse a little with spirits formed by a like tonic discipline. Nick had an instinct, in which there was no consciousness of detriment to Nash, that the pupils, possibly even the imitators, of such a genius would be, as he mentally phrased it, something awful. He could be sure, even Gabriel himself could be sure, of his own reservations, but how could either of them be sure ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... being the bearer of my father upon all his missions of doctrine and mercy, she belonged to the clergy, and, sharing in their privileges, must have a chance before other animals of her kind. I believe this was a right instinct glad of a foolish reason. I am wiser now, and extend the hope to the rest of the horses, for I cannot believe that the God who does nothing in vain ever creates in order ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... community, society, acting with a keen instinct of self-preservation, has always punished with just severity those capital offenders against peace and good order who strike at the very foundation on ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... With sure instinct, Bong turned tail and fled with his young charges away across the grassland. The crowds, hardly knowing what they fled from, with screams and cries and blanched faces, followed the elephant's example. A moment later ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... and two shadows seemed to fall upon him from behind, one on either side. With primitive instinct a cry of terror and surprise escaped him as he made a desperate movement to wrench himself free, and for a short second he almost succeeded in dragging one hand into a pocket. Then his wrists slowly came together and the ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... movement when its necessity is not naturally indicated is as harmful as to eat a meal when it is not craved, but unquestionably it is of advantage to have the bowels move of their own accord, as the result of a natural impulse. Movements that do not come through the call of an instinct for relief are rarely satisfactory, and, though we strongly emphasize the necessity of regularity of the bowels, it is not absolutely necessary that this call should come at a certain time during each day; and though it is undoubtedly of some advantage if such is the case, yet so long as ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... Baronscourt, the seat of the Duke of Abercorn, and the way to it in the shade of young forests. There are nodding firs and feathery larches over the hills, glassing themselves in the still waters of beautiful lakes. Lonely grandeur and stately desolation reign and brood over a scene instinct with peasant life and peasant labor some years ago. The Duke of Abercorn was counted a model landlord. His published utterances were genial, such as a good landlord, father and protector of his people would utter. Some ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... stable, and, as if by a mutual instinct, the two men walked on till they stood in ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the rumbling ambulances roll in but among their human freight is some poor wretch snoring into unconsciousness or in the throes of epileptiform convulsions. Custom has sharpened our clinical instinct, and where, in civil life, we would look for meningitis, now we only write cerebral malaria, and search the senseless soldier's pay-book for the name that we may put upon the "dangerous list." As this name is flashed 12,000 miles to England, I sometimes ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... on my memory. He was a sedate young fellow, with a gift of dry humour, now and then expressed in quaint remarks, a gentleman in every instinct, much given to reading and reflecting. When he said anything, he meant it, and this remark of his struck me more than the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... wrought fiction to produce the impression of reality, so that his Plague in London was quoted by medical men as an authentic narrative, and his Life of a Cavalier recommended by Lord Chatham as an historical authority, is certainly worth an analysis. With him, undoubtedly, it was an instinct. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... mathematician, who arrived at his conclusion by laborious and careful fluxionary calculation. To his surprise, and to the surprise of the world, such lines and such a building were found in the common bee cell. Now I hold that the same Creator who gave to the bee the mathematical instinct could endow man with the instinct of speech. Even to animal instinct we find a certain variation and permitted latitude in what is called adaptive instinct. So in man we find this same instinct of adaptation ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... Overcoming a slight instinct of repulsion, Mrs. Wade returned, "You can speak to me here; no one will interrupt you—unless I call them," she added with ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... opportunity to grip them both in the fingers of disgrace, and make instant mock of all their plans. In spite of every effort, every lurking hope, some way I could not rid myself of the thought that Beaucaire—either through sheer neglect, or some instinct of bitter hatred—had failed to meet the requirements of his duty. Even as I sat there, struggling vainly against this suspicion, the Judge himself came forth upon the lower deck, and began pacing back and forth restlessly beside the ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... no sense heralds of the new. Amid a labyrinth of ruins they had no clue to guide their footsteps, in which the peoples of the world were told to follow. Only true political vision, breadth of judgment, thorough mastery of the elements of the situation, an instinct for discerning central issues, genuine concern for high principles of governance, and the rare moral courage that disregards popularity as a mainspring of action—could have fitted any set of legislators to tackle ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... was, that in so far as she had ever felt real sentiment for anybody, she felt it for Tom Fairing of the Royal Fusileers. It was not love she felt in the old, in the big, in the noble sense, but it had behind it selection and instinct ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... woman's instinct told her that it was not likely Ninitta would put any great distance between herself and the sculptor. The model could have but few acquaintances in the city, and as she would need support it seemed probable she might try posing for some of the artists. As this thought crossed her ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... Of late, some instinct told her that he had been forcing the pace; and as she turned to him, she felt certain that he had just received some news which had given him great pleasure, and she felt certain also that it was news of which he ought rather ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... them, and they form excellent hiding-places for their nests, where they are tolerably secure from the attacks of their numerous enemies. I had often, when in the tropics, to notice the great sagacity or instinct of the small birds in choosing places for their nests. So many animals—monkeys, wild-cats, raccoons, opossums, and tree-rats—are constantly prowling about, looking out for eggs and young birds, that, unless ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... home-circle—once to convey a budding flower from the earth-home to the skies, and again like a lightning-stroke laying young manhood low in a moment. The instinct within him, stronger than doubt, turned his thought in those dark hours toward God. The ashes of the earthly hopes that had perished in the fire of fierce calamity, and the tears of a grief unspeakable, fertilized and watered the seed of faith which was surely in his heart. The hot furnace-fire ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... influence of no poet are the famous lines of Spenser's great nineteenth-century rival so applicable as to Spenser's own. The enchanted boat, angel-guided, floating on away, afar, without conscious purpose, but simply obeying the instinct of sweet poetry, is not an extravagant symbol for the mind of a reader of Spenser. If such readers want "Criticisms of Life" first of all, they must go elsewhere, though they will find them amply given, subject to the limitations of the poetical ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and then feel genuine surprise that the other person concerned should be pained. He was not inconsiderate. Those who lived with him never heard from him a rough or unkind word. But his dramatic instinct was uncontrollable and had to be expressed. The Archdeacon read the book, and was naturally furious. If he could have been in any way convinced of his errors, which may be doubted, to publish an account of ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... element" (op. cit., p. 51), it became the genius or spirit that possesses a man and shapes his conduct and regulates his behaviour. It was in fact the expression of a crude attempt on the part of the early psychologists of Iran to explain the working of the instinct ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Then, as if some instinct had accused her of unmaidenly presumption, a flush, that was like the rosy dawn upon the eastern sky, suffused her fair face, neck, ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... fulfilling a highest duty when they choose a profession or a calling they believe the best for their children, but against which the whole nature of the boy revolts, and for which they have no natural ability. If instinct and heart ask for a blacksmithing trade, be a blacksmith; if for carpentry, be a carpenter; if for the medical profession, be a doctor; if for music, be a musician. There is nothing like filling your place in the labor of this world successfully. If you cannot fill a higher position acceptably ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... to Gideon's explanations I was at the same time meditating upon this dark and fearful glen, and I reflected that the instinct which attracts the brutes into such retreats as these, far from the light of heaven, away from everything bright and cheerful, must partake of the nature of remorse. Those animals which love the open sunshine—the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... or the principle of power for its own sake, to which he had been a servant, could not bear to acknowledge him as its master. His intellect was just great enough (as his birth was small enough) to render it jealous of him under that aspect. There is an instinct in Toryism which renders pure intellect intolerable to it, except in some inferior or mechanical shape, or in the flattery of voluntary servitude. But, by a like instinct, it is not so jealous of military renown. It is glad of the doubtful amount of intellect in military genius, ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... But the instinct of modesty prevailed over love. "No," cried she, as she struggled out of his arms, trembling with excitement—"no, Feodor, it is no hour of happiness in which my honor and good name are to be buried—no hour of happiness when scandal ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... cottage is worn away with his hob-nailed footsteps, scuffling over it from the reign of the first Plantagenet to that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our restless countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them tend always towards "fresh woods and pastures new." Rather than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering on a village-green, toiling in hereditary fields, listening to the parson's drone lengthened through centuries in the gray Norman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... live, But live to die; and, living, see no thing 110 To make death hateful, save an innate clinging, A loathsome, and yet all invincible Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I Despise myself, yet cannot overcome— And so I live. Would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... darling could not escape. Aided by the villain with whom he had been so friendly, he might destroy my happiness for ever. And so, unthinkingly, I allowed the mare to carry me whither she would. It did not matter, however. By a strange instinct, which I am sure some animals possess, she seemed to divine the road I wanted to go, ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... the Fatherland," and amongst the group which surrounded it. They were men in red shirts, with a scarf round the body, a cloak over the shoulders, trousers thrust into high boots, and broad-leaved plumed hats. But what faces these were! How instinct with purpose and determination! Look at the well-known portrait of Orsini, the man who threw bombs at Napoleon III.; in him you have the typical Italian cast of countenance often seen in the men who had risen against the tyranny in Church and ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... intention of taking them back again. Be this as it may, these tardy claims, which were peremptorily rejected, created an extreme coolness between Napoleon and Pius VII. The public did not immediately perceive it, but there is in the public an instinct of reason which the most able politicians never can impose upon; and all eyes were opened when it was known that the Pope, after having crowned Napoleon as Emperor of France, refused to crown him as sovereign of the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... therefore, to say to a Government that it acts unjustly in coercing opinion, unless it is shown that freedom of opinion is a principle of such overmastering social utility as to render other considerations negligible. Socrates had a true instinct in taking the line that freedom is ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... play, we must wonder what he might have done had he outlived his wretched youth and become a man. Here and there his work is remarkable for its splendid imagination, for the stateliness of its verse, and for its rare bits of poetic beauty; but in dramatic instinct, in wide knowledge of human life, in humor, in delineation of woman's character, in the delicate fancy which presents an Ariel as perfectly as a Macbeth,—in a word, in all that makes a dramatic genius, Shakespeare stands alone. Marlowe simply prepared the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... secondary place. Where they differed from the new efficiency was in method, for they believed efficiency would be attained if only the human instincts or "passions" were given free play, while the efficiency engineers of today trust less to unguided instinct and more to "scientific management" ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... women, if they are permitted to vote, will neglect the home, and that, if the professions are opened to them, they will find these too absorbingly attractive. Much weight should, however, be given to the great power of the domestic instinct implanted in the nature of woman. In the States where women vote and are eligible for political offices, there are fewer unmarried women in proportion to the population than in States where they have ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... destroyed one of the most beautiful Italian faces which a woman ever dreamed of in all its delicate proportions. This face, not unlike the type which Girodet has given to the dying young Turk, in the "Revolt at Cairo," was instinct with that melancholy by which all women are more ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... in spite of wind and storm, in spite of the greedy maw of old father Time, to be hovering beneath the sun and moon and all the stars of the firmament, where even the unreasoning birds of heaven, attracted by noble instinct, chant their seraphic music, and angels with tails hold their most holy councils? Don't you see? And, while monarchs and potentates become a prey to moths and worms, to have the honor of receiving visits from the royal bird of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... compels the choosing and arranging, in due proportions for harmony, of clear, sharp glowing colours in some definite material, from a full and lavish range of existing samples. It is true that here and there a painter will arise who has by nature that kind of instinct or memory, or whatever it is, that seems to feel harmonies beforehand, note by note, and add them to one another with infallible accuracy; but very few possess this, and for those who lack I am urging this training. For it is a ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... support in certain of the facts of this area. It seems to us that the feeling with which incest is regarded is an example of a feeling or sentiment engendered in each generation by law and tradition, rather than a spontaneous reaction of individuals, based on some special instinct or innate tendency. The occurrence of incest between brothers and sisters, and the strong feeling of the Sea Dayaks against incest between nephew and aunt (who often are members of distinct communities), are facts which seem to us fatal to ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... of restraining cattle or horses from stampeding—they did it from the instinct of self-preservation, for, whilst running with the wind, its force of driving cold was proportionately lessened, and some loss of heat was made good by the exertion of running, which they had to keep up till in safe shelter ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... no answer. I am still in my pocket-handkerchief, and he might be gone, but that I hear his quick, angry breathing, and know, by instinct, that he is standing over me, looking like a handsome thunder-cloud. I dare not look up at him, lest another mad cachinnation, such as sometimes overtakes one for the punishment of one's sins in church, should again lay violent ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... 'Rivers of blood flowing between us' is morbid nonsense. Forgive me that I speak strongly,—I feel strongly. My soul is in my words. I felt towards my cause as you towards yours, and had I not acted as I have, you would be the first to think me a craven. But what has all this to do with the sacred instinct, the pure, unbounded love which compels me to ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... to reach Bazeilles by those broad levels that border the Meuse. She was not very clear about it in her mind, however, and continued to hasten onward in obedience to that blind instinct which had originally imparted to her its impulse. She had not gone far before she found herself standing and gazing in dismay at a miniature ocean which barred her further progress in that direction. It was the inundated fields, the low-lying ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... house and indulged her maternal instinct by watching nurse as she undressed the child, put her in a warm bath, gave her some hot elderberry wine and water, laid her in her little bed, and with many kisses bade her go to sleep and forget all about everything till tea-time. And the keen relish with which she followed all these nursery ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... that he had been taken in by a rogue. I knew too, well enough, that my mother's hasty and earnest Amen to this discourse was an equally reliable token of her knowledge that my father sorely needed defending, and some instinct made me aware also that my father knew that this was so. That he knew that it was that tender generosity towards one's beloved, in which so many of her sex so far exceeds ours, and not an intellectual conviction of his wisdom, which ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... partially unreliable, and has little power apart from the reinforcement of higher thoughts to carry itself consistently through life—that our Lord is here speaking about; but it is a mercifulness which is more than an instinct, more than a sentiment, more than the natural answer of the human heart to the sight of compassion and distress, which is, in fact, the product of all that has preceded it in this linked chain ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... her music, she became a statue. She was too timid to play before artists; her only master had been her father. Once more he had heard the piano as he returned unexpectedly, and almost caught her; he saw her at the instrument, but some instinct must have warned her that she was being spied upon. She stopped in the middle of a phrase from a Mendelssohn song, and even to his prejudiced ears her touch had seemed commonplace. Yet he loved her all the more despite her ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... social instinct adds strength to business persuasion—Secret of the ability to use tactful and vivid words in business—Essential training necessary to the nice use of words—Business success depends upon nicety and tact more than on any quality of ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... question without looking up, saw enough to satisfy her that Bratish was making a fool of her husband, and, the moment his back was turned, expressed her astonishment that a man of sense—meaning me—could be so easily imposed upon. So much for the instinct of a woman; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... departing form of their escort, as though a sudden and shattering doubt of his identity had paralysed them, until some contrary wind of doctrine blew them into action again, and they hurled themselves upon his trail, filled with the single intention to rush between his legs. Nothing but that instinct of self-preservation that operates independent of the reason, preserved Larry from frequent and violent overthrow. His head was in the clouds; he was abandoning himself to dreams, with the very same headlong enthusiasm that ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... a dribble of water from a brook on the north shore. Alcatraz snorted in disgust at his folly. What had disturbed them was exactly what had disturbed him—thirst. He controlled his own desire for water, however, and followed an instinct that made him draw back and wait until all the rest—the oldest stallion and the youngest colt—had waded in and plunged their noses deep in the water. Then he went to the lake edge a little apart from the rest and drank with his ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... curious, terrible kind of blood-lust—to kill, not once, but as many times as possible in the same hunt; to be content not with one death, but to slay and slay until the whole herd is destroyed. It is the instinct that makes a little weasel kill all the chickens in a coop, when one was all it could possibly carry away, and that will cause a wolf to leap from sheep to sheep in a fold until every one is dead. Nahara didn't get a chance to kill every day; so when the opportunity ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... with relaxed under-jaws and faces gloomy, expressionless—so long bent over looms, they had taken on the very looks of them—the shapes of them, moving, walking, working, mechanically. Women, smileless, and so tired and numbed that they had forgotten the strongest instinct of humanity—the romance of sex; for many of them wore the dirty, chopped-off jackets of men, their slouched black hats, their coarse shoes, and talked even in the vulgar, hard irony of the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... to himself and of feeling the sharp, clean impact of the club head upon a ball that flew a surprising distance. His obedient young muscles soon conformed to the few master laws of the game. He kept down, followed through and forebore, against all human instinct, to ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... sweet mystery that rustled in every wood, following the call of the winds and the birds, or wandering alone where the spirit moved him, who never studied nature consciously, but only loved it, and who found out many of these Ways long ago, guided solely by a boy's instinct. ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... it is possible to satisfy him at the table with food that differs from that of the rest of the family. Habits of eating plain food should be established in childhood. Mrs. Richards says: "Habit rather than instinct guides civilized man in the choice of food." Likes or dislikes for food should not be discussed in the presence of children. Such discussions may establish distaste for a food of decided ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... but entirely conclusive. For the second time that day he was spurned, and by a friend. This time it was the deacon himself who drove him from his wife's room, whither he had betaken him with true instinct to ascertain the household intentions. The deacon seemed to be, if anything, in a worse humor than even Jack himself. The doctor had told him that afternoon that Mrs. Pratt was a very sick woman, and that, if she was to pull through at all, she must be kept from all worriment in an atmosphere which ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... fill the position assigned to him. There must be long arduous drills in a dozen particulars, from bucking the line, and carrying the ball, to making a flying tackle, or punting. Then the intricate system of signals must be thoroughly learned, so that instinct takes the place of reason in the carrying ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... to one's outlay either for himself or for others; in the latter use, they are somewhat less harsh and reproachful terms than niggardly. The close man holds like a vise all that he gets. Near and nigh are provincial words of similar import. The rapacious have the robber instinct, and put it in practise in some form, as far as they dare. The avaricious and rapacious are ready to reach out for gain; the parsimonious, miserly, and niggardly prefer the safer and less ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... still better,' said Jack drily. Already he had in his own mind pronounced a final verdict upon Mr. Sawyer, already he had begun to tell himself what a fool he had been for having anything more to do with him, but yet, with the British instinct of giving an accused man a fair chance, he waited till ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... wrathful he might have been touched at the joyful alacrity with which she sprang to meet him. It had needed no call to bring her to his side; some instinct seemed to have warned her of his coming, and she had caught sight of him while still a long way off and hastened towards him as he approached. She uttered a little cry of joy as her eyes fell upon ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... wheeled round. Some instinct must have warned him of my presence, for the silence was gravelike save for the soft splash of the rain without. As he turned the lightning blazed ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... from particular types, how do we look upon Theosophy as a power in Ethics? We find the elimination of the selfish instinct insisted upon as necessary for the progress of the Ego through its material envelope to a full and complete knowledge of its higher self; we find the doctrine of Brotherhood put forward in its noblest aspects; we find as a necessary corollary that responsibility ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... the time, forgot the universal distress, and sympathized with it. But the thermometer fell rapidly as he caught the expression which the face of his employer wore. Mr. Lindsay, of the house of Lindsay & Co., was usually a reserved, silent man—in business almost a machine, honest both from instinct and habit, and proud, in his quiet way, of his position and his stainless name. He had a wife and daughter, and therefore was presumed to have affections; but those whom he met in the market never thought of him, save as the systematic merchant. Well as Monroe knew him, being his confidential ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... just as lief stay here ALONE. I wouldn't have called anyway, don't you see, only I had a day off,—and—and—I wanted to talk with my niece on family matters." He did not say that he had received a somewhat distressful letter from her asking him to come; a new instinct ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... With the instinct and movements of the rat he had been compared to, Leyden flashed around as if to seek an outlet that need not be won over such a barrier as Houten. He sprang across the deck, and a cry of jubilation burst from his lips. There was no boat there; no foes to bar his way except the river. But at ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... several places; two are apparently playing on musical instruments. We recall that at Palenque, the roof of some of the temples bears a curious two-storied work, erected apparently for ornamental purposes. The same instinct reappears in this building. At regular intervals along the front they carried the wall above the cornice, forming thirteen turret-like elevations ten feet wide, and seventeen feet high. These turrets were also loaded with ornaments. Another curious feature about this building is, that ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... the pronouncement of the common formula, that children have an "instinct" for destruction. Nor are they familiar with the other axiom which contradicts this: That the instinct of "property," in other words, selfishness, is strongly developed in them. On the contrary, the child has merely the overpowering instinct to "grow," ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori |
