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Instinct   Listen
verb
Instinct  v. t.  To impress, as an animating power, or instinct. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Instinct" Quotes from Famous Books



... it came to him. He favoured no one—not even when the company sloven pulled the company cricket-match out of the fire with an unexpected forty-three at the last moment. There was very little getting round him, for he seemed to know by instinct exactly when and where to head off a malingerer; but he did not forget that the difference between a dazed and sulky junior of the upper school and a bewildered, browbeaten lump of a private fresh from the depot was very small indeed. The sergeants, seeing these things, told him ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... senses, stared at the two immobile figures, her eyes became focussed on the face of the woman standing to Varick's right. There was a coarse beauty in the mask-like-looking countenance, but it was a beauty now instinct with a kind of stark ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... The people's instinct was at the same time right and wrong. France had yet many evil days to go through and cruel trials to endure; she was, however, to be saved at last; Charles VI. was to be followed by Charles VII. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... known in his day as a politician than as a poet, and chiefly in ours as the subject of one of Izaak Walton's biographies. Something of artistic instinct, rather than finish, is evident in his verses. Here is the best and the best-known of the few poems ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... must gain her bread, And went with scorn and sorrow to her bed. Jane was a servant fitted for her place, Experienced, cunning, fraudful, selfish, base; Skill'd in those mean humiliating arts That make their way to proud and selfish hearts: By instinct taught, she felt an awe, a fear, For Jesse's upright, simple character; Whom with gross flattery she awhile assail'd, And then beheld with hatred when it fail'd; Yet, trying still upon her mind for hold, She all the secrets ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... novelists whose pages have a message for the world. True, the term will not stretch thus far. But it is condescension that has made the trouble, as I shall try to prove; for all of us, even the tense ones, do patronize that creative instinct playing upon life as it is which in all times and everywhere is the very essence ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... out the circumstances which seem to have led to the acceptance of such a wild belief by the dreamy and marvel loving Hindi. The south of India swarms with monkeys of curious intelligence and rare physical powers. Their wonderful instinct for organization, their attachment to particular localities, their occasional journeys in large numbers over mountains and across rivers, their obstinate assertion of supposed rights, and the ridiculous caricature which they exhibit of all that is animal and emotional in ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... friends came, a whole twenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in the laboratory, and discussed me as if I was a kind of discovery; and some of them said it was wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest exhibition of instinct they could call to mind; but the master said, with vehemence, "It's far above instinct; it's REASON, and many a man, privileged to be saved and go with you and me to a better world by right of its ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... audience, and "The Shadow of the Glen" which is not liked by an English audience is always liked in Ireland, though it is disliked there in theory.' Since then 'The Riders to the Sea' has grown into great popularity in Dublin, partly because with the tactical instinct of an Irish mob, the demonstrators against 'The Playboy' both in the press and in the theatre, where it began the evening, selected it for applause. It is now what Shelley's 'Cloud' was for many years, a comfort to those who do ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats

... instinct which I believe we all have, paralyzed me. Then I tried to listen. There was most certainly a sound in the next room—a faint cry, quickly smothered—a very human cry. All the stories I had ever heard of supposed ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... grease and torn under the arms, aprons in rags, worn stockings in shoes that were out at heel. She allowed the cooking, the smoke, the coal, the wax, to soil her hands and face and simply wiped them as she would after dusting. Formerly she had had the one coquettish and luxurious instinct of poor women, a love for clean linen. No one in the house had fresher caps than she. Her simple little collars were always of that snowy whiteness that lights up the skin so prettily and makes the whole person clean. Now she wore frayed, dirty caps which looked as if she had slept in them. She went ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... she was very near, and Adam rose from the stone wall. It happened that just as he walked forward, Dinah had paused and turned round to look back at the village—who does not pause and look back in mounting a hill? Adam was glad, for, with the fine instinct of a lover, he felt that it would be best for her to hear his voice before she saw him. He came within three paces of her and then said, "Dinah!" She started without looking round, as if she connected the sound with no place. "Dinah!" Adam said again. He knew quite well what ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... a certain air and polish about her strain, however, like that in the vivacious conversation of a well-bred lady of the world, that commands respect. Her maternal instinct, also, is very strong, and that simple structure of dead twigs and dry grass is the center of much anxious solicitude. Not long since, while strolling through the woods, my attention was attracted to a small densely grown swamp, hedged in with eglantine, brambles, and the everlasting ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... battles of the Revolutionary party without reward. But when Napoleon appeared among them, their spirits rose as though by magic, for the young commander knew how to appeal to their imagination and to awaken their fighting instinct. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... as he expected to make a mouthful of Tom, he missed his aim, and his jaws met with a crack which sounded like the report of a hundred muskets. Tom gave a shriek, for he thought—as well he might—that his last hour had come; but, still more from instinct than from any hope of escape, he swam on, and was very much surprised to find himself alongside the ship. In fact, when he was hauled on deck, it was some time, I was told, before he could be persuaded that he hadn't lost both his ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... Hesperides, which you have mentioned, they not infrequently attack the caravans, peck the eyes out of the camels, and are sometimes even known to carry off a man, a whole man, vainly struggling in their inexorable talons. There is no sparrowless south. But as for the goldfinches returning—it is the instinct of us bipeds to return. Plumed and plumeless, we all return to something, what though we may have registered the most solemn vows ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... sovereignty over them." And he thus sums up his own conviction. "He may be called a saint who best teaches us to keep our lives pure; he a poet whose insight dims that of his fellow-men. He is no less than this, though guided by an instinct no higher than that of the bat; no more, though inspired by God. All gifts are from God, and no multiplying of gifts can convert the creature into the Creator. Between Him who created goodness, and made it binding on the conscience of man: and him who ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... all my actions—an unsurmountable instinct—a fatality, that will for ever render me the most miserable of human beings; and yet you, even you, my dear Miss Woodley, will not ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... which all creation groans, and produced in different minds the powerful retort of Butler's Analogy, and the biting sarcasm of Voltaire's Candide. Pope, accepting the doctrine without any perception of these difficulties, unintentionally fell into sheer pantheism. He was not yielding to the logical instinct which carries out a theory to its legitimate development; but obeying the imaginative impulse which cannot stop to listen to the usual qualifications and safeguards of the orthodox reasoner. The best passages in the essay are those in which ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... fowling-piece, as he fired several times, reverberated strangely among the rocks, making the birds fly to and fro in alarm at the unusual sound. Never before perhaps had fire-arms been discharged in that romantic region, but instinct told them that it boded them no good. In a short time he returned with several pigeons and a couple of parroquets. It seemed almost a sin to deprive such beautiful birds of their plumage; but Potto Jumbo, influenced by no such notions, quickly had them plucked and prepared for roasting. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... myself must you have felt at his conduct! indignant—amazed—ashamed! Our first prepossession against him was instinct—he conquered it by pains indefatigable to win us, and he succeeded astonishingly, for we became partial to him almost to fondness. The part he now acts against England may be justified, perhaps, by the spirit of revenge ; but the part he submits to perform of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... acquaintance of Dame Caterina lives in the same house, and moreover, on the same floor as Capuzzi. This acquaintance, the widow of a wine-dealer, has a daughter whom my little Margaret often goes to see. Now girls have a special instinct for finding out their fellows, and so it came about that Rose—that's the name of the wine-dealer's daughter—and Margaret soon discovered in the living-room a small vent-hole, leading into a dark closet that adjoins Marianna's apartment. Marianna had been by ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... people who robbed the community of its perquisites in this respect would be looked upon as "enemies of the people," and their joint life would begin under a social ban which it would cost much subsequent hospitality to remove. The dramatic instinct to which the life of towns is necessarily unfavourable, is kept alive in the country by the smallness of the stage and the fewness of the actors. A village is an organism, conscious of its several parts, as a town ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... is an error of yours; it was a fault on the wrong side. There is no credit to a mother in loving her children, for she cannot help it. It is a natural instinct implanted in the mother's heart by the Almighty, and in following this instinct we do no more than the beasts of the field. The duty of a mother is to check that feeling as far as it interferes with the happiness and well-doing of her children, and it is her duty ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... We say, whether the days of Purim were instituted to be holidays or not, yet there was some more than ordinary warrant for them, because Mordecai, by whose advice and direction they were appointed to be kept, was a prophet by the instinct and revelation of the Spirit, Esth. iv. 13. Non multum fortasse aberraverimus, saith Hospinian,(848) si dicamus hoc a Mordochcaeo et Hesthera, ex peculiari Spiritus ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... did no harm inside, she hurried off to help Mr. Brown, who might not know where things were. But he had roughed it so long, that he was the man for emergencies, and seemed to lay his hand on whatever was needed, by a sort of instinct. Finding that the hose was too short to reach the upper part of the roof, he was on the roof in a jiffy with two pails of water, and quenched the most dangerous spots before ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... have apprehended and brooded upon, and which shine with clear and steady light in our souls. As creatures rise in the scale of being the dominant factor in life changes. In vegetation it may be appetite; instinct in bird and beast for man a life at once passionate and intellectual; but the greater beings, the stars and planets, must wheel in the heavens under the guidance of inexorable and inflexible law. Now the State is higher in the scale of being than the ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell

... scientists have long been propounding theories which are sometimes amusing. Strangely enough they have nearly all explained that coral-polypes aggregate themselves in the forms of atolls and barrier-reefs by a mysterious "instinct," mediocrity's only term for screening its ignorance, and which is also given as the cause for their secreting lime. Flinders says that they form a great protecting reef in order that they may be protected by its shelter, and ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... accident. But the Indians, according to their custom, had taken so much precaution to hide their trail, that they found themselves exceedingly perplexed to keep it, and they were obliged to put forth all the acquirement and instinct of woodsmen not to find themselves every moment at fault in regard to their course. The rear Indians of the file had covered their foot prints with leaves. They often turned off at right angles; and whenever they came to a branch, walked in the water for some ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... on a thorn branch; a kingfisher gleaming with turquoise hues, poised ready for a dive upon a froth-lapped stone. He was no cultured critic, but he knew the ways of the wild creatures and saw that she had talent, for her representations of them were instinct with life. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... to make something, is the instinct of divinity in humanity, the power that crowns man ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... after a fashion. Then she began to look at the man who was lying in the bottom of the boat. Although he was very pale and weak he looked contentedly at the sky and the fleecy clouds, and when his eyes caught hers he smiled bashfully. And the instinct then moved her, which lies in every proper feminine heart, however dormantly, ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... population has any such idea. We have seen a financial panic in one country send whole army corps of aliens kiting back to the lands whose allegiance they forswore. What would they or their likes do in time of real stress, since no instinct in their bodies or their souls would call them to stand by till ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... caused the shells to fly in splinters; the intestines were then torn out and handed to the Indian women, whose duty it was to remove from them the precious fat, after which the carcasses were left to the vultures and fisher-eagles, which flocked from afar to the scene of carnage with that unerring instinct which has so often been commented on by travellers, but ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... allow the camels to feed well, for there will now be little or no herbage for them until we arrive at Sockna, a distance of some six days. Respecting all these delays, I can say with the most heartfelt sincerity, "Here is the patience of (travellers)." The poor slaves know by instinct the encampment of the Kafer to be a friendly one, notwithstanding the Moors and Arabs persist ungenerously in teaching these poor things to call me kafer, or infidel, and to look upon me with a species ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... was such a stage, but much more likely the home was a communal residence, where the man-herd, the group, the clan, the Family in the larger sense dwelt. Only a large group would be safe, and the strong social instinct, the herd feeling, was the basis of the home. Here the men and women dwelt in a promiscuity that through the ages went through an evolution which finally became the father-controlled monogamy of to-day. Here the women lived; here they span, sewed, ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... of all who take life as a gay adventure, who defy all efforts to turn life into a social, economic, or moral abstraction. Is it therefore just that the critics who, by some dark instinct, unerringly pick out the exact opposite of any creator's real virtues as his chief characteristics, should praise him as an idealistic reformer? An "ideal" state of society was the last thing Aristophanes desired. He wished, certainly, to eliminate inhumanities and ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... take us; many more people can take machines to pieces than can put them together again. Mr. Grant Allen used to call our current prohibitions Taboos. Well, the fact is, in these matters there is something that is probably an instinct, a deeply felt necessity for Taboos. We know perhaps that our Taboos were not devised on absolutely reasonable grounds, but we are afraid of just how many may not collapse before a purely reasonable ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... makes sin so horrible and damnable a thing in our eyes, as when we see there is nothing can save us from it but the infinite grace of God? Further, there seems, if I may so term it, to be a kind of natural instinct in the new creature to seek after the grace of God; for so saith the Word, 'They that are after the flesh, do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit' (Rom 8:5). The child by nature nuzzles in its mother's bosom for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... With the vague instinct of abandoned children who seek to attach themselves to some one or some thing, Jeanne clung to Madame Desvarennes, who, ready to protect, and longing for maternity, took the child in her arms. The gardener's wife acted as guide during her ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... body, the Elephant is superior in intelligence to all animals, except the dog and man. He is said by naturalists to have a very fine brain, considering that he is only a beast. His instinct seems to rise on some occasions almost to the level of our practical reasoning, and the stories which are told of his ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... her, a little startled. What instinct, he wondered, had led her to place her finger upon the one poison spot in ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a sudden movement, as of chairs pushed hastily aside, and then a mysterious unaccountable noise—heavy, sudden; and then a slight movement as of chairs again; and then a profound stillness. Ellinor leaned her head against the side of the window to listen more intently, for some mysterious instinct made her sick and faint. No sound—no noise. Only by-and-by she heard, what we have all heard at such times of intent listening, the beating of the pulses of her heart, and then the whirling rush of blood through her head. How long did this last? She never knew. By-and-by she heard her father's ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell

... more or less service in securing united action against the savages in Philip's War. The union was, however, of little immediate service, useful rather as an example for the far future. Its failure was due partly to the distance of the colonies apart, and to the strength of the instinct for local self-government, a distinguishing political trait of New England till our day. Its main weakness, however, was the overbearing power and manner of Massachusetts, especially after her assumption of Maine in 1652. In 1653 the Plymouth, ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... greatest honor, and most important fact of all, is the unanimous firmness of the common soldiers and common sailors. To the last man, so far as known, they have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose commands, but an hour before, they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic instinct of the plain people. They understand, without an argument, that the destroying of the government which was made by Washington means ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... of the leading women in the American literature of the century. Miss Woolson spent the latter years of her life in Europe, changing her residence frequently. Gracefully impulsive and independent, she had a gypsy instinct for the roving life of liberty out-of-doors; yet in character and demeanor she was so serenely poised, so self-contained, with such inviolable reserve and dignity, that she was, as Stedman put it, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... Her woman's instinct assured her that the expression and the words arose from a heart ignorant of the quality of love, and ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... steaming bowl, and proceeded to take off her friend's shoes and substitute moccasin slippers. It was thus that she and Pamela had mothered one another at Somerville eighteen years ago, and ever since. They had the maternal instinct, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... to aureate, flashing penumbra it was instinct with and poured forth power—power vast ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... the moment I can't say; for with that selfish instinct of self-preservation which makes a man in the instant of danger grasp anything, regardless of what his comrades in distress might be doing, I grappled hold of one of the oars and the pork breaker, besides the stern-sheet grating, ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... judicial murders and forcible assassinations, of famines produced by iniquitous taxation, and of every kind of diabolical tyranny, Ferdinand contrived to hold his own, in the teeth of a rebellious baronage or a maddened population. His political sagacity amounted almost to a prophetic instinct in the last years of his life, when he became aware that the old order was breaking up in Italy, and had cause to dread that Charles VIII. of France would prove his title to the kingdom of Naples ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... every other night, too. Haven't I just told you so? Directly we strike the viaduct I come to my feet by instinct." ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... century whose famous Ode on The Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Childhood, in which he made metempsychosis his own, must still express for some minds something more than merely poetic truth. For Pythagoreanism too, like all the graver utterances of primitive Greek philosophy, is an instinct of the human mind itself, and therefore also a constant tradition in its history, which will recur; fortifying this or that soul here or there in a part at least of that old sanguine assurance about itself, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... not things. Our works are our children; our children are the pictures, books, and statues of our lives. Are we not artists in their earliest education? I say that this unknown woman, if she is not a young girl, has never been a mother but is filled with the maternal instinct; she has loved this man to form him, to develop him. It needs a feminine element in you men of law to detect these shades of motive, which too often escape you. If I had been your deputy," she said, looking straight at the procureur-general, ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... idea that instinct is a sufficient guide in so delicate and sacred and vital a matter, the comfortable superstition that babies bring their own directions with them,—these fictions have existed long enough. If a girl asks me why, since the function ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... 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 Prof. Westermarck's theory, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... both as to the want of oil for the stove and the commutation ticket for the restaurant. But she knew by instinct that McTeague had money about him, and she did not intend to let it go out of the house. She listened intently until she was sure McTeague was gone. Then she hurriedly opened her trunk and hid the money in the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... his fears gradually began to subside in a certain apathy of the imagination, which, perhaps, dulled his apprehensions and allowed the instinct of hunger to become again uppermost. He knew that the low bark tents, or wigwams, of the Indians were hung with strips of dried salmon, and his whole being was new centered upon an attempt to stealthily procure a delicious morsel. ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... Elizabeth herself. This letter was handed about in manuscript, as was so often the case in those times, and Shakespeare, in all human probability, must have seen it, detected good copy for the theatre—he had a never-failing instinct in that direction—and used it for his famous last play. Shakespeare must have met and talked with Strachey on his return from America, for recent investigations have shown that Shakespeare had many communications with the men who founded the Virginia ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... his master's call, and had regained the shore: but he could not stay quiet; he plunged in among the tall grass, and guided by instinct, he appeared to follow some invisible being which was slipping along under the surface of the water. However the water was calm; not a ripple disturbed its surface. Several times the settlers stopped on the bank, and observed it attentively. Nothing appeared. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... her desire." The whole art of love is there. Women, naturally and instinctively, seek to make themselves desirable to men, even to men whom they are supremely indifferent to, and the woman who is in love with a man, by an equally natural instinct, seeks to shape herself to the measure which individually pleases him. This tendency is not really modified by the fundamental fact that in these matters it is only the arts that Nature makes which are truly effective. It is finally by what he is that a man arouses a woman's deepest emotions ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... no gleam of poetry, no light-hearted rhythm in his soul, has yet chaotic glimpses of the sublime in his earnest, gloomy nature. He gives little promise of culture, but much of heroism. There is, too, a reaching after something grand and invisible, which is a deep religious instinct. All these qualities had the future English nation slumbering within them. Marriage was sacred, woman honored. All the members of a family were responsible for the acts of one member. The sense of obligation and of responsibility was ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... personal gratification before the common weal be enough to constitute a state criminal, then the Queen of France was one of the worst state criminals that ever afflicted a nation. The popular hatred of Marie Antoinette sprang from a sound instinct. We shall never know how much or how little truth there was in those frightful charges against her, that may still be read in a thousand pamphlets. These imputed depravities far surpass anything that John Knox ever said against Mary Stuart, or that Juvenal has recorded ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... brief observations on instinct and intelligence, Darwin brings forward evidence to show that the greater number of the emotional states, such as pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, love and hate are common to man and the higher animals. He goes on to give various examples showing that wonder and curiosity, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... those who died so tragically, and she bequeathed the entire enormous fortune, which was supposed to have served as the motive for the murder, to various charitable organisations. It is characteristic that even under such terrible conditions her motherly instinct did not forsake her altogether; in a postscript to the will she left me a considerable sum, which secures my existence whether I am ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... course of time is so visibly marked, that it is observed even by the birds of passage, and by nations who have raised their minds very little above animal instinct: there are human beings whose language does not supply them with words by which they can number five, but I have read of none, that have not names for day and night, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... of curing his friend of his degrading vice, for a true friend's instinct in all that belongs to the inner life is unerring as a dog's sense of smell; a friend knows by intuition the trouble in his friend's soul, and guesses at the cause and ponders it ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... adorned Judge Ridge's brick house in Euston, Pa. Milly naturally had other views of this treasure. Somewhere she had learned that the living room of a modern household was no longer called the "parlor," by those who knew, but the "drawing-room," and with the same unerring instinct she had discovered the ignominy of this early Victorian heritage. She did not loathe the shiny "quartered oak" dining-room pieces—her father's venture in an opulent moment—nor the dingy pine bedroom sets, nor even the worn "ingrain" carpets, ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... this over without notice. Though she had spoken to both of them, her cunning little eyes rested on Stone from the moment when she appeared in the room. She knew by instinct the man who disliked her—and she waited deliberately for Stone ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... too, will gladly add to the scanty, though accurate, knowledge of the sex-instinct and its pathology which is all that even the best medical course can compass, the facts presented by a specialist in this field. The easiest way for those parents who accept the responsibility for rational guidance of their children in matters of sex-behavior ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... was now waiting to arrest her as she entered her own home! She realized that her courage had lain in the knowledge of absolute security, for now, at the menace of discovery, her heart was paralyzed with fright and she could scarcely breathe. Instinct told her to run, but acquired self-control kept her from this madness, and, by a great effort, she continued walking quietly as before. Gradually her nerve returned. She determined, by feint, to discover whether the man were ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... haste, touched his hat slightly to Master Lowestoffe, who returned his reverence with the same negligence, and walked slowly on with his companion, while Lord Dalgarno stopped Richie Moniplies with a commanding sign, which the instinct of education compelled Moniplies, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... that of a stock or stone. He is rational, and cannot but be rational. Hence he can neither be ruled, as dead matter is ruled, by natural law; nor live, like a bird, the life of innocent impulse or instinct. He is placed, from the very first, on "the table land whence life upsprings aspiring to be immortality." He is a spirit,—responsible because he is free, and free ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... favorite argument was founded on the impropriety of the House "delegating its authority to a committee," which was asserted to be "an essential alteration of the constitution of the House of Commons." Lord North himself had too keen an instinct of propriety to deny the existence of a great evil, and contented himself with pleading for time for farther consideration; while the Attorney-general confined his objections to some details of the bill, which it would be easy to amend. Others, with too accurate a foresight, doubted ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... The poetic instinct of the German mother is rich in expression, her voice soothing and magnetic as she sways her babe to and ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... I have offered with regard to sudden rencounters let me add, that the blood already too much heated, kindleth afresh at every pass or blow. And in the tumult of the passions, in which the mere instinct of self-preservation has no inconsiderable share, the voice of reason is not heard; and therefore the law, in condescension to the infirmities of flesh and ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... can be no doubt that the Greek conception of slavery is one of the points in which their view of life runs most counter to our own. Centuries of Christianity have engendered in us the conviction, or rather, the instinct, that men are equal at least to this extent, that no one has a right explicitly to make of another a mere passive instrument of his will—that every man, in short, must be regarded as an end in himself. Yet ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... was blended with the rattle of chains and the rolling of the metal carriages in their tracks. The Genius of Railroading seemed present in the grim strength and rapidity of several machines which moved almost as if instinct with intelligence, and played with the most unyielding substances as if they were soft and pliable clay. In the midst of all the smashing of matter against matter, through the smoke and din and dust and revolution of the place, Mr. Hardy was more ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon

... passed away, and were succeeded by an intensity of hate, a vehemence of wrath, and a hot glow of indignant passion that swept away all other feelings. All the pride of her haughty spirit was roused; her soul became instinct with a desperate resolve; and mingling with these feelings there was a scorn for her enemies as beings of a baser nature, and a stubborn determination to fight them all till the ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... savages, and ruthlessly destroyed them. Now, when the smoldering strife between the French and English in the West burst into an open flame of war between the two nations, the Western tribes took the side of those whom reason and instinct taught them to ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... of the Indian girls freeing the boat, the natural instinct of the wolf apprised him of her danger; instantly springing to his loved mistress, fastening his powerful jaws in her deer skin dress, the faithful beast tumbled into the water, struggling with fear and more than common strength ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah

... question did not receive the support of Rawlins, although both he and Grant, fresh from the victory of Chattanooga, were warm friends and admirers of General Smith as a strategist. Rawlins, with unerring instinct, took strong grounds against it, for the reason, as he vigorously expressed it, that he could not see the sense of going so far, and taking so much time to find Lee with a divided army, when he could be reached within a half day's march directly ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson

... With seaman's instinct, Mascola sensed rather than saw the Richard's change of course. If he tried to make the fog he would be cut in two. If he deviated a hair's breadth at that speed he'd turn turtle. There was only one thing he ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... The full name of the builder is Sriman Nayak Manmor, who was the head of the Banjara merchants of Mirzapur. The inscription on his temple is dated 23 February, 1825, A.D. 'I suppose', remarks Cunningham, 'that the vagrant instinct of the old Banjara preferred a jungle site. No doubt he got the ground cheap; and from this vantage point he was able to supply Mirzapur with both wood and charcoal.' (A.S.R., vol. xxi, pp. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... freedom to a degree unknown to the prose-writer. And beyond this, if he wishes to be read—and a poem without readers is no more than a musical instrument without a musician—he has to consider the character of his audience. He must have all the instinct of an orator, all the intuitive knowledge of the world, as well as all the practical resource, which are required to gain command over the hearts of men, and to subdue, by the charms of eloquence, their passions, their ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... ordered two of his comrades to seize and bind him, assuring the others, that their only chance of impunity consisted in instant submission. He then ordered the men into their ranks. They obeyed. He commanded them to ground their arms. They hesitated; but the instinct of discipline, joined to their persuasion that the authority of their officer, so boldly exerted, must be supported by some forces without the gate, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... instinct which characterizes those who make their fortunes by craft, Gaubertin believed in a resemblance of nature (which was not improbable) between an old soldier and an Opera-singer. An actress, and a general of the Empire,—surely ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... vehemently that we were wrong. I called C. up from the rear for consultation. Kongoni was very positive he was right; but as we had now been walking over an hour, and camp should not have been more than three miles from where we had killed the roan, we were inclined towards my instinct. So we took the compass direction, in order to assure consistency at least, and struck off at full right angles to ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... which they take daily as a man takes his bitters, and then fall silent and think they are thinking. But the mind goes out under this regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... alleviates the acuteness of individual sufferings, by the consolation that our friends have fallen in the courageous execution of their duty. It has in its composition none of those higher feelings, but is more an instinct, and one too of a shallow and degrading nature, than any thing like a ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... wide-spread and all but universally expressed instinct of human nature. Argue about it as you like, explain it away how you choose, charge the notions of priesthood and sacrifice with exaggeration, immorality, barbarism, if you will—still the thing remains. And I believe for my part that, so far from that want ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... postillion had succeeded in putting his foot into the stirrup, but in throwing his leg over the horse's croupe, he grazed his flank sharply with the spur—and, from the instantaneous rearing and plunging of the horse, was pretty nearly flung under his feet. Drunk as the lad was, however, he had a sort of instinct for maintaining or recovering any hold once gained that soon enabled him to throw himself into the saddle. But the danger was now past his power to control: a shower of squibs and crackers, which ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... girl in merry England, he winds up with the following: "Much has been said and written concerning the sagacity of some animals, especially the elephant, horse and dog, but the other day I was an eye witness to a fact which developed the cunning, reason, instinct, or call it what you will, of the Indian Jackall. Having sauntered from my tent in the cool of the evening through some wild cotton plants, down to a clump of shady trees that grew at no great distance from the river, I sat down to enjoy a cigar, and while so doing I observed the ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... get a chance to do that, Mr. Wyatt, in a fight; you have got to whip out your pistol, to throw up your arm and fire. It has got to be done by instinct rather than by aim. It is all very well to aim when you are on your feet and standing perfectly steady, but on a horse half-mad with excitement, and perhaps going at a gallop, you could no more hold your ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... Pacific. Some realized more than their most sanguine expectations; but for one such there were hundreds disappointed, many of whom now fill unknown graves; others died wrecks of their former selves, and many, without a vicious instinct, became criminals and outcasts. Many of the real scenes in early California life exceed in strangeness and interest any of the mere products of the brain of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... enough had they been given ordinary daylight so as to look around them. The gathering gloom made it very difficult to see twenty feet away with any degree of certainty. Frank was being guided partly by instinct, and the knowledge that he had taken his ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... hind, who, along with her fawns, was refreshing herself at this exuberant fountain. As soon as they were gone, she returned, and approached the languishing creature, which seemed about to lose for ever the little strength which remained. A powerful instinct led this animal to give the child that nourishment which was reserved only for her young ones. She fed quietly around her nursling, and left the place no more. The wild beasts of the forest, it appeared, had abandoned to her the enjoyment of this happy spot, although so necessary ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... troubled look momentarily crossed the handsome face; with the Oriental's unerring instinct, he had detected the reserve of my greeting. Yet, when I thought of the treachery of Karamaneh, when I remembered how she, whom we had befriended, whom we had rescued from the house of Fu-Manchu, now had turned like the beautiful viper that she was to strike at the hand ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... possibility. Though he and she loved each other very dearly, though they were all in all each to the other, yet he comprehended the loneliness she felt rather than analyzed—the infinite need of man for man, of woman for woman—the old social, group-instinct of the race beginning to reassert itself even ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... its rise, and it alone remains unchanged, while all created matter must be continually renewed and perfected. The ardent longing for some being above us, on whom we can lean when our own powers fail,—the wonderful instinct which desires a faithful friend to whom we can tell every joy and sorrow without fear of disclosure, the thankfulness with which we behold this beautiful world and all the rich blessings we have received—these are the feelings ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... kind of folly, I will endeavour to describe it. Were all creatures to be ranked in the order of creation according to their usefulness, I know few animals that would not take place of a coquette; nor indeed hath this creature much pretence to anything beyond instinct; for, though sometimes we might imagine it was animated by the passion of vanity, yet far the greater part of its actions fall beneath even that low motive; for instance, several absurd gestures and tricks, infinitely more foolish than what can be observed in the most ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... himself in his own room every night, he said to his friends—"I regret the deed. I had no thought of touching Warren. When I saw his pistol flash in front of me, I felt in a moment that my life was at stake. I obeyed an instinct, which prompted me to get the first shot to save myself. I could get back to the States, but I'll stay right here. Let them ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous

... which her pardon is not granted, tends also to give license to evil. He who kneels before fallen man, and opens in confession the secret thoughts and imaginations of his heart, is debasing his manhood, and degrading every noble instinct of his soul. In unfolding the sins of his life to a priest,—an erring, sinful mortal, and too often corrupted with wine and licentiousness,—his standard of character is lowered, and he is defiled in consequence. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... the way, the eye of the bird is like a telescope. It magnifies and sees from very far off. Flying through the upper air the bird watches the line of coast and river, and the instinct that is placed in him says, 'Follow these.' So he follows them, remembering that by doing so he has found a place of safety in other seasons. All through the spring and all through the autumn birds ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... boasts, the whole person of the speaker seemed instinct with his ambition. He strode the gloomy chamber with light and rapid steps, as if on air; his breast heaved, his eyes glowed. He felt that love itself can scarcely bestow a rapture equal to that which is felt, in his first virgin enthusiasm, by a ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... dog—such days as Knox describes in Chapter V; historic cricket matches; stories of the Sussex oddities, the long-headed country lawyers, the Quaker autocrats, the wild farmers, the eccentric squires; characters of favourite horses and dogs (such was the mobility of his countenance and his instinct for drama that he could bring before you visibly any animal he described); early railway days (he had ridden in the first train that ran between Brighton and Southwick); fierce struggles over rights-of-way; reminiscences of old Brighton before a hundredth part of its ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... to find myself about to leave This life be bitter and afflict me sore, Such is our common instinct, I should grieve But for myself; but whether thee, before Of after me, the orc of life bereave, Assure thyself thy death will pain me more Than mine.' And thus the dame persists to moan More Norandino's ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... natural, not artificial. A man seeks to serve, a woman seeks to please. Hence a woman's politeness is less insincere than ours, whatever we may think of her character; for she is only acting upon a fundamental instinct; but when a man professes to put my interests before his own, I detect the falsehood, however disguised. Hence it is easy for women to be polite, and easy to teach little girls politeness. The first lessons come by nature; art only ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... hand graceful. "True," he goes on, "your advice has been invaluable on occasions, friend McCabe; especially in the early stages of my career as a commissioned agent of philanthropy. But I rather fancy that of late I have developed an altruistic instinct of my own; an instinct, if I may say so, in which kindly zeal is tempered by a ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... was free. Emily had no schemes, no plans, no purposes. She knew not that there was one feeling in her bosom with which praise of Mrs. Hazleton could ever jar. She loved her well. Such eyes as hers are not practised in seeing into darkness. She had divined the Italian singer—perhaps by instinct, perhaps by some distinct trait, which occasionally will betray the most wily. But Mrs. Hazleton was a fellow-woman—a woman of great brightness and many fine qualities. Neither had she any superficial defects to indicate a baser metal or a harder within. If ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... where she might live solitary and unknown, she bent her way from the town towards these rocks, where she might conceal herself from observation. All sensitive and suffering creatures, from a sort of common instinct, fly for refuge amidst their pains to haunts the most wild and desolate; as if rocks could form a rampart against misfortune—as if the calm of Nature could hush the tumults of the soul. That Providence, which lends its support when we ask but the supply of our necessary wants, had a blessing in ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... known by those who know it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... respect, Eddington uses a striking comparison. If a sculptor were to point in our presence to a raw block of marble saying that the form of a human head was lying hidden in the block, 'all our rational instinct would be roused against such an anthropomorphic speculation'. For it is inconceivable to us that nature should have placed such a form inside the block. Roused by our objection, the artist proceeds to verify his theory ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... worst product of this epidemic error is, the fashion of either denying or undervaluing the evidence of a future state and the survival of individual consciousness, derived from the conscience, and the holy instinct of the whole human race. Dreadful is this:—for the main force of the reasoning by which this scepticism is vindicated consists in reducing all legitimate conviction to objective proof: whereas in the very essence of religion and even of morality the evidence, and the preparation for its reception, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... her, attracted by the very coldness with which she had tried in her girlhood to repel him. She had caught his fancy in those far-off days. Her queenliness, her grace, had captivated him. And later, with the sheer hunter's instinct, he had pursued her, and had eventually discovered a means of entrapping her. He had named his conditions and she had named hers. In the end he had dispatched the father to Canada and made ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... through the darkness, with the wild, panic-stricken, headlong abandon of a hunted thing, finding the narrow trail ahead of her by instinct alone. Only once she overran it, but that once a low hanging branch, face high, caught her full across the forehead and sent her crashing back in the underbrush. Just once she put one narrow foot in its ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... hideous chorus. The two maidens resumed their former flight, and took refuge in the darksome den, entitled their bedroom, while the humpbacked postilion fled like the wind into the stable, and, with professional instinct, began, in the extremity of his ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... cigarettes were consumed, or when her housewifely instinct told Apporo that the dish was properly cooked, back it went into the trough again, and was mashed with the keatukipopoi, the Phallic pounder of stone known to all primitive peoples. A pahake, or wooden bowl about eighteen inches in ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... namely, intelligent cooperation among the constituent elements of the crystals. When soldiers form lines, or hollow squares, you call it reason. When wild geese in flight take the form of a letter V you say instinct. When the homogeneous atoms of a mineral, moving freely in solution, arrange themselves into shapes mathematically perfect, or particles of frozen moisture into the symmetrical and beautiful forms of snowflakes, you have nothing to say. You have not even ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... and desire are for her home and her loved ones, and planted right in by the side of these two loves of hern is a deathless instinct and desire to protect ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... novelist. As it is, his best plays are but the good journeyman work of one who is a skilled literary craftsman. Mr. Martyn has more originality of theme, more intimacy with Irish character, a surer instinct for effective situation, and more nobility of intention, though Mr. Moore's greater power over words gives his plays a dignity as art that the plays of Mr. Martyn ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... Director of the Conservatory, which he governed with consummate ability, his old age was further employed in producing that series of great masses which rank with the symphonies of Beethoven. His creative instinct and the fire of his imagination remained unimpaired to the time of his death. Mendelssohn in a letter to Moscheles speaks of him as "that truly wonderful old man, whose genius seems bathed in immortal youth." His opera of "Ali Baba," composed at seventy-six, though inferior ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... together. I remember the musty, warm, shut-in odour of the front room. I heard the faint cry of a child. The room was dim, with a single kerosene lamp, but I saw three women huddled by the stove, in which a new fire was blazing. Two looked up as we entered, with feminine instinct moving aside to hide the form ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson

... did not believe that this was the truth, even as he knew it. The truth was glimmering in the rear of her thoughts, but she would not allow it to come forward; in plain daylight it was really difficult to entertain. Still, as an instinct it was there, instinct supported even by certain ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... the plots and gardens were like large reticulated mottlings. Each had its centre of human life with life of bird and beast, and the centres were in touch with one another, connected like a row of children linked together by their hands; all together forming one organism, instinct with one life, moved by one mind, like a many-coloured serpent lying at rest, extended at ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... chiefly, in times of national danger, are their fancies so busy in suspicion; which under such shape, though oftentimes producing dire and pitiable effects, is notwithstanding in its general character no other than that habit which has grown out of the instinct of self-preservation—elevated into a wakeful and affectionate apprehension for the whole, and ennobling its private and baser ways by the generous use to which they are converted. Nor ever has a good and loyal man such a swell of mind, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Bishop of Auxerre. His scholarship, seen not only in his Plutarch, but in his rendering of the Daphnis et Chloe of Longus, and other works, was exquisite; but still more admirable was his sense of the capacities of French prose. He divined with a rare instinct the genius of the language; he felt the affinities between his Greek original and the idioms of his own countrymen; he rather re-created than translated Plutarch. "We dunces," wrote Montaigne, "would have been ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... could only say, with an instinct of self-defence, "Pray for the soul of Gerard the son of Eli!" meaning that he was dead to the world. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... suffering, and turned his own eyes away. He was only trying to preserve her from greater unhappiness, the agony of ever finding out the truth; but he felt guilty at that moment, and as if he had been cruel to the woman who roused all his tenderness, all his protective instinct. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... was utterly defenceless under both shame and suspicion, being fettered fast by his own tardy but stern sense of duty and loyalty. It seemed to him at first that he would be crippled beyond cure in his whole life if he should stay where he was; and then he felt the spring of the fighting instinct within him, and said proudly to himself that he would turn his back upon nothing. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... animal passion that may be trained and purified into a human emotion, which may be used as one of the levers in human progress, one of the factors in human growth. But, instead of this, man in the past has made his intellect the servant of his passions; the abnormal development of the sexual instinct in man—in whom it is far greater and more continuous than in any brute—is due to the mingling with it of the intellectual element, all sexual thoughts, desires, and imaginations having created thought-forms, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... used in a very ingenious fashion to prevent duck from flying away when put upon water: "The trained hawks were now brought into requisition, and marvellous it was to see the instinct with which they seconded the efforts of their trainers. The ordinary hawking of the heron we had at a later period of this expedition; but the use now made of the animal was altogether different, and displayed infinitely ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... where every line may be two-thirds spoken and one-third sung, he adds: "I respectfully submit these poems as experiments in which I endeavor to carry this vaudeville form back towards the old Greek presentation of the half-chanted lyric. In this case the one-third of music must be added by the instinct of the reader.... Big general contrasts between the main sections should be the rule of the first attempts at improvising. It is the hope of the writer that after two or three readings each line will suggest its own separate touch of melody to the reader ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert

... and O'Leary, while enjoying the beauties of Killarney, had the rare fortune to witness a staghunt. The hunted animal ran towards the spot where the Attorney-General and O'Leary stood. "Ah!" said Father Arthur, with genuine wit, "how naturally instinct leads him to come to you, that you may deliver him ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... have pursued it. I am confident that had my education been directed in an entirely different channel, I should have followed my destiny, and come out a soldier in the end. For by inheritance as well as by instinct I was foreordained to follow the fortunes of war, to delight in the clash of arms and the smoke of battle; and I expect that when I do hear the clash of arms and smell the smoke of battle, the last of the Macklins will prove himself worthy ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... way in silence. When the colonel's pain seemed soothed, the marquis resumed his fatigue; and with the instinct, or rather the will, of a wearied man his eye took in the very depths of the forest; he questioned the tree-tops and examined the branching paths, hoping to discover some dwelling where he could ask hospitality. Arriving ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac

... in organization into which women fall more readily than men in my experience. Our instinct as women is to want to make everything perfect. We instinctively run to detail and to a desire ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser

... and the attic next her own was full of them. To this store she found her way by a sort of instinct as sure as that which leads a fly to a honey-pot, and, finding many novels, she read her fill. This amusement lightened many heavy hours, peopled the silent house with troops of friends, and, for a time, was the joy of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... with the request. By a common instinct all of the Grammar School boys gathered closely around the stove, extending their hands and ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... you're so different from me. You never give yourself away. I watched you this evening with Katharine Hilbery. My instinct is to trust the person I'm talking to. That's why I'm always being taken in, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... he nearly knocked down Martha, who was bursting into it. Instinct, or perhaps sound, took Jan to the surgery, and they all followed in his wake. Bob, the image of terrified consternation, stood in the midst of a debris of glass, his mouth open, and his hair standing-upright. The glass ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... instinct they all swarm in upon him, craning their heads far over each other's shoulders to secure a share of the Providential shelter. The glare of the great bonfire falls upon the scene; the rain pours down in torrents: they crowd in upon him on ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various



Words linked to "Instinct" :   death instinct, inherent aptitude, replete, id



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