"Instinctive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Martin re-entered the parlour, she found him sitting near a table, with his head resting upon his hand, and his whole manner indicating a state of painful self-consciousness. With the instinctive perception of a woman, she saw the truth; and going at once up to him, she laid her hand upon ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... daring exploits were prepared by meditation beforehand, and he never indulged in recklessness without having pondered and calculated. His action was so swift that it might seem instinctive, but under appearances the reasoning element ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... idealising of the past, the golden age of great law-givers and philosophers and saints. But very much more—mere inertia and torpidity in mind and body, a reluctance to take stock of things, and an instinctive treading in the old paths. "Via trita, via tuta." In the path from one Indian village to another may often be observed an inexplicable deviation from the beeline, and then a return to the line again. It is where ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... with a select and instructed class, could say with impunity, speaking of what were called the god-inflicted diseases, that to his mind they were neither more nor less god-inflicted than all others. The doctrine of abstract entities was a kind of instinctive conciliation between the observed uniformity of the facts of nature, and their dependence on arbitrary volition; since it was easier to conceive a single volition as setting a machinery to work, which afterwards went on of itself, than to suppose an inflexible ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... Roosevelt's epigrammatic sayings is, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." The public, with its instinctive preference for the dramatic over the significant, promptly seized upon the "big stick" half of the aphorism and ignored the other half. But a study of the various acts of Roosevelt when he was President readily shows that in his mind the "big stick" was purely ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... even fathers, who are summoned to become unwilling vocalists at break of day by young gentlemen and ladies of two years old; and to all having the charge of children, who are alive to the importance of cultivating their natural keenness for rhyme, rhythm, melody, and instinctive love for fun, that I offer this first part of a collection of Traditional Nursery Songs. This Collection has been in progress for more than ten years, and it is now published, after a revision, with all the editions by Ritson, and others, that I have been able ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... part of the rudely awakened sleepers. They were only dimly conscious of their assailants. The compelling rings of metal that confronted them weighed the balance of their judgment, and their response was the instinctive response of the prairie. Whoever their assailants, they had got the drop on them. The result was ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... play, certain fundamental reactions are continually repeated until they reach the plane of absolute mechanism. In imitating the actions of others, adjustments are learned and made into habits without effort; in fact, the process of imitation, so far as it is instinctive, is a source of pure delight to the young child. Finally, closely related to these two instincts, is the native tendency to repetition,—nature's primary provision for drill. You have often heard little children repeat their ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... forced into the rush of the day before the fundamental ideas have been cleared up, the methods of investigation really tried, and an ample supply of facts collected. But this very justified reluctance becomes a real danger if it grows into an instinctive fear of coming into contact at all with practical life. To be sure, in any single case there may be a difference of opinion as to when the right time has come and when the inner consolidation of a new science is sufficiently ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... a tall haggard figure, arrayed in a fantastic garment of black and grey, passmented with silver lace, all fell back with a sort of instinctive horror, and made wide way for him to approach the foot of the table. As this office was held by the common executioner, men shouldered each other backward to avoid even the touch of his garment, and some ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... do, sir? This is the train you mentioned, I think?" Spinrobin heard his own thin voice speaking, by way, as it were, of instinctive apology that he should have put such a man to the trouble of coming to meet him. He said "sir," it seemed unavoidable; for there was nothing of the clergyman about him—bishop, perhaps, or archbishop, but no suggestion of vicar or parish priest. Somewhere, too, in his presentment he felt dimly, even ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... distinguished from a white man, at a distance, by the constant rising and falling of the whip arm. With the squaws were the children, some of whom, not over four, five, and six years of age, rode alone on horseback, tied in the high saddles; managing their steeds with instinctive skill, and when the journey became fatiguing, going to sleep, secured by their ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... a Moslem mob on such occasions is phenomenal: no fellow-feeling makes them decently kind. And so at executions even women will take an active part in insulting and tormenting the criminal, tearing his hair, spitting in his face and so forth. It is the instinctive brutality with which wild beasts and birds tear to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... there be inculcated. There is no good reason why the dance activities should be turned over to the devil. There was a time and there were places where violin playing was turned over to him and banished from the churches. Dancing is too old, too general, too instinctive, and too important, not to be recognized as a means to social culture. Here again the sane teacher can be an efficient supervisor. He can take care that the young people do ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... a taste for men of letters, and perhaps, if the truth must be told, have no objection to playing the fine gentleman and patron among the wits. Such people are usually needy, and of low birth, and have an instinctive awe and love of a gentleman and a laced coat; as all must have remarked who have frequented their society. Mr. Reynolds, who was afterwards knighted, and certainly the most elegant painter of his day, was a pretty dexterous courtier of the wit tribe; and it was through this gentleman, who ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that instinctive belief in God which, in common with my fellow-creatures, I had brought into the world with me. I had no disposition to deny my instincts, which told me that if there was a God His laws ought to have my obedience and His interests ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... relations, there will be something to overcome before the conceptions of forgiveness or atonement can get a hearing. These conceptions have their place in a certain view of the world as a whole, and if the mind is preoccupied with a different view, it will have an instinctive consciousness that it cannot accommodate them, and a disposition therefore to reject them ab initio. This is, in point of fact, the difficulty with which we have to deal. And let no one say that it is transparently absurd to suggest that we must get men to accept ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... in the social scale, from villagers of the Benoni type to the land-owning class. There is the same conflict of temperaments that we have seen before, but less violent now; the poet's late-won calm of mind, and the level of culture from which his characters now are drawn—perhaps by instinctive selection—make for restraint. Still a romantic at heart, he ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... despair, and she has "turned herself back,"—too frightened to stay for comfort. And then she has seen near her a Face, a Form, she was too dazed to recognise until the unforgettable Voice has thrilled through her, and she has flung herself forward with the old, instinctive cry, "Master!" to touch, to clasp that Hand, so dear, so familiar, so all-protecting, and find it ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... too, of the highest class. He knew, and hummed or whistled to her all sorts of pieces out of the works of the great masters, which a boy of his age could hardly be expected to know, and it was evident that this was purely instinctive, inasmuch as music received no kind of encouragement at Roughborough. There was no boy in the school as fond of music as he was. He picked up his knowledge, he said, from the organist of St Michael's Church who used to practise sometimes ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... it, closed every window in the big factory, and the operatives gasped in the early heat, the odour of oil, the exhausted air. There was a ventilating system in the Hardwick mill, and it was supposed to be exceptionally free from lint; but the fagged children crowded to the casements with instinctive longing for the outdoor air which could not of course enter through the glass; or plodded their monotonous rounds to tend the frames and see that the thread was running properly to each spool, and that the ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... abode with instinctive bad taste," he said, bitterly; and again his weakness, his folly turned him cold; for with all his physical powers he was shy to the point ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... been made known to the men generally by the watch; and now that our salvation was certain, by an instinctive impulse they raised a cry, and ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... hold communication with us in any way unless they again assume the human form and human existence. In this case (which very frequently happens) it takes not only time for us to know them, but it also demands a certain instinctive receptiveness on our parts, or willingness to recognise them. Even the risen Saviour was not at first recognised by His own disciples. It is because I have been practically convinced of this truth, and because I have learned that life is not and never can be death, but only constant change ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... that I was always in a hurry, for I must have had an instinctive idea that I had my fortune to look for. The governor had nothing more than a genteel independence, and this would be a good deal lessened after his death by the lapse of an annuity. But sister Laura was thus provided for well enough, while ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... to help lift the little girl, so that his chum might get a firm clasp with one arm around her. He also knew that Helene's instinctive action in clinging to Jack's neck would greatly ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... game. Wretched villages in the mark of Brandenburg, as Slavonic in type as the villages of Bohemia, revolt as naturally against exalted and difficult mystery as do the isolated villages of the Swedish valleys or the isolated rustics of the Cevennes or the Alps. The revolt is confused, instinctive, and therefore enjoying the sincere motive which accompanies such risings, but deprived of unity and of organizing power. There has never been a fixed Protestant creed. The common factor has been, and is, reaction against the ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... at things from our standpoint exactly, but his nature is fine. I used to consider that it was his vanity that demanded approval of everybody he had dealings with, but it seems to me now more like an instinctive desire to create a right atmosphere. Why should he care to win ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... chief strength in this poor child's nature was its intense trustfulness,—a part, perhaps, of its instinctive appreciation of truth. She trusted in Waife, in the future, in Providence, in her own ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Khyber Pass, but suddenly a presentiment, which I have never been able to explain to myself, made me retrace my steps and hurry back towards Kabul—a presentiment of coming trouble which I can only characterize as instinctive. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... it, yes," asseverated John. "The beginning, end, and middle of social life in England, as in Crim-Tartary, is worship of the longest pigtail,—a fetichism sometimes grosser, sometimes subtler, sometimes deliberate, often unconscious and instinctive. Every one you meet is aware that his pigtail is either longer or shorter than yours, and accordingly, more or less subtly, grossly, unconsciously or deliberately, swaggers or bends the knee. It's a state of things I've tried in vain to ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... contract incestuous alliances. Desirable as it may be from a social point of view that this strong sentiment against incest should continue, it is not yet proven that even the closest blood relationship between the parents is directly injurious to the offspring. The "instinctive horror of incest" is a myth, for although a horror of incest does very properly exist in civilized, and in some tribal societies, it is purely a matter of custom and education, and not ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... in the preceding chapter how the equality of conditions leads men to entertain a sort of instinctive incredulity of the supernatural, and a very lofty and often exaggerated opinion of the human understanding. The men who live at a period of social equality are not therefore easily led to place that intellectual authority to which they bow either beyond or above humanity. They commonly seek for ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic: it is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good honest intellectual talent, no transcendent one;—a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther: but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in sincerity, as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at his grave, "who never ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... sincerely felt that the right was entirely on his side, a proof that such intelligence as he had moved freely and exclusively within the lines of his faith. The result of this was that his faith was intelligent, I mean, that he understood it, and had a clear, almost instinctive perception of what was compatible or incompatible with it. He defended his walls and he cultivated his garden. His position ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... modern English authors, Thackeray is my favorite. Humor, pathos, satire, ripe culture, knowledge of the world and of the human heart, instinctive good taste and a style equaled by none of his fellows in its clearness, ease, flexibility and winning charm—these are some of the traits that make the author of Vanity Fair and Esmond incomparably the first literary artist as well as the greatest writer of his ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... prayer if the unity of the race had not been both an instinctive reality and a clear ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... heart of society and of the commonwealth, and substituted an absolute selfishness for humanity and patriotism. The better portion of the nation were very keenly sensible of the seeds of corruption which lurked in that system of speculation; and the instinctive hatred of the great multitude, as well as the displeasure of the well-disposed statesman, was especially directed against the trade of the professional money-lender, which for long had been subjected to penal laws and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... instinctive doubts, dear. But if you can trust Mr. Egerton, and if your father can trust him, my fancies can matter very little. I cannot stand between you and your love, dear—I ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... resolution. Nor did the Cabinet have any warning that the President was turning a corner, developing a new phase of himself, something sterner, more powerful than anything they had suspected. This was ever his way. His instinctive reticence stood firm until the moment of the new birth. Not only the Cabinet but the country was amazed and startled, when, late in June, the President suddenly left Washington. He made a flying ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... not be regarded, by any means, as mere animals. I had felt something of this before, when that first Thing peered in through my window. Then I had applied the term superhuman to it, with an almost instinctive knowledge that the creature was something different from the brute-beast. Something beyond human; yet in no good sense; but rather as something foul and hostile to the great and good in humanity. In a word, as something intelligent, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... last difficulty I had to encounter was necessarily connected with her father. He had never been very affectionate; and he was now, for aught she or I knew to the contrary, parted from her forever. Still, the instinctive recognition of his position made her shrink, at the last moment, when she spoke of him, and thought of the serious nature of her engagement with me. After some vain arguing and remonstrating, I contrived to quiet her scruples, by promising that an address ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... of yawning, on the other hand, is instinctive imitation. Also when in a crowd during the homeward evening rush, we instinctively quicken our pace though there may be no reason ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... hardly formulated, is in the "Confessions," as Darwin is in Wallace. Here ye shall find me, the germs of all I have written are in the "Confessions," "Esther Waters" and "Modern Painting," my love of France—the country as Pater would say of my instinctive election—and all my prophecies. Manet, Degas, Whistler, Monet, Pissaro, all these have come into their inheritance. Those whom I brushed aside, where are they? Stevenson, so well described as the best-dressed young man that ever walked in the Burlington Arcade, has slipped into ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... notions that are comprehended in the broad notion of civilisation—that of the development of social activity and that of the development of individual activity—are intimately related to each other. Their relationship is upheld by the instinctive conviction of men; it is proved by the course of the world's history—all the great moral and intellectual advances of man have profited society, all the great social advances have ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Roosevelt," not "Theodore" nor "Teddy." For, though he was comrade and friend to all, he was also the "boss," and they showed him the respect his position and his instinctive leadership merited. More than once a man who attempted to be unduly familiar with Roosevelt found himself swiftly and effectively squelched. He himself entered with enthusiasm into the work of administration. He regarded the ranch as a most promising business venture, and felt assured ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... more than passion—it was fierceness; and her gentle companion was filled with vague alarms. She had, as feeble natures often have, an instinctive appreciation of the superior energy and daring of her more fiery companion, and knew that she would, too probably, take some violent and irreparable step in furtherance of her resolution. It was, therefore, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Chief Secretary for Ireland, charged with a message of peace and conciliation, had been stabbed to death within twenty-four hours of his landing on that unhappy shore. She cannot forego the deep instinctive feeling—so generally manifested at the time of Lincoln's murder—that the lawless spilling of life for any cause dishonours and discredits that cause; nor have various subsequent efforts made to terrorise public ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... surprise, before Henri was seen coming down the street on horseback, almost at full gallop, and at his right hand rode a man, whom they did not all immediately recognize. Agatha, however, knew at the first glance who the stranger was, and with an instinctive feeling that the sight of her would be painful to him, she retreated behind her father's couch, so that he could not well see her from the street. When Chapeau had first whispered into his master's ear the name of Adolphe Denot as the leader of the Bretons, Agatha had truly guessed ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... must be divided into hundredths, and action must be instantaneous, instinctive, and without flaw. McGee felt one of the spreading limbs brush against his right wing tip, felt the plane swerve for a moment, then respond to rudder and aileron. It was a case where one moment he was supremely thankful for flying speed, and the next, as the ground of the ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... as an external counterpart of the child in the first stages of his development, its undivided unity corresponding to his mental condition, and its movableness to his instinctive activity. Through its recognition he is led to separate himself from the external world, and the external world ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... true, "In vino veritas," so in the hypnotic state the real bent of the normal mind and personality is more ready to follow the good and reject the bad suggestion, than in the normal, conscious state. Instinctive morality comes to the aid of the genuine psycho-therapist, and refuses its ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... exactitude, of course, is obtained in an army; and an army also has to be in many ways monastic; only that it has celibacy without chastity. But these things do not apply to normal married men. These have a quite sufficient restraint on their instinctive anarchy in the savage common-sense of the other sex. There is only one very timid sort of man that is not afraid ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... rather too vehemently a true idea. Do not try to impart a rigid education whose apparent correctness hides grave defects. Allow free course to the child's instinctive activity and turbulence; let nature speak; do not crave reserve and fastidiousness at the expense of frankness and vigor of mind. This is what the ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... treated with the Government as if he were a foreign power. She had grown up in the historical castle of Joinville, bought, restored, and magnificently furnished by her father. Montessuy made life give all it could yield. An instinctive and powerful atheist, he wanted all the goods of this world and all the desirable things that earth produces. He accumulated pictures by old masters, and precious sculptures. At fifty he had known all the most beautiful ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... intellectual suicide. The wise, as the world goes on, may differ more and more from some of Milton's opinions. They can never escape the greatness either of the poet or of the man. Men's appreciation of Milton is almost in proportion to their instinctive understanding of what greatness is. Other poets, perhaps, have things of greater beauty: none in English, none, perhaps, in any language, fills us with a more exalting conviction of the greatness of human life. No man rises from an hour with Milton without ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... one in some measure. America, which affects sometimes to declare itself indifferent to our opinions, gathers them up, however, with jealous care. I have seen respectable Americans blush at encountering that instinctive blame which, among us, is addressed to the progress of slavery; they suffered at seeing their country thus fallen from the esteem which it formerly enjoyed. Proud nations like America always avenge themselves by ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... copper-tinted clouds were rising; the sun, seen through its hazy veil, looked red and dim; and a hot, sultry air, unrelieved by a breath of refreshing wind, oppressed our young voyagers. And though the same coppery clouds and red sun had been seen for several successive days, a sort of instinctive feeling prompted the desire in all to return, and, after a few minutes' rest and refreshment, they turned their little bark towards the lake; and it was well that they did so. By the time they had ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... public?" said Alan, with an Englishman's instinctive fear of trespassing. For, although he had had a French grandmother, and sometimes boasted himself of French descent, he was essentially English in his ideas. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... without restraint. He paid her no compliments, and she did not seem to expect any. With other ladies, Ronald was always thinking, "What would they say if they knew of that fair young wife at Eastham?" With Valentine no such idea haunted him—he had an instinctive belief in her true ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... responsibility compel. We cannot omit the adventures of fairyland from our educational program. They are too well adapted to the restless, active, and unrestrained life of childhood. They take the objects which little boys and girls know vividly and personify them so that instinctive hopes and fears may play ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... vagabond known familiarly as "Tode Mall!" He tried to travel backward and imagine himself that young scamp who stole his passage from Albany to Buffalo, at which thought the blood rolled again into his face, and he felt an instinctive desire to go at once and seek out the proper authorities and pay for that surreptitious ride. Moreover, he resolved that being an honest man now it was his duty so to do, and that it should be the first item of business to which he would attend after leaving the ...
— Three People • Pansy
... his wife would have endured with cheerfulness, but that he also wished to take advantage of this opportunity to come in closer touch with his second daughter, for whose self-contained and occasionally insensitive nature he had never felt the instinctive understanding he had for Sylvia's moods. It is certain that the result was a better feeling between the two than had existed before. During the long hours of jolting over branch railroads back to remote settlements, or waiting at cheerless junctions for ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... preferences published by the candidate, or of indicating his own. Mr. Dobbs thus gets rid of the compulsory acceptance of a schedule of preferences, a proposal to which most English-speaking electors would have an instinctive dislike. But even to an optional schedule certain objections remain. The system has lost in simplicity, and the order of the candidates in the particular schedules would be determined in most cases ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... of experience and self-distrust, Johanna had, however, acquired a certain faith in her mother's opinions—these blind, instinctive hits and guesses, which often proved right where Johanna's carefully drawn conclusions failed. Here, once more, her mother's idea had broken in upon her like a flash of light, even though she could not immediately bring herself to accept ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... which may be less, and may well be more, than I endured. And I do this with the more content and confidence, that I have little doubt as to what the result will be. I have not lived with you all these years gone by, without learning the openness of your minds, the instinctive passion of your souls for right, the quickness of your sensibilities to all sweet influences of progress and good-will. If there be truth in my conviction for change, it will in time be your conviction, as it is mine. ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes
... Theodore was always less contented; and his tearless moan went to his sister's heart, for the poor little fellow had been wont to lie day and night in his mother's bosom, and she had been as uneasy without him as he now was without her. All her other babes had grown past her helpless instinctive tenderness, and Theodore's continued passiveness had been hitherto an advantage, which had always been ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and as such its characteristics and its form must exemplify religious tendencies and thought. A barn can be supremely beautiful, but it does not radiate the atmosphere of worship. A Church must be characterized by certain great and instinctive elements of grandeur, it must breathe the spirit of reverence, it must, as Ruskin says, "speak well and say the things it was intended to say in the best words." Giggleswick School Chapel may justly be said to fulfil all these conditions. It is in harmony with its surroundings, ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... sheer resolution, have dragged her husband up from the gulf and saved him, though as by fire; or a more buoyant and younger wife might have passed it by as a first offence, hopeful of its being also the only one. But an instinctive knowledge of the man bereft Hitty of any such hope; she knew it was not the first time; from his own revelations and penitent confessions while she was yet free, she knew he had sinned as well as suffered, and the past ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... is on the frontiers of Alsace and Franche-Comte, in the vicinity of Belfort and Vesoul, a feudal district, in which the peasant, over-burdened with taxes, bears the heavier yoke with greater impatience. An instinctive argument is going on in his mind without his knowing it. "The good Assembly and the good King want us to be happy, suppose we help them! They say that the King has already relieved us of the taxes, suppose we relieve ourselves of paying rents! Down with the nobles! They are no ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Shibanoff, with two horses, he made his escape. This Vasili was his stirrup-bearer, one of those serfs over whom the boyard on whose land they were born possessed absolute power. That power was often abused, but the instinctive faithfulness of the serf towards his master could hardly be shaken, even by the most savage treatment, and a well- treated serf viewed his master's family with enthusiastic love and veneration. Vasili accompanied his master's flight through the birch forests towards the Livonian frontier, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... formed in another climate religions for themselves which were somewhat crude; especially the worship of Odin, the Druidic and the Greek religions, the metaphysical contents of which were small and shallow. Meanwhile there developed among the Greeks a quite special, one might say an instinctive, sense of beauty, possessed by them alone of all the nations of the earth that have ever existed—a peculiar, fine, and correct sense of beauty, so that in the mouths of their poets and in the hands of their artists, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... scattering thoughts I was brought suddenly face to face with a remembrance that, in the heat and haste of our departure, I had left Captain Sang to pay the ordinary. At this I began to laugh out loud, for I thought the man well served; and at the same time, by an instinctive movement, carried my hand to the pocket where my money was. I suppose it was in the lane where the women jostled us; but there is only the one thing certain, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first mention of his name from the lips of his beloved, Ralph drew very close to her, with that instinctive drawing which he was now experiencing. It was that irresistible first love of a man who has never wasted himself even on the harmless flirtations which are said to be ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... down, and themselves assailed without leave or license; but they were by no means certain, now they came to think of it, that they had acted rightly in doing justice to the little rebel in such a summary manner. Peter especially, who had proposed the court martial, had an instinctive feeling that if his father were to learn the action they had taken, he would scarcely consider it to tally with the exercise of strict politeness to company. In short, without a word said, there was ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... of the dead people drove him thence. It grieved him, to the very depth of his kind heart, to observe how the children fled from his approach, breaking up their merriest sports, while his melancholy figure was yet afar off. Their instinctive dread caused him to feel more strongly than aught else, that a preternatural horror was interwoven with the threads of the black crape. In truth, his own antipathy to the veil was known to be so great, that he never ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... is not jealous. It's not in her to be jealous. If she doesn't like you, Madalena, it's instinctive mistrust. I don't think she's even seen the claws sticking out of the velvet. But I have. I've seen exactly what you are up to. You talk about our 'past'. You want to force my hand. You expect me, ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... side, what makes Milton's versification as unique as it is admirable, is the instinctive and yet prescient skill with which the pause is continuously varied so as to keep the whole metrical structure in movement. There are no dead lines. There are no jerks or stoppages. His movement may best be described by quoting a passage which, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... her breath come quick and sudden, as if under a hypnotic force, and following the prompting of some instinctive mentor, he held out his ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... an American man of war would towards British prisoners. They considered our men as living, sensitive beings, feeling the inconveniences of hunger and thirst, and the pleasure of the gratifications of these instinctive appetites; they seemed to consider, also, that we were rational beings; and it is possible they may have suspected that some of us might have had our rational and improvable faculty increased by education; they ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... type of offender. By careful research, my father and others of his School have brought to light many anomalies in bodily organs, and functions both physical and mental, all of which serve to indicate the atavistic and pathological origin of the instinctive criminal. ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... awkwardnesses, we meet with brilliant pictures and genuine love-cries? How happens it, that when this generation was exhausted, true poetry ended in England, as true painting in Italy and Flanders? It was because an epoch of the mind came and passed away,—that, namely, of instinctive and creative conception. These men had new senses, and no theories in their heads. . . . They are happy in contemplating beautiful things, and wish only that they should be the most beautiful possible. They do not excite ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... bodies, preserves them from the attack of insects, which otherwise prove very troublesome. Their owners light fires for them in the evening, in order that the smoke may have the same effect, and they have the instinctive sagacity to lay themselves down to leeward, that they may ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... and are utilised, each link receiving something from its neighbours and giving them something in return, thus expressing on the visible plane that gracious unity which is divine Love: love that is instinctive and imperative in beings of a low degree of evolution; obeyed by those who, without loving it, understand its good services, and actually lived by such souls as have entered upon the path of sacrifice—souls that comprehend the Unity of beings. If this earth has been capable of teaching the Saviours ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... eyes dilated: she learned the meaning of hatred at first sight. Observing the stranger with instinctive suspicion, all at once she seemed, to herself, awkward. Poor Marjorie underwent that experience which hearty, healthy, little girls and big girls undergo at one time or another—from heels to head she ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... of his instinctive amazement. This fine American woman was not without a sense of reflected glory given by this fact. Her sister-in-law was a De Montfort! Expressing his thanks for her candor, he ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... been the same with Aruna. But with Aruna it was primitive, instinctive. This exotic flower of Western girlhood wielded her power with ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of instinctive faith and a philosophical mind could not produce in him the belief in those things which did not appear to him to have been first submitted to the test of argument, and proved to be just by the convictions resulting from the test of reasoning to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... existence, and it behooves us all to allow it free access to our dwellings. What if it does bleach carpets and draperies! Its beneficent effects are not to be measured by yards of wool and silk. Love of light is as instinctive as the aversion to darkness. Plants growing in a dark cellar, where but one struggling ray of light enters, will instinctively grow in the direction of that ray. It is questionable whether defective lighting is not productive of as much physical deterioration in the crowded tenement ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... not merely by extreme valour and ready subordination or military discipline, that the Normans were pre-eminent among all the conquering races of the Gothic stock, but also by their instinctive faculty of appreciating and adopting the superior civilizations which they encountered. Thus Duke Rollo and his Scandinavian warriors readily embraced the creed, the language, the laws, and the arts which France, in those troubled and evil times with which the Capetian dynasty commenced, still ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... league, white front and flabby face Bent o'er the groaning board. Twelve brave men droned the grace; But with instinctive tact, in courtesy to their Host, Omitted God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, And to the God of Battles raised their humble prayers. Then, then, like thunder, all the guests drew up their chairs. By each a drinking-cup, yellow, almost, as gold. (The blue eye-sockets gave the thumbs a good firm hold) ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... such a length of years, The Shepherd, if he lov'd himself, must needs Have lov'd his Help-mate; but to Michael's heart This Son of his old age was yet more dear— Effect which might perhaps have been produc'd By that instinctive tenderness, the same Blind Spirit, which is in the blood of all, Or that a child, more than all other gifts, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts, And stirrings of inquietude, when they By tendency of ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... hopeful, it is surprising to see how many annoyances of sickness are prevented or easily borne, and how life, and even cheerfulness, may be indefinitely extended. But when hope is taken away, or, rather, when, instead of looking towards life with that instinctive love of it which God has implanted, we turn from "the warm precincts of the cheerful day," and look into the grave, it is affecting to see how the disease takes advantage of it, and sufferings ensue which would ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... her work, and her sympathy is unbounded. She loves them with her whole heart, while she lays bare their little minds, and expresses their foibles, their faults, their virtues, their inward struggles, their conception of duty, and their instinctive knowledge of the right and wrong of things. She knows their characters, she understands their wants, and she desires to ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... a sharp instinctive belief that he could put his arm around her, but he rebuked himself and with excessive politeness he saw her to the car, drove her home. All the way back to ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... forget that there is all the difference in the world between Herbert and his deistical successors. They connected religion with the 'intellectual and sensational,' and we with the 'instinctive and emotional' ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... was, and shaken as its equilibrium had been by the recent earthquake, it lay now so insecurely poised, that its balance was entirely destroyed, even by the addition of the young man's weight. Aroused by the imminence of the danger, Arthur, by an instinctive attempt at self-preservation, drew cautiously back from the falling crag into the tree by which he had ascended, and turned his head back as if spell-bound, to watch the descent of the fatal rock from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... had occurred came back to her. She began to cry weakly. But the tears did her good, bringing with them relief from the awful shock which had strained her nerves almost to breaking-point, and with return to a more normal state of mind came the instinctive wish to help—to do something for those who must be suffering so pitiably in the midst of that scarred heap ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... enclose us that, though we have once passed them [in the preceding September], we almost despair of ever escaping from them without the assistance of the Indians.... Our guides traverse this trackless region with a kind of instinctive sagacity; they never hesitate, they are never embarrassed; and so undeviating is their step, that wherever the snow has disappeared, for even a hundred paces, we ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... by her instinctive recognition of these fundamental principles that Rachel shows herself to be an artist. She is fully persuaded of the value of the modern spirit, and she belongs to the time by nothing more than by her ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... an instinctive feeling that something had happened, but I never tried to find out.... Now, as a matter of fact, twenty years ago, a relation of mine, a distant cousin, used to live at the Domaine de Halingre. I hoped, because of the name I bear, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... her to another shed where the owner was installing a new machine. She hesitated in the doorway, oppressed by an instinctive dread. The great hall was vibrating from the machines and black shadows filled the air. He reassured her with a smile, swearing that there was nothing to fear, only she should be careful not to let her skirts get caught in any of the gears. He ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... himself afloat. But he was growing weaker and weaker, and the last vestige of his strength was giving way. As Madge reached him, he managed to reach out and clutch her arm, hanging to it with a force that threatened to pull them both under. He was making that instinctive struggle for life usually put forth by the drowning. Madge experienced a brief flash of terror. ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... turned away and covered his face with his hands. I could hear the tears in his voice. Mr. Morris, with instinctive delicacy, just laid a hand for a moment on his shoulder, and then walked quietly out of the room. I suppose there is something in a woman's nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... has been introduced among the population of some regions; while from others it has been shut out by almost impenetrable barriers, beyond which the aboriginal people remain secluded amid their mountains and forests, in a state of instinctive existence,—a state from which, history informs us, that human races have hardly emerged, until moved by some impulse from without. Neither Phoenician nor Roman culture seems to have penetrated into Africa beyond the Atlantic region and the desert. The activity ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... to that supporting thought, and during the rest of the evening she was untroubled by the instinctive knowledge that even the law cannot make right what the individual has ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... this eminent philosopher were not a contemporary of the master and had not attended his lectures, his artistic sessions and his concerts. In his manner of treating art, this is often shown bywords and forms and flashes of instinctive reminiscence which recall the great school. In his book, "The True, the Beautiful and the Good" (edition of 1858), the learned professor writes: "The true method gives us a law to start from man to arrive at things. All the arts, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various |
