"Self-preservation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elemental passion gave place to another. Horror had displaced anger, and now in its turn gave way to the instinct of self-preservation. He looked toward the carriage and saw that Pepeeta had fallen into a swoon. "Perhaps she has not seen what has happened," he said to himself, and a cunning smile lit up ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... constituted that in point of fact they contribute to his preservation and his happiness. But from one point of view this appears to be simply to say that the conditions of existence necessitate a certain harmony, and that the harmony is therefore to be a consequence of his self-preservation. From the opposite point of view, which Stewart accepts, it appears that the self-preservation is the consequence of a pre-established harmony, which has been divinely appointed in order that he may live. Stewart, in short, is a 'teleologist' of the Paley variety. Psychology proves ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... weary of their actions, and foresaw nothing but ruin would attend them; that he never repented him of any thing so much, as his being drawn in to that faction; in which he found himself so greatly involved, he could not retire with any credit; but since self-preservation was the first principle of nature, he had resolved to make that his aim, and rather prove false to a party, who had no justice and honour on their side, than to a King, whom all the laws of heaven and earth obliged him to serve; however, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... as there is no real change of heart in Germany and no final and irrevocable break with militarism, the law of self-preservation should be considered paramount; no fresh extension of Prussian militarism to other continents and seas should be tolerated; and the conquered German colonies can be regarded only as guaranties for the security of ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... him that he was being killed the instinct of self-preservation was born in him. The ferocity with which he had fought before paled into insignificance beside the mad fury with which he now attacked the three terrible creatures upon him. Shaking himself like a great lion he freed his ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... we are accustomed to do, that we do "automatically." Likewise we automatically make gestures, movements of welcome and aversion which we have never learned but which we do "naturally." They have their springs of action in the instinct of self-preservation and in the feelings connected with it. But what we are accustomed to do, we must first have learned and practiced. It is just that practice, the frequent repetition, that brings about the performance of the act "of itself," ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... other matters, Nature will burst out laughing in the face of the would-be philosopher, and bringing forward her town boy, will say, 'Look here!' For the town boys are Nature's boys after all, at least so long as doctrines of self-preservation and ambition have not turned them from children of the kingdom into dirt-worms. But I must stop, for I am getting up to the neck in a bog of discrimination. As if I did not know the nobility of some townspeople, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... of these demand a home-training. The parent should give to each its true direction, restrain and harmonize them in their relations and respective spheres of activity, and bring them under law, and place before each its legitimate object and end. Then, and then only, do they become laws of self-preservation. The natural appetites are subject to abuse, and when unrestrained, defeat the very ends of their existence. Thus the appetite for food may be over-indulged through mistaken parental kindness, until habits of sensualism are established, and ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Democratic rule replaced Republicanism "one set of abnormal influences were put at rest," economic and social problems becoming the all-engrossing topics, and politics a diversion rather than a matter of self-preservation. The race problem then aroused began in another age, and not being settled, has been bequeathed to a later generation. Emancipation itself would have aroused racial antagonism but Republican Reconstruction increased it a hundred fold. This was the most ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... the atrocities of revenge. Frantic energy is the quality most valued, and the man of violence is always trusted. That simplicity which is a chief ingredient of a noble nature is laughed to scorn. Inferior intellects succeed best. Revenge becomes dearer than self-preservation, and men even have a sweeter pleasure in the revenge that goes with perfidy than if it were open." If any reader of the ICONOCLAST desires a splendid picture of this Italy, I refer him to Vernon Lee's "Euphorion," which pictures the land as an inferno. Mr. Morley, too, gives a ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... British Isles were unmistakably disposed to cheer and help on a nation of oppressors, and wished them success. It was some time before I could understand such an anomaly; at last I saw that the instinct of self-preservation was at work, and I forgave as natural, what I ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Empire had a most unquestioned right thus to challenge the power of Great Britain. It was indeed the most effective challenge which a nation jealous of Britain's commerce could deliver, but it is none the less true that the plain policy of self-preservation compelled Britain ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... talisman, only not within an arm's length, but which in that state of the public mind, could he but have once grasped it, would have enabled him to blow up Presbyterian and Independent both. If ever a lawless act was defensible on the principle of self-preservation, the murder of Charles might be defended. I suspect that the fatal delay in the publication of the 'Icon Basilike' is susceptible of no other satisfactory explanation. In short it is absurd to burthen this act on Cromwell ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... survival of the soul and even of the body was based upon a strong instinct of human nature, the instinct of self-preservation. Social and moral conditions in the empire during its decline gave it greater strength than it had ever possessed before.[38] The third century saw so much suffering, anguish and violence, so much unnecessary ruin and ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... intelligence. MISS GODESBY is a little slow, more assertive, sharper of tongue, more acutely intelligent, and equally smartly dressed. She has still a remnant of real, sincere feeling buried under a cynical mask which her life in a fast set has developed for her self-preservation. TROTTER is a foolish young person, meaning well enough according to his lights, which are not of the biggest ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... existed upon the earth and acquired all the arts necessary for its subsistence without possessing a single sensation, idea, or emotion. Natural selection might have secured the survival of those automata which made useful reactions upon their environment. An instinct of self-preservation would have been developed, dangers would have been shunned without being feared, and ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... foreign capital are the insidious, the dangerous ones. The dislike of the foreign trader, the foreign creditor, may voice itself crudely as mere envy, know-nothingism, but it has a healthy root in national self-preservation. For an Italian the German article should be undesirable, especially if its possession means accepting the German and his way of life along with his goods. The small merchant and the peasant express their resentments of foreign competition rawly, no doubt. ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... economize as far as possible all unnecessary expenditure of his resources. Hence, the science of defence was almost exclusively studied. The object seemed to be, not so much the annoyance of the enemy, as self-preservation. The common interests of the condottieri being paramount to every obligation towards the state which they served, they easily came to an understanding with one another to spare their troops as much as possible; until at length battles were fought with little more personal hazard than would be ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... stipulation for national ignominy; an illusory expedient, to baffle the resentment of the nation; a truce without the suspension of hostilities on the part of Spain; on the part of England a suspension, as to Georgia, of the first law of nature, self-preservation and self-defence—surrender of the rights and trade of England to the mercy of plenipotentiaries, and in this infinitely highest and sacred point, future security, not only inadequate, but directly repugnant to the resolutions of Parliament, and the gracious promise from the Throne. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... state of the stairs leading to the successive stones of the tower, we were almost tempted to believe that her instinct of self-preservation had reached its climax here,—that we might break our necks, if we liked,—she preferred not to run the risk. Resolved to satisfy our suspicions, we pressed the point, and, after many inquiries and waiting a considerable time upon the motions of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Thus, no one element of the Kedy has any need of, or any desire for, self-preservation. The destruction of one element, or of thousands of elements, would be of no more consequence to the Kedy than ... well, they are strictly analogous to the severed ends of the hairs, every time you get ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... of restoring him to health, seemed to absorb all regard for their own situation. I witnessed with peculiar pleasure this conduct, so different from that which they had recently pursued, when every tender feeling was suspended by the desire of self-preservation. They now no longer betrayed impatience or despondency, but were composed and cheerful, and had entirely given up the practice of swearing, to which the Canadian voyagers are so lamentably addicted. Our conversation naturally turned upon the prospect of getting relief, and ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... of the friends of civil liberty throughout the world, and in the midst of public and individual prosperity unexampled in history, we are called to decide whether these laws possess any force and that Union the means of self-preservation. The decision of this question by an enlightened and patriotic people can not be doubtful. For myself, fellow-citizens, devoutly relying upon that kind Providence which has hitherto watched over our destinies, and actuated by a profound reverence ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... and five more hotels sequestered for their accommodation. No laws which do not bear directly or indirectly upon the slaying of Prussians have been made in recent years. This is sometimes called government, but used to be known as self-preservation when men dressed in yellow ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... others did at 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 ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... on the working classes direct. When asked to extend further relief to charities Mr. CHAMBERLAIN sought a definition of "charity." Would it apply, for example, to "the association of a small number of gentlemen in distress obeying the law of self-preservation in the face of world-forces which threaten to sweep them out of existence"? I seem to hear Mr. Wilkins Micawber reply, "The answer is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... In such a theory self-preservation becomes the aim of life, the struggle for existence the driving-power, and adaptation to environment the means to the desired end. Hence it comes about that only one standard of value remains, that of usefulness, for that alone can be regarded as valuable which proves to be useful towards ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... the fact or not, nay, even if the reestablishment of the Union had been hopeless from the first, a government which should have abandoned its capital, which should have flinched from the first and plainest duty of self-preservation, which should have admitted by a cowardly surrender that force was law, that treason was constitutional, and fraud honorable, would have deserved and received the contempt of all civilized nations, of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... do nothing but think, Mr. Hobart. You are here to act," came the scornful retort; "And what is this but self-preservation." ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... may take his novel up and put it down, spend days upon it in vain, and write not any more than he makes haste to blot. Not so the Beginner. Human nature has certain rights; instinct—the instinct of self-preservation—forbids that any man (cheered and supported by the consciousness of no previous victory) should endure the miseries of unsuccessful literary toil beyond a period to be measured in weeks. There must be something for hope to feed upon. The beginner must have a slant of wind, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Christian life more than their enemies' bodies. Guilelessness and harmlessness are their weapons. But 'be ye wise as serpents' is equally imperative with 'guileless as doves.' Mark the fine sanity of that injunction, which not only permits but enjoins prudent self-preservation, so long as it does not stoop to crooked policy, and is saved from that by dove-like guilelessness. A difficult combination, but a possible one, and when ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the French Republic—however we may have been bound in gratitude for the assistance rendered us during our Revolutionary struggle, to co-operate with France in her defence of popular institutions—still, self-preservation is the first law of nature. Mr. Adams saw, that to throw ourselves into the melee of European conflicts, would prostrate the interests of the country, and peril the very ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... mincing steps, such dainty nibbling is a lesson in culture. With wide, lustrous eyes, mobile ears ever listening, with moist, sensitive nostrils testing every vagrant odor in the air, they are the embodiment of hypersensitive self-preservation. And yet deer are not essentially timid animals. They will venture far through curiosity, and I have seen them from the hilltop, being run by dogs, play and trifle with their pursuers. The dog, hampered by brush and going only by scent, follows implicitly the trail. The deer runs, leaps ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... prevent the full development of her policy. Unfortunately for her, but fortunately for other nations, and especially so for Italy, she not only did not govern well, but governed badly; and there was a great power which was deeply, vitally interested—moved by the all-controlling principle of self-preservation—in watching all her movements, and in finding occasion to drive her out of Italy. She was not content with upholding misgovernment in Naples, Rome, Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and elsewhere, but she meant to subvert the constitutional polity established in the Sub-Alpine Kingdom of Sardinia. The enemy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... doubts as to how long she would stay conquered—and between constant fighting and constant travel there is not much choice; for Mr. Port knew from experience how acute is that form of biliousness which results from rage. After all, self-preservation is the first law of nature; and under the stress thus put upon him, therefore, it is not surprising that Mr. Port's qualms of conscience incident to his failure to do his duty to his neighbor vanished to ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... all directions: it is the most widespread and the most subterranean form of falsehood to be found on earth. Whatever a theologian regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth. His profound instinct of self-preservation stands against truth ever coming into honour in any way, or even getting stated. Wherever the influence of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of values, and the concepts "true" and "false" are forced to change places: whatever is most damaging to life is there called ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... that the males of all species, including man, are little more than chronic seducers, and that their chief energies are devoted to assaulting and breaking down the native reluctance of the aesthetic and anesthetic females. In her own words: "Regarding males, outside of the instinct for self-preservation, which, by the way is often overshadowed by their great sexual eagerness, no discriminating characters have been acquired and transmitted, other than those which have been the result of passion, namely, pugnacity and perseverance." Again the italics are mine. What we have here is merely ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... bridle holding than familiarity with a bucksaw and plow handle. It was a lazy hand. The man looked lazy. If he spoke at all it would be with lazy speech, yet Jean had not encountered many men to whom he would have accorded more potency to stir in him the instinct of self-preservation. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... that conscience was troubling her a little. She agreed with Archie that the discovery of the Wigmore Venus in his artistically furnished suite would give Mr. Brewster a surprise. Surprise, indeed, was perhaps an inadequate word. She was sorry for her father, but the instinct of self-preservation is stronger than ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... themselves to me with frightful distinctness; my mind became imbued with them to the exclusion of all else—of reason even. I was literally panic-stricken, and nothing but flight could satisfy my instinct, my impulse of self-preservation. I must go, even if blown like a leaf before the gales of heaven; must fly, if even to certainty of destruction. I had felt this necessity once before, be it remembered, but never so stringently, so morbidly ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... concrete case of production. One phase of this is the individual's estimate of his own powers. We may inquire what is the man's appreciation of his own worth. This is precarious because of two difficulties. There is an egotistical element in individuals. It is inherent as a historical agent of self-preservation. Most of us are like primitive groups. The ethnologist expects to find every tribe or horde of savages claiming to be THE PEOPLE. They ascribe superior qualities to their group. In their names for their group they call themselves the people, the men, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... themselves with terrible force on my memory, so that I could hardly keep from repeating them aloud like a dull, miserable, unconscious echo; but my brain was numb to the sense of what they said, unless I myself were named, and then, I suppose, some instinct of self-preservation stirred within me, and quickened my sense. And how I strained my ears, and nerved my hands and limbs, beginning to twitch with convulsive movements, which I feared might betray me! I gathered every word they spoke, not knowing ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... did not often make their laws give way to necessity. But religion has never suffered this, or practised it. Indeed, there must be these compromises, or miracles. It is not strange to be saved by yieldings, and this is not strictly self-preservation; besides, in the end they perish entirely. None has endured a thousand years. But the fact that this religion has always maintained itself, inflexible as it is, ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... mature consideration, he realized that Du Cane's motive in exposing him was twofold—in order to save himself, and also to curry favour in certain high quarters affected by the mysterious death of the young Parliamentary Under-Secretary who had placed to his lips that fatal cigar. Self-preservation being the first instinct of the human race, it surely was not surprising that Arnold Du Cane should seek to place himself ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... of ambition and of avarice and of self-preservation as the keys of character and action, but what force is there to move us like a woman? A little thing, a weak fragile thing—a toy from which the rain will wash the paint and of which the rust will stop the working, and yet a thing ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... by the accidental disarrangement of Arvina's gown, and the discovery of his own dagger, he perceived that the intended victim of his specious arts was probably cognizant in some degree of his last night's crime, a third and stronger cause was added, in the instinct of self-preservation. And as soon as he found out that Paullus was bound for the house of Cicero, he considered his life, in some sort, staked upon the issue of his ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... heart's unbiased instinct Impelled me to the daring deed, which now Necessity, self-preservation, orders. Stern is the on-look of necessity, Not without shudder may a human hand Grasp the mysterious urn of destiny. My deed was mine, remaining in my bosom; Once suffered to escape from its safe corner Within the heart, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... face of the convict murderer turned pale at the sound, and at the sight of the glowing eye-balls his ugly teeth clattered against each other. Nevertheless, the instinct of self-preservation made him crouch low, deadly knife in hand, ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... law, doubtless, but a law neither more nor less normal than that of destruction, even self-destruction. Is it possible that the whole normal law of humanity is contained in this sentiment of self-preservation?" ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... moral purity, but for the sake of some ulterior yet perfectly definite and concrete object, to gain which he is prepared to sacrifice the immediate gratification of his senses. That this is or may be so, the examples I have cited are amply sufficient to prove. They show that where the instinct of self-preservation, which manifests itself chiefly in the search for food, conflicts or appears to conflict with the instinct which conduces to the propagation of the species, the former instinct, as the primary and more fundamental, is capable of overmastering the latter. In short, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... would have been any thing short of death. Finding it impossible for such a number of discontented beings to continue of one mind, or to be able to furnish food in their miserable situation for so many, they judged it necessary, from a motive of self-preservation, that one half should deceive the other half; and while these were asleep, those who were prepared took away the boat, leaving their seven wretched and unsuspecting companions upon the desolate island, the situation of which this man could not describe so as to enable the governor at any ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... protested, "while that sort of philanthropy is very delightful when one can afford the luxury, it is scarcely practical when one is teetering on the verge of financial ruin. After all, Bryce, self-preservation is the first law of human nature, and the sale of those farms would go a long way toward helping the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company out of the hole it is ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... self-preservation, it is called by the learned, but it needs a stronger name. It is more than an instinct. It is the ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... requires:—and from this it is evident, since we are beloved by ourselves, and since we wish everything both in our minds and bodies to be perfect, that those qualities are dear to us for their own sakes, and that they are of the greatest influence towards our living well. For he to whom self-preservation is proposed as an object, must necessarily feel an affection for all the separate parts of himself; and a greater affection in proportion as they are more perfect and more praiseworthy in their separate kinds. For that kind of life is desired which is full of the virtues of the ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... understanding which she displays is real or simulated. She is a perfect actress, but very often is quite natural. Most women are either posing all the time, or not at all. Harietta's miming only comes into action for self-preservation, or personal gain, and then it is of such a superb quality that she leaves even me—I, who am no poor diviner—confused as to whether she is telling ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... first in date of the great battles of the world, we beheld Athens struggling for self-preservation against the invading armies of the East. At Syracuse she appears as the ambitious and oppressive invader of others. In her, as in other republics of old and of modern times, the same energy that had inspired the most heroic efforts in defence of the national independence soon learned ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... ought to conform to, but learning from them the very laws of religious growth they illustrate. The historian traces the birth of arts, science, and government to man's dependence on nature and his fellows for the means of self-preservation. Not that man receives these endowments from without, but that the stern step-mother, Nature, forces him by threats and stripes to develop his own inherent faculties. So with religion: The idea of God does not, and cannot, proceed from the external world, but, nevertheless, it finds its historical ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... to the frightful consequences of a wholesale exhibition of melodious irritants, that a natural love of order and desire for self-preservation has prompted them to raise numerous obstructions to the free development of musical science in their peculiar localities of town. In the Inns of Court and Chancery Lane professional etiquette forbids barristers and solicitors to play ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... full Negro suffrage meant one of two alternatives to the South: (1) The uplift of the Negro for sheer self-preservation. This is what Schurz and the saner North expected. As one Southern school superintendent said, "The elevation of this class is a matter of prime importance, since a ballot in the hands of a black citizen is quite as potent as in the hands ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... whose whole work is coloured by Montaigne's influence, and Thoreau as one who, specially developing one side of Emerson's gospel, may be said to have found it all where Emerson found it, in the Essay on Solitude.[160] The whole doctrine of intellectual self-preservation, the ancient thesis "flee from the press and dwell in soothfastness," is there set forth in a series of ringing sentences, most of which, set in Emerson or Thoreau, would seem part of their text and thought. That this is no random attribution ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... a bachelor, is exemplified by his willingness to marry a woman—against all his instincts, his sense of self-preservation, and ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... of the race, the passion for release from mortal existence, the passion for death. At that moment he felt, and probably felt truly, that had he been in dire peril, he would not have lifted a finger in self-preservation. He turned his eyes inward upon himself with greed for his own life, for his own blood, and back of that was the ravening thirst for release from the world and the flesh and the miseries which appertained ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... said, "it justifies itself. Take, for example, a strong instinct, like that of self-preservation. How completely it stands above all criticism! Not that it cannot be criticised in a kind of dilettante, abstract way; but in the moment of action the criticism simply disappears in face of the overwhelming fact ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... out some means of making men workers and, if need be, warriors, without making them slaves. We must cultivate the noble virtues that have their root in pride. Now no schoolmaster will teach these any more than a prison governor will teach his prisoners how to mutiny and escape. Self-preservation forces him to break the spirit that revolts against him, and to inculcate submission, even to obscene assault, as a duty. A bishop once had the hardihood to say that he would rather see England free than England sober. Nobody has yet dared to say that he would rather see an ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... and having a swim before recovering foothold on the frail embarkation. This the ducked individual would be certain to do. Drunk as he might have been, and maudlin as he might be, his instincts were never so benumbed as to render him regardless of self-preservation. Even from out his haggard eyes still gleamed enough of intelligence to tell that those dark triangular objects, moving in scores around the raft, and cutting the water, so swift and sheer, were the dorsal fins of the dreaded sharks. Each one was a sight that, to a sailor's eye, even when ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... has ground into my soul. I find myself reading such a book with but one feeling, one idea crying out in me. I discover that my whole being is reduced to the great elemental, primitive instinct of self-preservation. Love is dead in me, generosity, humanity, imagination is dead,—everything but one wild-beast passion; and I find myself panting as I read: "Get some money! Get some ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... sign of greatness is a desire to serve others. Self-preservation is the first law of life, but self-abnegation is the first law of greatness—and of art. Selfishness is the fundamental cause of all sin, it is the thing that all great religions, all worthy philosophies, have struck at. Out of a heart of real sympathy and love come ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... scented death afar off; for her the air was always tainted with ominous perfumes. Every unusual look or dubious word thrilled her with a sense of danger. Suspicion is the baleful instinct of self-preservation with which the devil gifts his children; and hers ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... restraints of ordinary life, until fear and shame, and becoming respect for order, all of which constitute the moral safety of society—are thrown aside or resolved into the great tyrannical instinct of self-preservation, which, when thus stimulated, becomes what may be termed the insanity of desolation. We know that the most savage animals as well as the most timid will, when impelled by its ravenous clamors, alike forget every ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... too dread. You think we live merely lives of commerce. You do not realise that there is with us a profound sentiment of affection for the Union. No people worth anything ever lived without the very human desire of national self-preservation. It has the force of a man's personal desire for self-preservation. Pardon me, I suppose that I have the habit ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... England for less cause? Did not Japan throw down the gauntlet to Russia for less cause than the Empress Dowager had for desiring that "each strive TO PRESERVE FROM DESTRUCTION AND SPOLIATION HIS ANCESTRAL HOME AND GRAVES"? It was not for conquest but for self-preservation the Empress Dowager was ready to go to war; not for glory but for home; not against a taunting neighbour, but against a "ruthless invader." Her unwisdom did not consist in her being ready to go to war, but in allowing herself ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... and it. He made a feint towards the left, then as quickly to the right. But doing so, he slipped and fell. The candle dropped to the floor and went out. With a lightning-like instinct of self-preservation he swung over upon his face just as the bear, in its wild rush, passed over his head. He remembered afterwards the odour of the hot, rank body, and the sprawling huge feet and claws. Scrambling to his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... those of despair, at last animated the people of Carthage. It was the same passion which arrayed Tyre against Alexander, and Jerusalem against Titus. It was a wild patriotic frenzy which knew no bounds, inspired by the instinct of self-preservation, and aside from all calculation of success or failure. As the fall of the city was inevitable, wisdom might have counseled an unreserved submission. Resistance should have been thought of before. In fact, Carthage should not have yielded to the first ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... of the Rue Soleil d'Or, May 28th, 1871; denounced as Communist by Andre Fort; executed on the spot." Nevertheless, for once the police were wrong. Jean was not shot, though it was true he was shot at. Fear, or loss of blood, or an instinctive effort at self-preservation, caused him to reel and fall just a second before a couple of bullets which should have found a home in his body, spent themselves in the blood-stained wall over his head. The tide of slaughter ebbed away, leaving ghastly heaps of dead men. From one of these ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... not through any peculiar presence of mind on my part, but simply from the instinct of self-preservation, which is common to every living creature, that I made an effort to save myself. This I did by throwing out my hands, and endeavouring to seize hold of something, just as drowning men will catch even at straws. But I caught something better than ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... perpetually on their guard against the possibility of arrest. Nor was this all. The very nature of the lawless and outrageous life they led, and their frequent exposure to danger, rendered habits of caution necessary—and those were altogether incompatible with habits of intemperance. Self-preservation rendered this policy necessary, and we believe there are but few instances on record of a Rapparee having been arrested in a state of intoxication. Their laws, in fact, however barbarous they were in other matters, rendered three cases of drunkenness a cause of expulsion ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... occupied a well-defined and useful place in rural morality, and witches, too, were indirectly teachers of charity, for no farm wife would refuse refreshments to the destitute lest vengeance should overtake her. In this way the deserving beggar obtained needed assistance from motives of self-preservation from benefactors ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... no poet known beyond it has breathed his soul into it; her architecture was first the Gothic from over the Alps, and then of the Renaissance which built the palaces of her merchants in a giant bulk and of a brutal grandeur. She had not the political genius of Venice, the oligarchic instinct of self-preservation from popular misgovernment and princely aggression. Her story is the usual Italian story of a people jealous of each other, and, in their fear of a native tyrant, impatiently calling in one foreign tyrant after another and then furiously ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... the Two-Paws don't understand what you're pleased to call a cat's egoism.... Our instinct of self-preservation, our dignity, our modest reserve, our attitude of weary renunciation (which comes of the hopelessness of ever being understood by them), they dub, in haphazard fashion, egoism. You're not a very discriminating dog, but at least you're free from prejudice. ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... stood breathless,—but the next instant, they saw Russell's head emerge, and then another wave foaming madly by, made them run backwards for their lives, and hid him from their view. When it had passed, they saw him clinging with both hands, in the desperate instinct of self-preservation, to a projecting bit of rock, by the aid of which he gradually dragged himself out of the water, and grasping at crevices or bits of seaweed, slowly and painfully reached the ledge on which they had stood before they took the ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... own way, lost in admiration of this opponent's intellect, but forced to admit his mistakes—the mistakes of a too ardent mind. The more bitter and caustic the sarcasms that leaped from Hamilton's tongue, the more suave he grew, for placidity was his only weapon of self-preservation; a war of words with Hamilton, and he would be made ridiculous in the presence of his colleagues and Washington. Occasionally the volcano flared through his pale eyes, and betrayed such hate and resentment that Washington elevated his hands an inch. The President sat like ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... is in the sense of dependance, and in the instinct of self-preservation or self-interest. The first objects of prayer to the infant man will be those on which by his localities he believes himself to be most dependant for whatever blessing his mode of life inclines him the most ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... department, without the action of the States; and yet the Government emanates directly from the people. In defending itself against an armed rebellion of nearly half the States themselves, struggling for self-preservation, it may rightfully, as in other wars, grasp all the means within its reach. War makes its own methods, for all of which necessity is a sufficient plea. But when the defence shall have been made, when the attack is repelled, and the Rebellion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... behaviour is accompanied by a correlation of the modes of primary experience. We may classify the instinctive modes of behaviour and their accompanying modes of instinctive experience under as many heads as may be convenient for our purposes of interpretation, and label them instincts of self-preservation, of pugnacity, of acquisition, the reproductive instincts, the parental instincts, and so forth. An instinct, in this sense of the term (for example the parental instinct), may be described as a ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... gloried in that race, perhaps more wildly than Venters. For he had been born to the sage and the saddle and the wild. He was more than half horse. Not until the last call—the sudden up-flashing instinct of self-preservation—would he lose his skill and judgment and nerve and the spirit of that race. Venters seemed to read Jerry's mind. That little crime-stained rider was actually thinking of his horses, husbanding their speed, handling them with knowledge of years, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... and brave a seaman as ever stepped; but he knew full well that killing an official of the Inquisition in the execution of his duty, would make the country too hot for him. The instinct of self-preservation was as strong with him as with most men. He considered how he could avoid the consequences of his act. There was a large cupboard in the room. He dragged the body in, and locking the door put the key in his pocket. The wound ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... two I felt as if I should fall. Then the instinct of self-preservation moved me to act, and with my hands stretched out before me I went quietly ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... childishly from the coming revealment of his victim. Yet why should he? Fierce as the struggle had proved, on his part the fight had been entirely one of defence. He had been attacked, and had fought back only in self-preservation. Winston harbored no animosity; the fierceness of actual combat past, he dreaded now beyond expression the thought that through his savagery a human life might have been sacrificed. The tiny flame of the ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... planet could not exist without water, and their land would become entirely desert unless supplied with moisture. It will, therefore, be seen that the only thing possible, as a means of self-preservation, would be for them to make channels to carry the water in the most economical way from the poles to the parts where it was needed. Unless they found a means of doing this death stared them in the face. What greater incentive could ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... fish-bones; but that oatmeal was, he apprehended, as nourishing and salutary as wheat-flour, and the Scots in general thought it at least as savoury. — He affirmed, that a mouse, which, in the article of self-preservation, might be supposed to act from infallible instinct, would always prefer oats to wheat, as appeared from experience; for, in a place where there was a parcel of each, that animal has never begun to feed upon the latter ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... cupidity—from then until now that combination has been struggling to hold and has held an audience of the undiscriminating and the unthinking. But, further, and worse, a short-sighted instinct of self-preservation has led other papers to follow somewhat at a distance in this demoralizing race. None of them has gone to such lengths, but the tendency to literary, mental and moral dissipation induced by a hitherto unknown form of competition has swerved and largely recast the methods ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... The chorus men have invaded society with their fox-trots and maxixe steps. We club men will have to countercharge the enemy, for self-preservation, to play heavy ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... individual life, and the other is the instinct to propagate the species. Mating, nesting and care of the young come under the reproductive instinct, while feeding, flight from danger, and shunning extreme heat or cold are modes of self-preservation. This seems logical enough, but it is very bad psychology. It amounts to a classification of native reactions from an external point of view, without any consideration of the way the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... of loving them was measured in the same measure as anxiety for their safety. In bygone days her care had been mainly for herself. All she had learned in her strange puppyhood, all she had picked up since, was bent to the main idea of self-preservation. Now she was ousted from her own affections by her brood. Her chief care was to keep their home concealed, and this was not very hard at first, for she left them only when she must, ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... was here being joined—the old, old conflict between a dead and a living fellowship. It was my intuitive, although unconscious knowledge of this fact, which made me a rebel in every Unitarian gathering of the last ten years. It was a similarly unconscious instinct of self-preservation which taught my Unitarian brethren, to whom the old association was still central, to resent the things I sought. We had been born together, and we lived together; our past and our present were joint possessions. But when we faced the future, we divided; my [12] colleagues, ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes
... Two more desperate efforts, while she fought the hideous temptation to look downwards. For an instant she almost lost all knowledge of what she was doing. Guided only by instinct—the instinct of self-preservation—her eyes still straining painfully in that enforced upward gaze, she at last ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... the last effort of Cromwell to rule with a parliament; or, as his advocates say, to restore the constitution of his country. It was plain that there was too much party animosity and party ambition to permit the protector, shackled by the law, to carry out his designs of order and good government. Self-preservation compelled him to be suspicious and despotic, and also to prohibit the exercise of the Catholic worship, and to curtail the religious rights of the Quakers, Socinians, and Jews. The continual plottings and political disaffections of these parties forced him to rule on a system to which ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... continue to enjoy it by oneself. But it never will lose currency with the world, in spite of monetary appearances; it never will lose supremacy. Currency and supremacy are insured to it, not indeed by the world's deliberate and conscious choice, but by something far deeper,—by the instinct of self-preservation in humanity. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... anxious and tired, the men gloomy or sad; and a general "Hark!-from-the-tombs-a-doleful-sound" style of conversation seemed to be the fashion: a state of things which caused one coming from a merry, social New England town, to feel as if she had got into an exhausted receiver; and the instinct of self-preservation, to say nothing of a philanthropic desire to serve the race, caused a speedy change in Ward ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... I should be choked to death; and the instinct of self-preservation took possession of me. I sprang at the throat of my old tyrant. He went down upon the floor, and I on the top of him, before my father or any other person could come to my aid. As he went down he released his grasp on my throat in his effort ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... nine categories and let us note that they have the following characters in common: They are grouped in combinations that are often new and unforeseen; they are not a repetition of daily life, acts necessary for self-preservation. At one time the movements are combined simultaneously (exhibition of beautiful colors), again (and most often) successively (amorous parades, fights, flight, dancing, emission of noises, sounds or songs); but, under one form or ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... Argyle Rooms were my favourite haunts. My mother suffered, and expected ruin, for I took no trouble to conceal anything; I boasted of dissipations. But there was no need for fear; I was naturally endowed with a very clear sense indeed of self-preservation; I neither betted nor drank, nor contracted debts, nor a secret marriage; from a worldly point of view, I was a model young man indeed; and when I returned home about four in the morning, I watched the pale moon ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... get a hundred per cent. if he can; why should the statesman sell his labour to the state at three? Away with the silly prejudice, and the retail-trade of your conscientious precepts; carry on your business wholesale, on the sacred principle of self-preservation. ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... of the American claims of exemption from parliamentary taxation, the destruction of the tea by the Bostonians was warranted by the great law of self-preservation; for it was not possible for them by any other means to discharge the duty ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... bring Prussia to the position she now holds, and what she has gained at the point of the sword must be retained in the same way. The immense sacrifices which the people make to support the army and navy are deemed necessary for self-preservation, and with France on one side and Russia on the other, there really seems to be ample excuse for it. To-day the German army is as ready as in 1870, when Von Moltke walked down the Unter den Linden, the day after hostilities were declared, looking in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... shoulders its instinctive way through scratching underbrush to food and water. Thea may be checked and delayed by all sorts of human complications but her deeper nature never loses the sense of its proper direction. Ambition with her is hardly more than the passion of self-preservation in ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... too, that the force of modesty is one of the strongest and most ancient instincts of civilized man, that probably it is a sound and healthy one, inextricably involved in the race's instinct of self-preservation and self-perpetuation. Anyway, they feel that the discussion draws ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... with an intention of remedying this evil, though the origin of it is beyond the reach of decree. It originates in that distrust of government which reconciles one part of the community to starving the other, under the idea of self-preservation. While every individual persists in establishing it as a maxim, that any thing is better than assignats, we must expect that all things will be difficult to procure, and will, of course, bear a high price. I fear, all ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... make some mention of us, "the only disfranchised class now remaining," in his last Liberator. It is fitting that we should be recognized in his valedictory. We have now boosted the negro over our own heads, and we had better begin to remember that self-preservation is the first law of nature. Will you see if you can get our petition in your city and county papers? Sign it yourself and send it to your representatives in Senate and Congress, and then try to galvanize the women of your district into life. Some say: "Be still; wait; this is the negro's hour." ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul closely connects the two (1 Cor. vi. 13, 15), as he also links drunkenness and impurity (1 Cor. vi. 9, 10). Then comes the third form in which the vitality of the body displays itself: the instinct of self-preservation, setting itself against everything that interferes with our pleasures and comfort. What is called temper, with its fruits of anger and strife, has its roots in the physical constitution, and is one among ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... exposed to dangers, such as the epidemics so frequent in places of confinement, exhaustion, flogging, not to mention accidents, such as sunstrokes, drowning or conflagrations, when the instinct of self-preservation makes even the kindest, most moral men commit cruel actions, and excuse such ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... skies. It is in all truth weary work, those long watches of the night.... Sometimes even your four hours' sleeping time is rudely broken into by half a dozen alarms; for separated sometimes by hundreds of feet from your comrades of the next post, the instinct of self-preservation makes you line your loopholes and peer anxiously into the gloom beyond, when any one of the enemy shows that he is afoot. A single rifle-shot spitting off near by is as often as not the cause of the alarm; for that rifle-shot cracking out ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... always terrible strong for self-preservation, and his thoughts leapt forward; and he saw that if a fox had bit poor dead Joe, the creature must have come from somewheres. Of course a fox can go where a man cannot, yet that foxes homed here meant hope for Amos; and there also was the blessed ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... Glenarvan and his party became terrible, and for the first time their moral energy threatened to give way. They no longer walked, they dragged themselves along, soulless bodies, animated only by the instinct of self-preservation which survives every other feeling, and in this melancholy plight they reached Point Lottin on the shores of ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... using that as the time for turning in. And thus are rendered grateful those slumbers which are induced by the prevailing spirit of noon. Of course, under such conditions of existence, there is no great probability that much risk will be encountered by any one gifted with the ordinary instinct of self-preservation. Should any one be foolhardy enough to dare for himself the experiment, he would scarcely find a surridgi to furnish animals, or a guide willing to pilot him. And should he even make a start of it, am I not the very man to know what a lesson ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... this?" I added, holding up the wrench, which, from an instinct of self-preservation, I ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... in the morning, I was overcome with tremendous exhaustion. My limbs stiffened in the grip of intense cramps. Conseil had to keep me going, and attending to our self-preservation became his sole responsibility. I soon heard the poor lad gasping; his breathing became shallow and quick. I didn't think he could stand such ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... piece of cruelty alone tarnished the glory of that day's action, but it seems to have been dictated by fear as a means of self-preservation. After the enemy had been completely routed in front, and a multitude of prisoners taken, the King, hearing that some detachments had got round to his rear, and were endeavoring to plunder his baggage, gave orders to the whole army to put their prisoners to death. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... perhaps, some respite, and possessed of a brain that had its station considerably above the tumult of the senses, he tried to reduce the vague and wandering incoherency of his emotions to order. The sense of self-preservation was strong in him, and Katharine herself had strangely revived it by convincing him that his family deserved and needed all his strength. She was right, and for their sake, if not for his own, this passion, which could bear no fruit, must be ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... her life," cried her father, "it is her only fault that she has not anger enough in her nature for self-preservation." ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... preventing these designs, was to seize the present opportunity, and take advantage of a like zeal in the Protestants of Scotland; nor could any doubt be entertained with regard to the justice of a measure founded on such evident necessity, and directed only to the ends of self-preservation: that though a French war, attended with great expense, seemed the necessary consequence of supporting the malecontents in Scotland, that power, if removed to the continent, would be much less formidable; and a small disbursement ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... "Yes! but self-preservation is the first law of nature, and I fear it is in vain to expect that persons not under the influence of religious principles will risk their lives, or submit to much self-denial, for the sake of alleviating the miseries of others. The reason given for this separation was, that it was impossible ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... glass jar, unable ever to leave it, and more than ever at the mercy of his captor's least whim. Not that he had any delusion that he would live long in any case: it was just the simple strong instinct of self-preservation that made him grab at every chance ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... sudden prosperity has deranged more heads and killed more people than reverses and grief; either because it takes a longer time to get convinced of utter ruin than great good fortune, or because the instinct of self-preservation compels us to seek, in adversity, for resources to mitigate despair; whereas, in the assault of excessive joy, the soul's spring is distended and broken when it is suddenly compressed by too many thoughts and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Fischer, and the other educated men of the Free State did not know that, following Kruger's hostile policy of eliminating the preponderating Power in South Africa, meant that that Power would be forced either to fight in self-preservation or to disappear ignominiously? For I maintain that there were only two courses open to England in answer to Kruger's challenging policy—to fight or to retire from South Africa. It was only possible for men suffering from tremendously swollen heads, such as our leaders were ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle |
