"Inborn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is inborn in all normal boys. Action is almost a supreme demand in all the stories they read with most pleasure. Here is presented a series of rattling good adventure stories which every live "go ahead" ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... tone of his mind, Chaucer could not but sympathise with the opponents of ecclesiastical domination—though, as a man of free and critical spirit, and of an inborn ability for penetrating beneath the surface, he could not but find subjects for endless blame and satire in the members of those Mendicant Orders in whom his chief patron's academical ally had recognised the most formidable ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... "must have begun with a metaphysic, not reasoned and abstract, like that of modern educated men, but felt and imagined, such as must have been that of primitive men. This was their own poetry, which with them was inborn, an innate faculty, for nature had furnished them with such feelings and such imaginations, a faculty born of the ignorance of causes, and therefore begetting a universal sense of wonder, for knowing nothing they marvelled greatly ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... been no occasion for the present notice. His fame would long since have been buried under the rubbish he had himself piled up. The fact is very different. "Natural fluency"—that is to say, the inborn capacity of the writer—he undoubtedly possessed; but "acquired difficulty,"—this was the school in which he had practised, this was the discipline which enabled him, when the need arose, to carry on a campaign of forced marches, brilliant and incessant skirmishes, without severing his lines or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... faith is more than the creed of our country, it is the inborn hope of our humanity, an ideal we carry but do not own, a trust we bear and pass along. And even after nearly 225 years, we have a long way ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... some smoothly polished devices that held an aura of violence. Looking at them, Neel had an overwhelming sensation of defeat. His life was dedicated to peace and the furthering of peace. He hated the violence that seemed inborn in man, and detested all the hypocritical rationalizations, such as the ends justifying the means. All of his training and personal inclinations ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... the dignity of the bishop and the laughter of Fairy ever in their thoughts, the girls arose and went down, proudly, calmly, loftily. Their inborn senses of humor came to their assistance when they entered the living-room. The Slaughter boys looked far more slaughtered than slaughtering. They sat limply in their chairs, nervously twitching their yellowed slimy fingers, ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... will be to him the instinctive clutch that may now and again—in an ungraceful, anyhow fashion—keep him from slipping down to perdition, and save his soul alive. There he shall find that whatever he has really learned by labour or grasped with inborn talent, will sooner or later come to the surface to his credit and for his good; but that what he swaggers will not even find fair play. There, in brief, he shall find his level—a great matter for most men. There, in ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... feel, that stones have character, that stones have tones and values, the whole artistic meaning of a Japanese garden cannot be revealed to you. In the foreigner, however aesthetic he may be, this feeling needs to be cultivated by study. It is inborn in the Japanese; the soul of the race comprehends Nature infinitely better than we do, at least in her visible forms. But although, being an Occidental, the true sense of the beauty of stones can be reached by you ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... differed in character and genius, there was a resemblance between their history and character.... both these poets held themselves above the opinion of the world, and both were followed by the fame and popularity which they seemed to despise. The writings of both exhibit an inborn, though sometimes ill-regulated, generosity of mind, and a spirit of proud independence, frequently pushed to extremes. Both carried their hatred of hypocrisy beyond the verge of prudence, and indulged their vein of satire ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... face twitched, his eyes twitched, his pursed-up lips worked together; it was again as if he were struggling with a laugh. He wore his tall square cap well off his forehead, and looked what he really was—a strong man tired, but not yet tired out, of kindness. The benevolence seemed inborn, seemed fighting through every seam of the pompous face. "Madonna! his generous motions work him into creases, as if he were volcanic soil," thought Angioletto. Watching him narrowly as he came, he decided that this was a master to be loved if not admired, respected but not feared. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... his true meaning. Thus Franconnette cost him two years' labour. Although he wrote of peasants in peasants' language, he took care to avoid everything gross or vulgar. Not even the most classical poet could have displayed inborn politeness—la politesse du coeur—in a higher degree. At the same time, while he expressed passion in many forms, it was always with ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... setting into which each one is born is his social heredity. "The heredity with which civilization is most supremely concerned," says Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, "is not that which is inborn in the individual. It is the SOCIAL inheritance which constitutes the dominant factor in human progress."[1] It is this social inheritance which shapes our characters, rough-hewn by nature. It is by the light of each person's social inheritance ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... native strength more clearly than in his treatment of love. He has touched this world-old theme—which almost every poet has handled, and handled in his highest manner—with that freshness and insight, which is possible only to the inborn originality of genius. Other poets have, in some ways, given to love a more exquisite utterance, and rendered its sweetness, and tenderness, and charm with a lighter grace. It may even be admitted that there are poets whose verses have echoed more ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... one of its most beloved members, blessed in the fruition of every earthly good. The virtues, the muses, and the charities were the chosen guests at his abundant table. Poverty could not veil genius from his penetration, nor misfortune obscure the inborn light of its integrity. Though exiled from his native land, where his birth gave him dominion over rich territories, now in the hands of strangers, and a numerous happy people, now no more, he had not yet ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... we cannot overcome; Say not thy evil instinct is inherited, Or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life forlorn, And calls down punishment that ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... imagined courts, even in the minister's house in Pleasant Valley, there was the calm poise and grace which we associate in our speech and thoughts with the highest advantages of social relations. So extremes sometimes meet. In Diana it was due to her inborn nobility of nature and the sharp discipline of sorrow; in aid of which practically came also her perfection of physical health and form. It must be remembered, too, that she had been now for a good while in the close companionship ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... concerned, devoted it to her wishes. Except for books, and the clothes she was forced to remind him to get, he had no personal expenses. In addition to the money he never offended her, his relationships and manner were conducted with an inborn nice formality ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... conveyance of useful information as my forte. This belief was not inborn with me; it has been driven home upon me ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... chief educational influence was to be found in the Anglo-American passion for an argument and a speech. Hand in hand, as has so long been the custom in our country, law and politics moved among the people, who had an inborn, inherited taste for both; these stimulated and educated the settlers in a way that only Americans can appreciate. When Lincoln, as is soon to be seen, turned to them, he turned to what then and there appeared ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... senses. He was a conceptualist, and never could raise himself into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, and has been so to others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated, and, as it were, looked down upon, from the throne of actual ideas, or living, inborn, essential truths.' ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... musicians and painters cannot demand from the interpreters of their works knowledge of the relations between movements in time and in space, for this knowledge can only be developed by special studies. No doubt a few poets and painters have an inborn knowledge of the rhythms of space; for instance, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the stage mounter of "Electra" at the Vienna Opera, who constructed a huge staircase, on which, however, the actors, having little acquaintance with the most elementary notions of balance, moved with deplorable heaviness; ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... is evident from the following. Animals of every kind have limbs by which they move, organs by which they feel, and viscera by which these are exercised; these they have in common with man. They have also appetites and affections similar to man's natural appetites and affections; and they have inborn knowledges corresponding to their affections, in some of which there appears a resemblance to what is spiritual, which is more or less evident in beasts of the earth, and birds of the air, and in bees, silk-worms, ants, ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... human kindness had been slightly curdled for Mr. Joe by sundry college-tribulations; and having been "suspended," he very naturally vibrated between the inborn jollity of his temperament and the bitterness occasioned by his wrongs. He had lost at billiards the night before, had been hurried at breakfast, had mislaid his cigar-case, and splashed his boots; consequently the darker mood prevailed that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... inquired, how were these people governed? how were their passions controlled in their everyday transactions? It must have been by an inherent principle of honesty and charity towards each other. They seemed to be governed by that sort of tacit common-sense law which, say what they will of the inborn lawlessness of the human race, has its precepts graven on every breast. The grand principles of virtue and honour, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same all the world over: and where these ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... second nature, in fact, a habitual movement fashions the material and physical being in such a manner as to create a type not inborn, and which ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... artificial society, to follow blindly the doctrines of a faith, or to be an obedient subject of a king. Instead he conceived the function of education to be to evolve the natural powers, cultivate the human side, unfold the inborn capacities of every human being, and to develop a reasoning individual, capable of intelligently directing his life under diverse conditions and in any form of society. A book setting forth such ideas naturally ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... had all Anna-Rose's inborn horror of accepting money or other benefits from people who had no natural right to exercise their benevolences upon her, to appeal to. Christopher, after long wrestling restored at last to pride, did sit down and write the letter ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... there were one or two not so crude, but not so harmless, who held her thoughts a little longer, but she decided that she did not want any of them, even if they should want her. Then again the face of Randolph Anderson flashed out before her eyes as it had done before. Charlotte, with her inborn convictions, laughed at herself, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... declare that, "unless witchcraft is true, nothing in the Bible is true," led him, while giving up the Ptolemaic theory and accepting in a general way the Copernican, to suspect the demonstrations of Newton. Happily, his inborn nobility of character lifted him above any bitterness or persecuting spirit, or any imposition of doctrinal tests which could prevent those who came after him from finding their ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... said Sproatly with a rueful gesture, "it implies no end of giving up. You have to fall into line, and that's why I kept outside it just as long as I could. I don't like standing in a rank, and," he glanced down at his clothing, "I've an inborn objection ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Civilisation,' Darwin published his 'Origin of Species,' which gradually effected a revolution in speculative philosophy almost as great as it effected in natural science; and from that time the supreme importance of inborn and hereditary tendencies has become the very central fact in English philosophy. It must be added that Buckle had many of the distinctive faults of a young writer; of a writer who had mixed little with men, and had ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... back to the tent. His chicken was gone. He laid this loss on Peter, saying, "He always did bring me bad luck." Penhallow was still asleep. Ought he to tell him of Peter Lamb. He decided not to do so, or at least to wait. Inborn kindliness acted as it had done before, and conscious of his own helplessness, he was at a loss. Near to dusk he lighted a pipe and sat down outside of Penhallow's hut. Servants of engineer officers spoke as they passed, or chaffed ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... people who simply read get but a second-hand experience. We must observe form and recognize the rules which good taste has drawn, but after all the finest form and the most nearly perfect rule is an inborn judgment. The merest accident may thrill a dull man with genius. I knew a young man who was commonplace until he was taken down with a fever, and when he got up his business sense was gone, but he wrote a parody that made ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... rang out on the conflict a new voice; the voice of a woman, clear and commanding, the tones instinct with that inborn quality of imperious authority which expects and ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... the associated vegetative-endocrine reactions, certain inborn automatic processes in the vegetative system and in the internal secretion system, which work automatically to produce increased intravisceral pressures. The reduction of these pressures below the point of their intrusion upon consciousness, their relief, as we say, also form the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... indeed, for a man, he was wonderfully modest and shy, and of a humility which was, as I saw it, profoundly touching. Yet there was no weakness in him. Not unbecomingly, not one whit more than was just, he believed in himself, in his position, in his family; he had dignity true and inborn without the need of self- assertion, and love and respect towards him went hand ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... for reasons of family, young St. Ledger decided to marry Ethel Manton; and to this end he devoted himself persistently and insidiously, but with the inborn patience and diplomacy ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... His reverence for men, if not for things, grew weaker with the strengthening of his sway, a sway due to the fact that men of extensive learning are rarely men of incisive force, and Carlyle—in this respect more akin to Johnson than to Swift—had the acquired material to serve as fuel for the inborn fire. Hence the least satisfactory of his criticisms are those passed on his peers. Injustices of conversation should be pardoned to an impulsive nature, even those of correspondence in the case of a man who had a mania for pouring out his moods to all and sundry; but where ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... himself was relegated to the position of an exploded idea, becoming an object of vituperation, witty or obscene according to the humour of the individual critic. As one of the illuminated, Mr. Verity did not escape the prevailing infection, although an inborn amenity of disposition saved him from atheism in its more blatantly offensive forms. The existence of the Supreme Being might be, (probably was) so he feared, but "a fond thing vainly imagined". Yet such is the constitution of the human mind that age confers a certain prestige and authority ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... at him from time to time she reflected, with some pride, that no one could have taken him for anything but what he was—a rising young New York banker of some hereditary line. As in certain English portraits there is an inborn aptitude for statesmanship, so in Derek Pruyn there was that air, almost inseparable from the Van Tromp kinship, of one accustomed to possess money, to make money, to spend money, and to support moneyed responsibilities. The face, slightly stern by nature, slightly grave by habit, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... masters, Mr. Luke Fraser, and Dr. Adam, were erudite and pains-taking teachers; but, to borrow a phrase from Montaigne, they could neither lodge it with him, nor make him espouse it, and Chambers illustratively relates, "apparently, neither the care of the master, nor the inborn genius of the pupil, availed much in this case; for it is said that the twenty-fifth place was no uncommon situation in the class for the future Author of the Waverley Novels." Perhaps the only anecdote of any early indication of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... showed a quickness of comprehension in taking the pose required, and the shoulder she bared was of so exquisite mold that Helen's keenest artistic powers were aroused. Ninitta understood the art of posing as a painter knows the use of brush and colors; she had for it an inborn capacity impossible except in the child of an art land. Moved by the inspiration of that most beautiful bust, Mrs. Greyson worked enthusiastically, scarcely noticing when her master left the room, an indication of ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... to take children travelling for their amusement and instruction. In our case we were put in the carriage because my mother would not leave us behind, and wanted to give our grandparents pleasure by our presence. She was right, but in spite of my inborn love of travel the month we spent on the journey seemed a period of very uncomfortable restlessness. A child realizes only a single detail of beauty—a flower, a radiant star, a human face. Any individual recollection of the journey to Holland, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... companionable. I have sometimes fancied an enjoyment of natural scenery not so much a faculty as an acquirement. It is so exquisite in the instructed, so strangely absent in uneducated humanity. But certainly with Milly it was inborn and hearty; and so she could enter into my raptures, and ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... soul. The spiritual functions are "smothered in surmise". Faith is not a matter of blind belief, of slavish assent and acceptance, as many no-faith people seem to regard it. It is what Wordsworth calls it, "a passionate intuition", and springs out of quickened and refined sentiment, out of inborn instincts which are as cultivable as are any other elements of our complex nature, and which, too, may be blunted beyond a consciousness of their possession. And when one in this latter state denies the reality of faith, he is not unlike one born ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... temptation of the fantan shops is a fertile source of crime, especially amongst domestic servants, for apart from the Chinaman's inborn love of gambling, in the event of their being in financial straits, as is frequently the case, a possible way out of such difficulties is by stealthily taking certain objects from their master's house, say a clock and a dozen silver ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... laughed like a lot o' guinea-hens, but I knew that a business man has to overlook the inborn ignorance of his customers, or else it's twice as hard to land 'em; so ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... them. A child during the years of seven and nine is usually hungering for true stories, and some mothers and teachers try to meet the demand by reading and telling "true" stories to them. This is well and good, but it is clear that if this inborn craving could be met by books framed in language of such limited vocabulary and construction that so young a child would constantly be invited to the story, how valuable it would be. This book is designated to meet this end. Less than 750 ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... I believe you're right, Les," he ventured, but with some hesitation. He was a rather nice young fellow, with the inborn idea that, theoretically, there couldn't be too many girls, but there was no denying the fact that Algonquin seemed to have more than her fair share. Only, Leslie was always so startlingly truthful, it was sometimes rather disconcerting to hear one's half-formed thoughts spoken out incisively ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... say nothing of lapses of memory, of inborn defects of observational power—though the suspiciously precise recollection of dates and events possessed by ordinary witnesses in important trials taking place years after the occurrences involved, is one of the most amazing things in the curiosities of modern jurisprudence. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... hat with the inborn grace of a high-born gentleman. I coloured and bowed. The train steamed out of the station. As it went, I fell back, half fainting, in the comfortable armchair of the Pullman car, hardly able to speak with surprise and horror. ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... the art of Raphael, partly from a notion of its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offices. He scorned to bear the yoke of any regular schooling; and proceeded to turn one half of the dining-room into a studio for the reproduction of still life. There he amassed a variety of objects, indiscriminately chosen from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ideal, the imperatively clamoured-for mysterious something, is neither conformity to an abstract idea, nor conformity to actual reality, nor conformity to the typical, nor conformity to the individual; it is, I take it, simply conformity to man's requirements, to man's inborn and peremptory demand for greater harmony, for more perfect co-ordination and ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... Jean had that inborn hatred of authority so common to many of his countrymen. It often begins in baiting the police, and sometimes ends in the overthrow ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... do less at first, but he promises to outrank the other man after a period of further training. Special experiments must be carried on and have been actually started to determine this plasticity of the psychophysical apparatus as an independent inborn trait ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... drove his horse furiously at Payne. He was very close now, and his face showed livid under the smearing dust, but his lips were drawn up in a little bitter smile as he rode straight upon the leveled carbines. Payne, at least, understood it, and the absence of flung-up hand or cry. Courthorne's inborn instincts were strong to ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... E'en in untutored brutes, the female sex Is marked by inborn subtlety—much more In beings gifted with intelligence. The wily Koeil, ere towards the sky She wings her sportive flight, commits her eggs To other nests, and artfully consigns The rearing of her ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... born some ten years after his brother,—to be accurate, in 1756,—and after the old King had laid aside his sword and retired into the quiet of his later years. With an honestly inherited love of fighting, and the inborn hostility to England that, even then, had existed in the Valerians for a hundred years, Hugo watched with quickening interest the struggle between the North American Colonies and Great Britain which began in 1775. When the Marquis de Lafayette threw in his fortunes ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... our mother's milk, and knew the Rule of Three as well as a Presbyterian boy does the Shorter Catechism. A cadet—an undergraduate of the South Carolina Military Institute —called our roll at Florence, and though an inborn young aristocrat, who believed himself made of finer clay than most mortals, he was not a bad fellow at all. He thought South Carolina aristocracy the finest gentry, and the South Carolina Military Institute the greatest institution ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... to which the human workers seemed mere automatic appendages, she lost all perception of what the scene meant. He had forgotten, too, that the swift apprehension of suffering in others is as much the result of training as the immediate perception of beauty. Both perceptions may be inborn, but if they are not they can be developed only ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... scrambling, squirming, screaming girls as were piled up five or six deep in the bottom of it may never be seen again. Some had been dumped overboard outright, and were floundering about in the snow, which, happily, had saved them from serious harm. With the inborn chivalry of his race, Michael's first thoughts said: "Fly to the rescue of the demoiselles," but stern duty said: "Sthick to yer horses, Moik, or they'll smash things to smithereens, and, bedad, I sthuck wid all me moight, or the Lord only knows where we'd all have fetched up at that ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... helped her greatly. She purposed to yet become as unaffected and un-self-conscious as Patty, and, though she knew she could never acquire Patty's inborn gaiety of spirit, she resolved to come as near to it as she could with ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... been invented by our mutual enemy. When the Hindus and Mahomedans fought against one another, they certainly spoke in that strain. They have long since ceased to fight. How, then, can there be any inborn enmity? Pray remember this, too, that we did not cease to fight only after British occupation. The Hindus flourished under Moslem sovereigns, and Moslems under the Hindu. Each party recognised that mutual fighting was suicidal, and ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... with his original disposition. He pronounced the most severe sentences upon Offenders, which, the moment after, Compassion induced him to mitigate: He undertook the most daring enterprizes, which the fear of their consequences soon obliged him to abandon: His inborn genius darted a brilliant light upon subjects the most obscure; and almost instantaneously his Superstition replunged them in darkness more profound than that from which they had just been rescued. His ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... Blair, and with an intent to throw suspicion on Mr. Thorpe, then we must look for a criminal of great cleverness and of patience and perseverance in the workings of his nefarious plans. I mean a nature of inborn evil, capable of premeditated wrong. This murder of Gilbert Blair was no impulsive or suddenly brought about job. It was carefully planned and carefully carried out. If you will show me some of Mr. Thorpe's writing I will tell you if ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... not. It is a mode of Enlightenment, as it is the dispelling of illusion and of doubt, and at the same time it is the overcoming of egoism, the destroying of mean desires, the uplifting of the moral ideal, and the disclosing of inborn wisdom. ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... of the various scenes of London life which he knew so well. These were published as fast as they were written, over the pen name of "Boz." He was paid almost nothing for them, but he persevered, prompted by his inborn love of writing and the fun he had in describing ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... have known one Henry Needler, a pupil of Purcell, and also Gostling, the son of the singer of the same name for whom Purcell wrote; but neither acquaintance seems to have profited him aught. His anecdotes are the product of inborn wickedness and an uncouth, boorish imagination. When we have cleared away his garbage, there remains only a skeleton life, but at any rate we have the satisfaction of ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... render a reason before the bar of Omniscience; for the grace which had lightened her last days we should pour out our hearts in thankful acknowledgment. From the life and the death of this our dear sister we should learn a lesson of patience with our fellow-creatures in their inborn peculiarities, of charity in judging what seem to us wilful faults of character, of hope and trust, that, by sickness or affliction, or such inevitable discipline as life must always bring with it, if by no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... inborn love of the antique in most men, although some are fond of asserting that their interests are bound up in the modern, and that they have no time to devote to the study of the antiquities of past ages or the things that were ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... engraver, possessed of an admirable knowledge, or, more properly speaking, a rare instinct as to the most minute particularity of time and degree, which may aid in varying the efficacy of the acid on copper. It was not only practice, industry, and intelligence, but more especially this inborn, well-nigh infallible instinct which warned him of the exact instant at which the corrosion had proceeded far enough to give such and such a value to the shadows as, in the artist's intention, the engraving required. It was just this triumph of mind over matter, this power of infusing ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight it was to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home; but there was more of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the sentiment was manifested; and never did he seem to roam the moors for the sake of their ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... afternoons—when Miss Lee and Mr. Brown regularly went down to the Rocks. So extraordinary was all this that Mr. Port admitted frankly to himself that he could make neither head nor tail of it; but he had an inborn conviction that such an unnatural state of affairs was not likely to last There was good Scriptural authority, he called to mind grimly, for the assertion that the leopard did not change his spots nor ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... in the ordinance of feet-washing. You eat the Lord's Supper as nearly after his example as can be known, in honor of him, and partake of the Communion of the bread and wine in remembrance of his broken body and shed blood. In addition to all this you hate the inborn corruptions of your fleshly mind. You sometimes sing from your heart's ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... resolutions, as generally happens in the season of prosperity, were executed in a leisurely and slothful manner. The Romans, in addition to their inborn activity of mind, were prevented from delaying by the posture of their affairs. For the consul was not wanting in any business which was to be done by him; and the dictator, Marcus Junius Pera, after the sacred ceremonies were concluded, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... difference between Beelzebub and Michael. It is primitive and unreasoning. Nationality may be compulsory—a sore grievance and a bitter reproach to existence. It may be a matter of choice, free and deliberate, a source of joy and social energy. Such nationality—whether inborn or acquired—is the best and safest asset which a State can possess. It is generally supposed that the naturalized subject must be disloyal in a case of conflict between his country of adoption and his country ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... she talks to me of God I shall send her to her friend 'Shapron,'" he said, imitating Ursula's infant speech, "I wish to see whether religious sentiment is inborn or not. Therefore I shall do nothing either for or against the tendencies of that young soul; but in my heart I have ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... who had traveled a great deal, and picked up western notions of hospitality to add to the inborn eastern sense of sacredness in the relation between host and guest. It seems that an hour or two later he came to take me down to a Gargantuan meal, but, feeling the chair against the door, and hearing snores, he decided it was better manners to let ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... greatest respect for the national army man, because I have seen him at his best. In the moments of gravest danger he has exhibited that courage which is only inborn in a free man. And when I saw that courage, I said, He does not need any 'education.' Let him remain a free man, and God help those who will try to take away his freedom." SGT. J. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... women who are created to love and to be loved. Starting from a very low station in life, she had risen in her adventurous career, acting instinctively, with inborn cleverness, accepting money and kisses, naturally, without distinguishing between them, employing her extraordinary ability in an unthinking and simple fashion. From all her experiences she had never known either a genuine tenderness ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... rather as a constitutional lawyer that he influenced the course of events. He was impetuous, intense and often vehement, unflinchingly courageous, devoted with his whole soul to the cause he had espoused; but his vanity, his pride of opinion and his inborn contentiousness were serious handicaps to him in his political career. These qualities were particularly manifested at a later period—-as, for example, during his term as president. He first made his influence widely felt and became conspicuous as a leader of the Massachusetts Whigs ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... drawing cartoons was adopted by the Flemish cartoonists at this time, but as it was an adoption and not a natural expression of inborn talent, it fell short of the high standard of the Renaissance. But that is not to say that we of to-day are not ready to worship the fruit of the Italian graft on Flemish talent. A tapestry belonging to the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... achieved the distinction of becoming the only convert to religion that was ever gathered from the Virginia roughs; and it transpired that the man who had it in him to espouse the quarrel of the weak out of inborn nobility of spirit was no mean timber whereof to construct a Christian. The making him one did not warp his generosity or diminish his courage; on the contrary it gave intelligent direction to the one and a broader field to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... both nations. Inevitably Henry's sympathies went out to the sore-pressed republic. They were none the less strong because the chief of the spoilers was France, for Henry and his people were imbued with an inborn antipathy to everything French.[97] Before he came to the throne he was reported to be France's enemy; and speculations were rife as to the chances of his invading it and imitating the exploits of his ancestor Henry V. It needed no persuasion from Ferdinand to induce him to ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... they went, as was their wont, for a stroll through the woods; and the Honourable John Ruffin, who had so carefully gratified his great inborn interest in the human race that now he missed very little, observed that once or twice the duke paused and looked about him as ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... does not believe it capable of explaining the riddle of human nature. He is so far from being a Pyrrhonist in the sense of resting on Pyrrhonism, that he seeks to mount on its shoulders to a higher truth. Nay, he clearly recognises that man has an inborn faculty for truth which not all the contradictions of his experience can belie. We may and must doubt as to many things; but there are principles lying at the root of human life which are invincible to all doubt. We can demonstrate many things; but there are natural realities beyond ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Saturday night. She had on a clean calico, and she bore herself imperturbably. Nanny and Sammy kept close at her heels. Their eyes were large, and Nanny was full of nervous tremors. Still there was to them more pleasant excitement than anything else. An inborn confidence in their mother ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... power, might, truthfulness, rectitude, devotion to Brahmanas, freedom from illusion or perplexity, protection of followers, destruction of foes, and care of all creatures,—these, O lord of men, are the inborn virtues of Skanda. Thus anointed by all the gods, he looked pleased and complacent; and dressed in his best style, he looked beautiful like the moon at its full. The much-esteemed incantation of Vedic hymns, the music of the celestial band, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... magistrates and the government were formally bound to do homage. Hence sprang those citizen-generals, accustomed to sketch plans of battle on the tables of taverns and to look down on the regular service with compassion by virtue of their inborn genius for strategy: hence those staff-officers, who owed their command to the canvassing intrigues of the capital and, whenever matters looked serious, had at once to get leave of absence -en masse-; and hence the battles on the Trasimene lake and at Cannae, and the disgraceful ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... trinkets, decorates herself with wild flowers, and is permitted to do no manner of drudgery. Some of these gypsy maidens are really quite beautiful in spite of their very dark complexions. Their eyes glisten with inborn avarice as I sweep past on my "silver" bicycle, and in their astonishment at my strange appearance and my evidently enormous wealth they almost forget their plaintive wail of "kreuzer! kreuzer!" a cry which readily bespeaks their origin, and is ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... a very innocent utterance," I replied. "There are splendid souls in whom the love of splendid things is natural and inborn." ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... human infant—thanks to inborn cravings—is DISCONTENTED with crawling. With much trouble and risk and many feeble totterings, he learns to walk erect. He gets up into a position that takes his eyes off the ground. He is able to look at the sun and stars and takes the position ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... These inborn likes and dislikes—which we call instincts—are the forces which have built up this wonderful body-machine of ours in the past and, if properly understood and trained, can be largely trusted to run it in the future. How to follow these instincts ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... some of which may be wholly or partly reckoned among the fine arts such as those which had to do with damasks and gold or silver embroidery, with woodcarving and 'intarsia,' with the sculpture of arabesques in marble and sandstone, with portraits in wax, and with jewelry and work in gold. The inborn talent of the Florentines for the systematization of outward life is shown by their books on agriculture, business, and domestic economy, which are markedly superior to those of other European people ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... but not for me. Day after day has taught me that very few men really live. Most of them are in a state of ceaseless dissipation: nay what they call thought and reflexion is itself the very same thing, a mere attempt to raise a mist around the nature and inborn feelings of their hearts, and to keep themselves from discerning them. And arrogance starts up, the consciousness of their dignity and strength goads and spurs them on, till they rave with ungovernable pride. This too I have ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... of the Fujiwara clan. Here he spent his days in military exercises and the chase, and by the time he was twenty-one had gained a reputation as a soldier of great valor and consummate skill, and as a warrior in whom the true spirit of chivalry seemed inborn. A youth of such honor, virtue, courage, and martial fire Japan ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... himself up with an effort. "That way—to your left—you cannot miss the path. Addio, signorina," and he lifted his hat with the inborn grace of the peasantry of ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... the lives of the Roman emperors, of whom M. Crevier has given such an exact account. Those princes were not born more evilly disposed than other men. Caius, surnamed Caligula, was wanting neither in natural spirit nor in judgment, and was quite capable of friendship. Nero had an inborn liking for virtue, and his temperament disposed him towards all that is grand and sublime. Both of them were led by a first fault on the nefarious, villainous road whereon they walked to their miserable end. Their history is cleverly treated ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... are fine. It is a good thing that we can count upon them. But at the same time let us rejoice in the play of native traits and individual vagaries. Cultivated manners are admirable, yet there is a sudden touch of inborn grace and courtesy that goes beyond them all. No array of accomplishments can rival the charm of an unsuspected gift of nature, brought suddenly to light. I once heard a peasant girl singing down the Traunthal, and the echo of her ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... manifestation of delight, I thought that the animal had been taught the accomplishment; his master assured me, however, that such was not the case, that both the smile and the chuckle were natural and inborn traits of ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... arrangements which civilized man follows with admiration. She shows just the right abhorrence of water for a creature that is not able to swim. She knows just what enemies to fly from and when to turn and fight, using with inborn dexterity her formidable claws. She prefers nocturnal excursions and sociabilities, having eyes which make it safe to be venturesome in the dark. She has certain vocal expressions of her emotions, which man in vain attempts to eradicate with all the agencies of domestication. She has special arts ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... than all this to me was my own story to Bessie, which found ready sympathy in her tender heart, especially that part of it that had to do with the home for working girls where I was now living. For to Bessie, with her inborn racial love of family, nothing was so much to be pitied as the unfortunates who found shelter there. She seemed to take a certain sort of consolation for her own hard life in hearing the sordid details of the wretched ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... would write ten pages where a clod-hopping collector would write a sentence. He could say the same thing over and over again in a hundred different ways. The feeble forms of official satire were at his command. [He could bray ironically at subordinate officers. He had the inborn arrogance required for official "snubbing." Being without a ray of good feeling or modesty, he could allow himself to write with ceremonial rudeness of men who in his inmost heart he knew to be in every way his ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... to the new religion, which he always hated and persecuted. But, even after their conversion to Christianity, his countrymen for a long time retained their inborn love of bloodshed and tyranny; they were in this respect, as in many others, the very reverse of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... too much even for dogs' teeth. The utmost the rascals could accomplish was to annoy and torment the object of their attack. It was quite another matter when the young ones began to arrive. Among this small game the enterprising hunters could easily satisfy their inborn craving for murder, for the scoundrels only killed for the sake of killing; they were not at all hungry, as they had as much food as they liked. Of course, we did all we could to put a stop to this state of ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... original nature plus their surroundings. Some would claim that if we could give boys and girls the same surroundings, the same social requirements, the same treatment from babyhood, there would be no difference in the resulting natures. Training undoubtedly accentuates inborn sex differences, and it is true that a reversal of training does lessen this difference; however, the weight of opinion at present is that differences in intellect and character do exist because of differences of sex, but that these ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... powers had clothed him with the glory of a Protestant hero, that Pitt could do what he wanted. The old religious fire was stirred. The most potent of all national instincts kindled the people to a generous warmth which overcame their inborn antipathy to continental operations, and it was possible to send a substantial contingent to Frederick's assistance. In the end the support fully achieved its purpose, but it must be noted that even in this case the operations were limited not only by contingent but also by object. ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett |
