"Instinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impressed me with the idea that in their bulky heads lay the brains that directed the community in its various duties. Many of their actions, such as that I have mentioned of two relays of workmen carrying out the ant-food, can scarcely be blind instinct. Some of the ants make mistakes, and carry in unsuitable leaves. Thus grass is nearly always rejected by them, yet I have seen some ants, perhaps young ones, carrying in leaves of grass. After a while these pieces ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... newspaper in town caught the contagion; became by insensible degrees more sensational and pornographic. The Patriot had started a rag-time pace (based on the same fundamental instinct which the rhythm of rag-time expresses, if the psychologists are correct) and the rest must, perforce, adopt it. Such as lagged in this Harlot's Progress suffered a loss of circulation, journalism's most condign penalty. For there are certain ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... power, never yet vanquished, and about to undertake the invasion of Russia—they had nothing to hope from the mother country. Yet the leaders, largely professional soldiers, faced the situation with soldierly instinct. "If we could destroy the American posts at Detroit and Michilimackinac," wrote Lieutenant-Governor Gore of Upper Canada, to Craig, in 1808, "many Indians would declare for us;" and he agrees with Craig that, "if not for us, they will ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... senses through the brain, as much as to the brain through the senses. It is the feminine equivalent of intellect. It "magnetises our poor vertebrae," in Verlaine's phrase, because it is sex and yet not instinct. It is sex civilised, under direction, playing a part, as we say of others than those on the stage. It calculates, and is unerring. It has none of the vulgar warmth of mere passion, none of its health or simplicity. It leaves a little red sting where ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... than one young American, idle, enterprising, charming and quite irresponsible), and she was appalled at her own capacity for love and suffering, the complete rout of her theories, based on harsh experience, before the ancient instinct to unleash her womanhood ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... were only soldiers of the Republic, whereas they were in truth soldiers of socialism. Thus their political understanding hid from them the roots of social distress; it distorted their insight into their real aims; their political understanding deceived their social instinct. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... side and were it not for the fact that Copper wasn't human could have been thoroughly enjoyable. That, however, was the real hell of it. He couldn't relax and enjoy the contest—his feet were on too slippery ground. And Copper with her unerring female instinct knew just what to do to make the footing slipperier. Sooner or later, she was certain that he would fall. It was only a question of applying sufficient pressure at the right spot and the right time. Now that she knew he desired her, she was content to wait. The only thing that had bothered ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... Sunday-school days the usual formulas of dogmatic religion, but upon matters of morality her ideas were of the vaguest possible description. The guide of her life had always been her instinct for happiness, her "genial sense of youth." She had never formulated any rule of life to herself, but that which she sought was joy, primarily for herself, and incidentally for other people, because unhappy people were disturbing ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... wild boar, which was really dangerous. F—— and another gentleman were riding with me one afternoon in a very lonely gully at the back of the run, when the dogs (who always accompany us) put up a large, fierce, black, boar out of some thick flax-bushes. Of course the hunting instinct, which all young Englishmen possess, was in full force instantly; and in default of any weapon these two jumped off their horses and picked up, out of the creek close by, the largest and heaviest stones they could lift. I disapproved of the chase under the circumstances, but my timid remonstrances ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... 'I beg your pardon; but it's not that; I am really out of order. I daresay my unwillingness to encounter any displeasure from my father is the consequence of my indisposition; but I'll answer for it, it is not the cause of it. My instinct tells me there is something ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... made a dive for them, and they tumbled ignominiously down the hatchway. We laughed consumedly. Then he cruised aft, the dress-circle considerately widening. He came up to me, as if knowing his benefactor by instinct, looking curiously about him, and curling and retracting his flexile snout and lip, after the manner of his kind. Now, I had often dealt with bears, tame and semi-tame, had 'held Sackerson by the chain,' as often as ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his house, engaged in verbal agreements with Bella and spreading comfortably on a chair, Lemuel was powerless. AH his instinct pressed him to send the other on, to refuse—in the commonest self-preservation—shelter. But both the laws of his old life and the commands of the new were against this act of simple precaution. Bowman eyed him with a ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... A sporting instinct and a grim sense of humor—the readiness to admire a brave foe and the ability to extract amusement from discomfiture—are the two things that have conspired to make the British soldier so uniformly successful in treating those "twin impostors," Triumph ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... gripped by the unknown. Some far-off instinct of future drove him, set his spiritual need, and made him register with his senses all that was so beautiful and good and heroic ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... lonely shores of Greenwater Broad the cry of a drowning man would bring no help at night. The fatal accident would explain itself. There was literally but one difficulty in the way—the difficulty which had already occurred to my mind. Could I sufficiently master the animal instinct of self-preservation to deliberately let myself sink ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... contemplating the scene with a leisurely, artistic eye, when some instinct made him turn his head and look over his shoulder ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... intrenched himself strongly on the ground of natural right; and, like some of the reformers of our own day, disdained to calculate the consequences of carrying out the principle to its full and unqualified extent. His earnest eloquence, instinct with the generous love of humanity, and fortified by a host of facts, which it was not easy to assail, prevailed over his auditors. The result of their deliberations was a code of ordinances, which, however, far from being limited to the wants of the natives, had particular reference ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... difficult to make out a case for the view that intercourse with the white races is proving a misfortune to China, but apparently this view is not taken by anyone in China except where unreasoning conservative prejudice outweighs all other considerations. The Chinese have a very strong instinct for trade, and a considerable intellectual curiosity, to both of which we appeal. Only a bare minimum of common decency is required to secure their friendship, whether privately or politically. And I think their thought ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... morality was, at worst, above that of many contemporary politicians; and that, in short, he had a conscience, though he could not afford to obey it implicitly. He says himself, and I think the statement has its pathetic side, that he made a kind of compromise with that awkward instinct. He praised those acts only of the Government which he really approved, though he could not afford to denounce those from which he differed. Undoubtedly, as many respectable moralists have told us, the man ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... swept down upon Egypt and North Africa. The burning of the library of Alexandria remains forever the symbol of the triumph of a militarist "culture" over civilization. This easy belief of the dull and violent that war "braces" comes out of a real instinct of self-preservation against the subtler tests of peace. This type of person will keep on with war if it can. It is to politics what the criminal type is to social order; it will be resentful and hostile to every attempt to fix up a ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... fact is, the developement of a new instinct, which, as M. Roulin declares, seems to become hereditary in the breed of dogs found among the borderers on the river Madeleine, which are employed in hunting the pecari. I shall cite the author's own words:—'L'addresse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... suddenly changed; pressed upon by the transitions of trade, and new and all incalculable modes, fabrics, arts, machines and competing populations,—I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before; indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe in her power of endurance ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... One's instinct is to dislike luxury, but in war-time it seems horrible. We ourselves will probably have to rough it badly soon, so I don't mind, but it's a side of life that seems to me as beastly as anything I know. Fortunately, the luxury of an hotel is minimised ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... seldom occasion to meet him. I have no doubt that he credits me with the disfavour in which he is held by the prince; but I have never even mentioned his name before him, and the prince's misliking is but the feeling which a noble and generous heart has, as though by instinct, against one who is false and treacherous. At the same time we must grant that this traitor knight is a bold and fearless man-at-arms; he fought well at La Blanche Tache and Cressy, and he is much liked and trusted by my lord of Northampton, in whose following ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... to me—things have a habit of coming my way.... I suppose I'm not exactly the man to lecture anybody on the art of fighting fortune. She's always been decent to me.... Sometimes I'm afraid—I have an instinct that she's too friendly.... And it troubles me. Do you understand what ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... in order to be replaced by the factory owner, thus the small farmer can no longer exist beside a syndicate which will systematically cultivate large tracts of land. The tendency of the time is to apply system also to agricultural pursuits, to take that art out of the sphere of instinct and to transplant it into ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... first place, because her doing so would have given offence to Napoleon; and next, because her natural frivolity led her to give a preference to lighter pursuits. But I may safely affirm that she was endowed with an instinct so perfect as seldom to be deceived respecting the good or evil tendency of any measure which Napoleon engaged in; and I remember she told me that when informed of the intention of the Emperor to bestow the throne of Spain on Joseph, she was seized with a feeling of indescribable ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... scavengers of Nature, and hoping that they will grow bold enough to settle at length somewhere near me. But they are too suspicious; perhaps with their superior sight they note the blinking of my eyes as I look upwards at the dazzling sky, or instinct may tell them that I am not lying down after the manner of a dying animal. Their patience is more than a match for mine, and so I come down from my ledge and make my way back to my cottage before the pink blush of evening has ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... of the table, a heavy shawl over her head. Under it the dark face, propped in the fork of her hand, glowed sullenly, and her bare, white arm was like a menacing thing. Dawson bowed to her with an instinct of politeness. In a chair near her a grossly fat man was huddled, scowling heavily under thick, fair brows, while the other man, he who had opened ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... while pointing out that this was scarcely adequate to produce the effect desired, thought that placing a child to the breast after labor had begun might increase uterine action. (J.Y. Simpson, Obstetric Memoirs, vol. i, p. 836; also Fere, L'Instinct ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the Irish literature, we see that the strength of this conservative instinct has been of the greatest service in the preservation of the early monuments in their purity. So much is this the case, that in many tales the most flagrant contradictions appear, the author or scribe being unwilling to depart at all from that which he found ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... Polonaise, and Les Oiseaux Voyageurs, ou Les Polonais en France—both written in Gascon. Saint-beuve thinks the latter one of Jasmin's best works. "It is full of pathos," he says, "and rises to the sublime through its very simplicity. It is indeed difficult to exaggerate the poetic instinct and the unaffected artlessness of this amiable bard. "At the same time," he said, "Jasmin still wanted the fire of passion to reach the noblest poetic work. Yet he had the art of style. If Agen was renowned as 'the eye of Guienne,' Jasmin was certainly the greatest ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... will talk of the tennis. I do not know whether it is my fancy, but that man there to your left, in grey, seems to me to be taking an interest in our conversation. He cannot possibly overhear, and he has not glanced once in our direction, yet I have an instinct ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... turned by a sort of instinct to Amy Russell, whose face was like a beam of sunshine in Sandhill cottage, and whose labours among the poor and the afflicted showed that she regarded life in this world as a journey towards a better; as an opportunity ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... confession of her own intractable character, without religious faith to ennoble it, without even imagination to refine it—the unconscious disclosure of the one tender and loving instinct in her nature still piteously struggling for existence, with no sympathy to sustain it, with no light to guide it—would have touched the heart of any man not incurably depraved. Amelius spoke with the fervour of his young enthusiasm. ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... his appearance, approaching with his hand proffered in token of welcome, while his face beamed with everything one could imagine to be associated with benevolence and charity. He seemed to divine by instinct that I was an Englishman, as promptly as he did by my embarrassment that I was no Frenchman, addressing me in my own language with great fluency, though, as was to be expected, with a considerable ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... remembered his father's opinions, so that he was able to quote some maxims or hint of his in most cases of illness. As a rule, he put small faith in doctors, and thus his unlimited belief in Dr. Darwin's medical instinct and methods of treatment ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... railway-key men, suddenly reminding me of his unnecessary existence. "Hardly knew what I was about when I shoved you away from the door. Me and my friend was afraid of missing the train, so we pushed—instinct of self-preservation, I suppose," and he chuckled as if he had got off some witticism. "Anyhow, I apologise. Nothing ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... The instinct to conceal defeat and pain is so strong in me that I would have my heart cut out rather than own it ached. Yet many women carry all before them by a little ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... body. But upon what principle is the discrimination of the places of election to be made, in order to answer the purpose of the meditated preference? Are "the wealthy and the well-born,'' as they are called, confined to particular spots in the several States? Have they, by some miraculous instinct or foresight, set apart in each of them a common place of residence? Are they only to be met with in the towns or cities? Or are they, on the contrary, scattered over the face of the country as avarice or chance may have happened to cast their own lot or that of their predecessors? If the ...
— The Federalist Papers
... into an element of power, a discipline of goodness. Even in the coarsest life, and the most depressing circumstances, woman hath this power of hallowing all things with the sunshine of her presence. But never does it unfold itself so finely as when education, instinct with religion, has accomplished its most successful work. It is only then that she reveals all her varied excellence, and develops her high capacities. It only unfolds powers that were latent, or develops ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... isolation, to rejoin the most numerous herd as soon as possible, to always form masses and bodies and thus follow the impulsion which comes from above, and gather together scattered individuals, such is the instinct of the flock. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... particular kind of folly, I will endeavour to describe it. Were all creatures to be ranked in the order of creation according to their usefulness, I know few animals that would not take place of a coquette; nor indeed hath this creature much pretence to anything beyond instinct; for, though sometimes we might imagine it was animated by the passion of vanity, yet far the greater part of its actions fall beneath even that low motive; for instance, several absurd gestures and tricks, infinitely more foolish than what can be observed in the most ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... critical moment, and had the young hunter leaped up he might have been dangerously if not fatally struck. But by instinct he backed away silently and moved off in another direction through the brush. The rattlesnake did not follow, although it kept its piercing eyes on the hunter as long as possible. After the antelope stalk was ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... "especially the one I met in the trench (p. 111) when I was going round the traverse. It lay on the floor in front of me. I hardly knew what it was at first, but a kind of instinct told me to stand and gaze at it. The Germans had just flung it into the trench and there it lay, the bounder, making up its mind to explode. It was looking at me, I could ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... (Pleasantly.) Is not the moral view of a question, about as far as a woman's instinct ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... him. He wished to escape, but was always kept from doing so by some word or sign from Madame de Nailles. Jacqueline had been thinking: "Oh! if he would only come and talk to us!" He was now drawing near them, and an instinct made her wish to rush up to him and tell him—what should she tell him? She did not know. A few moments before so many things to tell him had ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... was unfamiliar. This man was scarcely many years older than Glenn, yet he had grizzled hair, a seamed and scarred visage, coarse, thick lips, and beetling brows, from under which peered gleaming light eyes. At every turn he flashed them upon Carley's face, her neck, the swell of her bosom. It was instinct that caused her hastily to close her riding coat. She felt as if her flesh had been burned. Like a snake he fascinated her. The intelligence in his bold gaze made the beastliness of it all the harder to endure, all ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... a still greater reward to his fidelity that she seized an opportunity when her husband's head was turned to wave her hand to him. Leonidas did not approach the fence, partly through shyness and partly through a more subtle instinct that this man was not in the secret. He was right, for only the next day, as he passed to the post-office, she called him ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... is as wayward and as fickle as a bee among the flowers. It will not long pause anywhere, and it easily leaves each blossom for a better. But like the bee, while impelled by an instinct that makes it search for sugar, it sucks in therewith its ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... women, children, and dogs. By virtue of a mystic gift with which rumour credits them, they are never mistaken. It is merely not true. Women are constantly quite wrong in the estimates based on their "feminine instinct"; they sometimes even admit it; and the matrimonial courts prove it passim. Children are more often wrong than women. And as for dogs, it is notorious that they are for ever being taken in by plausible scoundrels; the perspective of dogs is grotesque. Not seldom have I grimly watched the gradual ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... brush-filled gulley. Happy Jack gave a hoarse croak of triumph and fired, just as the fog-curtain swayed back maddeningly. Happy Jack nearly wept with pure rage. Weary and Slim came up, and together they galloped to the place, riding by instinct of direction, for there was no longer any sound ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... the most precious. The observance of this, not alone in the drawing-room, but in the family, in business, in the street, with regard to relatives, inferiors, servants and strangers, gives dignity, as well as a charm, to human intercourse. Delicate regard for what is proper becomes a habit, an instinct, a second nature, which nature, superimposed on the original nature, is the best, inasmuch as the internal code which governs each detail of action and speech, prescribes the standard of behavior and respect for oneself, as well as respect and refined behavior towards others.—To ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the article of M. Zola's young days to which I have referred is not one on market life in particular, but one on violets. It contains, however, a vigorous, if brief, picture of the Halles in the small hours of the morning, and is instinct with that realistic descriptive power of which M. Zola has since given so many proofs. We hear the rumbling and clattering of the market carts, we see the piles of red meat, the baskets of silvery fish, the mountains of vegetables, green and white; in a few paragraphs the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... shape! and both walking with their legs bent; both taking long strides, and both finding their way, with the instinct of a blood-hound, never looking up, nor turning to the right or left in their course. Are they partners in trade, or rivals? Do they follow the same business, or were they school-fellows together, some ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... intended them for, is not man in the same condition—with this difference only, that to his instincts (i.e., appetites and passion) is added the principle of reflection or conscience? And as brutes act agreeably to their nature, in following that principle or particular instinct which for the present is strongest in them, does not man likewise act agreeably to his nature, or obey the law of his creation, by following that principle, be it passion or conscience, which for the present happens to be strongest in him? Thus different men are by their particular ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... railroad practically banishes at once from its field all other means of land transportation. The railroad has thus a practical monopoly within its territory, and its managers, if left to follow their instinct, will despotically control all the business tributary to it, with unlimited power to build up and tear down, to punish its enemies and to ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... Their colors gleaming in the noonday glance, Their steps symphonious with the drum's deep notes, While high the buoyant, breeze-borne banner floats! O, let not allied hosts yon band deride! 'T is Harvard Corps, our bulwark and our pride! Mark, how like one great whole, instinct with life, They seem to woo the dangers of the strife! Who would not brave the heat, the dust, the rain, To march the leader of that valiant ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... What but that he was to act as though the greatest contest of his life was before him—aye, one with his very life for the prize! The zest for life, the deep-rooted objection to give up his task half done, the old sporting instinct to battle to the very finish, all combined to brace Max's nerve to a point at which nothing was impossible. Ready?—aye, he was ready and more than ready—all he waited for was the signal he ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... child," pleaded Nora. Her woman's instinct guided her straight to the secret of the conflict raging ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... with a yell of horror, and drawing my revolver fired it by a sort of instinct straight at the diabolical woman who had been caressing Mahomed, and was now gripping him in her arms. The bullet struck her in the back and killed her, and to this day I am glad that it did, for, as it afterwards transpired, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... the eyes that closed and opened to close again, as if to shut out the unworthy weakness,—yea, in the whole physical man,—was seen the crisis of the moral struggle. And what, in truth, to him an Edward or a Henry, a Lancaster or a York? Nothing. But still that instinct, that principle, that conscience, ever strongest in those whose eyes are accustomed to the search of truth, prevailed. So he rose suddenly and quietly, drew himself apart, left his work to ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... others.—My mother bows, As if Olympus to a molehill should In supplication nod: and my young boy Hath an aspect of intercession which Great nature cries "Deny not.'—Let the Volsces Plough Rome and harrow Italy: I'll never Be such a gosling to obey instinct; but stand, As if a man were author of himself, And ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... them for himself. He had not come to offer marriage. She had, in the face of the old warnings, dreamed again—falsely idealized once more—and his mission was to waken in her anew the dreary reality of her life. Yet that same maternal instinct which made her love a thing more of giving than of asking endowed him with a greater dearness, as ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... lived in a very comfortable, middling state of harmony, apparently on about the same social scale as Marietta's parents. That this feat was accomplished on a much smaller income was due to Marietta's unrivaled instinct and trained capacity for ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... which are produced by habits and sentiments, no two persons were less alike. Nature seemed to have intended them as examples of the futility of those theories which ascribe every thing to conformation and instinct and nothing to external circumstances; in what different modes the same materials may be fashioned, and to what different purposes the same materials may be applied. Perhaps the rudiments of their intellectual character, as well as of their form, w^ere the same; but the powers that in ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... girl student. Nor do they perceive that these aspirants possess much that is lacking in themselves—and that not particularly to their credit. Gorki knows that aspiration is not fulfilled without inward struggle and travail. And it is with a subtle psychological instinct that he endows the men who are struggling upward out of adversity with a deep craving for purity. Noble souls are invariably characterised by greater sensitiveness to delicacy, and this is equally the characteristic of those who are yearning to rise above ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... and on the ground. For in this way one deprives the man of one of his few opportunities which occur to him during his whole service of learning to find his way in unknown country, and thus to develop the instinct of finding his way, which requires ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... every wood, following the call of the winds and the birds, or wandering alone where the spirit moved him, who never studied nature consciously, but only loved it, and who found out many of these Ways long ago, guided solely by a boy's instinct. ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... deductions. I gather from his other works that he adopts the principle of Hobbes, that justice is founded in contract solely, and does not result from the constitution of man. I believe, on the contrary, that it is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society: ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... quite simple, naked, and unashamed. In vain the officers commanded and implored, in vain Sykes' Regulars took position on the Mathews Hill, a nucleus around which the broken troops might have reformed. The mob had neither instinct nor desire for order. The Regulars, retreating finally with the rest, could only guard the rear and hinder the Confederate pursuit. The panic grew. Ravens in the air brought news, true and false, of the victors. Beckham's battery, screaming ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... appear to enjoy themselves until the coachman lashes backwards at them with his whip. I never saw a grown man do it before, and I should have supposed that it would be most uncomfortable. Bland, however, seemed quite cheerful, and I admired the instinct which led him to attach himself to Moyne's carriage. He made sure of being present at the outbreak of hostilities, since the meeting could neither be held nor stopped till Moyne arrived; and he had hit upon far the easiest way of getting through the ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... pair of narrow eyes. He looked neither of the two occupants of the room full in the face. His glance was searching and sidelong rather, not so much from the presence of anything to spy upon as from habit and instinct. One fancied a man too accustomed to the heavy foot of superiors to decline willingly any minor advantage that came his way—or any ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... fact I think I was asleep as far as it would be called so, for I had from habit the custom of sleeping with one eye open, when I saw or felt the flash of a knife over my head. The entrance to my couch was very limited, so that my would-be murderer had some difficulty in striking the fatal blow. Instinct at once showed me ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... what to do, yet instinct urged her to follow. She had a feeling that she was on the verge of an important discovery, that events were about to happen which had been wholly unforeseen even by old ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... neighborhoods! But, as if sated with the destruction already wrought in the great square of the palace, the wolf dealt death no more in the precincts of the city; as if lashed on by invisible demons, his aim, or his instinct, was to escape. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... other is that any influence so far exerted by the Negro on American civilization has been primarily in the field of aesthetics. The reason is not far to seek, and is to be found in the artistic striving even of untutored Negroes. The instinct for beauty insists upon an outlet, and if one can find no better picture he will paste a circus poster or a flaring advertisement on the wall. Very few homes have not at least a geranium on the windowsill or a rosebush in the garden. If we look at the matter conversely we shall find that ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... principles alone, and of the example I wish to set the world, could I ever fall back upon any other. Yet fall back I would. And what good would you have done me then by refusing me? You would merely have cast me off from the man I love best, the man who I know by immediate instinct, which is the voice of nature and of God within us, was intended from all time for me. The moment I saw you my heart beat quicker; my heart's evidence told me you were the one love meant for me. Why force me to decline upon some other less ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... With the admirable instinct of an egotist, M. Favoral understood so well what passed in the mind of his wife, that he dared not complain too much of what the little fellow cost. He made up his mind bravely; and when four years later, his daughter Gilberte was born, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... The instinct of hospitality is not strong in my people!" She took me again by the hand, and led me through the darkness many steps to a curtain of black. Beyond it was a white stair, up which she conducted me ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... prisoners, who, by practised instinct, get to know the moment at which it should sound, three presently straightened up, spade in hand, to glance at the prison: ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... had been repeatedly varied. The result was that painful and profound sensation of helplessness that overcomes us all when the chain of association is broken, and reason becomes an agent less useful than instinct. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... skies at last. What has preserved it through each disfavor of birth and circumstances—why are its leaves as green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with all its arms, can embrace the open sunshine? My child, because of the very instinct that impelled the struggle,—because the labor for the light won to the light at length. So with a gallant heart, through every adverse accident of sorrow, and of fate, to turn to the sun, to strive for the heaven; this it is that ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Natural instinct seems to have no hesitation in seizing upon the first help that comes. It was so here. I might have swum to the wheel at first and clung to it, but I was afraid; but now, after going under once or twice—I'm ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... beautiful than a carefully prepared collection of moths, butterflies, and beetles with their infinite variety of form and colour, nothing is more disgusting than a badly preserved collection of distorted, shrivelled, vermin-infested specimens. The teacher should avail himself of the collecting instinct which is prominent in boys of nine to fourteen years of age and of their desire to have things done well, to develop in them habits ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... much thinner and older than formerly, she thought. There were harassed lines in his face, and its worn contours and shadowed eyes called aloud to the compassionate womanhood within her, to the mother-instinct that involuntarily longs to ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... cunning of long practice, he would read the sign in the snow, and by means of craftily concealed iron jaws and innocent appearing deadfalls, renew with increased confidence in his "winter set," the world-old battle of skill against instinct. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... little body towards Rochemalan, when he suddenly found himself opposed by the two bodies which had come up from St. John and La Tour. Retiring before them, he next found himself face to face with the fourth detachment, which had come up from Pramol. With the quick instinct of military genius, Javanel threw himself upon it before the beaten Rocheplate detachment were able to rally and assail him in flank; and he succeeded in cutting the Pramol force in two and passing through it, rushing up to the summit of the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... think, that the old instinct which tended to make a division between poetry and prose is being gradually obliterated. The rhythmical structure of poetry, and above all the device of rhyme, is essentially immature and childish: the use by poets of rhythmical beat and verbal assonance is simply ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Mitchell fished along the Billabong all the afternoon; I fished a little, and lay about the camp and read. I had an instinct that the Lachlan saw I didn't cotton on to his camping with us, though he wasn't the sort of man to show what he saw or felt. After tea, and a smoke at sunset, he shouldered his swag, nodded to me as if I was an accidental but respectful stranger ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... as naturally to Georgina as breathing. She could not repeat the simplest message without unconsciously imitating the tone and gesture of the one who sent it. This dramatic instinct made a good reader of her when she took her turn with Barbara in reading aloud. They used to take page about, sitting with their arms around each other on the old claw- foot sofa, backed ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hearing), she has trotted up-stairs again to the nest, and is as busy as ever. Possibly Clara might do the greater part of what she does, and do it better: but still, are they not her children? Let those who will call a mother's care mere animal instinct, and liken it to that of the sparrow or the spider: shall we not rather call it a Divine inspiration, and doubt whether the sparrow and the spider must not have souls to be saved, if they, too, show forth that faculty of maternal ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the instinct for preservation of one's kind, the voice of the life principle, the sign of creative power." These last four words open before us a wonderful field of thought. "Creative power!" What does that mean? Is creative power limited to reproduction of kind? Do you not create ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... prostitution of the streets is that of the marriage for a livelihood sanctioned by law and custom, because under its pestilential poison-breath not only the dignity and happiness of the living, but the sap and strength of future generations are blasted and destroyed. As love, that sacred instinct which should lead the wife into the arms of the husband, united with whom she might bequeath to the next generation its worthiest members, had become the only means of gain within her reach woman was compelled to dishonour ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the companionship of the great and the wise of past time." "Words," the same writer reminds us, "over and above their dictionary signification, connote all the feeling which has gathered round them by reason of their employment through a hundred generations of song." So it is, every word seems instinct with its own peculiar beauty, and fraught with its own peculiar association, and yet each detail is strictly subordinate to the general effect. No poet of Milton's rank, probably, has been equally indebted to his predecessors, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... preservation. Every child becomes fond of its nurse; Romulus must have loved the she-wolf who suckled him. At first this attachment is quite unconscious; the individual is attracted to that which contributes to his welfare and repelled by that which is harmful; this is merely blind instinct. What transforms this instinct into feeling, the liking into love, the aversion into hatred, is the evident intention of helping or hurting us. We do not become passionately attached to objects without feeling, which only ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... him coming from the porch of the house, a tall slim figure in a hunting shirt—that fitted to perfection—and cavalry boots. His face, his carriage, his quick movement and stride filled my notion of a hero, and my instinct told me he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... definite foundation of the Impressionist school. For thirty years it continued to produce without interruption an enormous quantity of works under an accidental and inexact denomination; to obey the creative instinct, without any other dogma than the passionate observation of nature, without any other assistance than individual sympathies, in the face of the disciplinary teaching of ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... had learned, partly through a wonderful instinct and partly through her mother's teaching, how to act when there was cause for alarm. Immediately on detecting the presence of an intruder, she lay as still as the stone beside the ant-heap near, trusting that ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... the road forked. We looked to see, if we could, which road Sheridan had taken with his cavalry during the day. It seemed to be the right-hand one, and accordingly we took it. We had not gone far, however, when Colonel C. B. Comstock, of my staff, with the instinct of the engineer, suspecting that we were on a road that would lead us into the lines of the enemy, if he, too, should be moving, dashed by at a rapid gallop and all alone. In a few minutes he returned and reported that Lee was moving, and that ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... more than her face. He had not spent a rou life in a great city for nothing; he had lived enough with gentlemen, broken-down and lost, it is true, but well-bred, to be able to ape their manners; and the devil's instinct that such people possess warned him of Hitty Hyde's weakest points. So, too, he contrived to make that first errand lead to another, and still another,—to make the solitary woman depend on his help, and expect his coming; fifty thousand dollars, with no more incumbrance than such a woman, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the main reliance. Its use should be practiced in every possible situation, until a correct choice or combination of long point, short point, and jab, and the execution thereof, becomes a matter of instinct. 2. The point must always be directed at a definite target. The most vulnerable points of the body are: Lower abdomen, base of the neck, small of the back (on either side of the spine), chest, and thighs. Bony parts of the trunk must be avoided by accurate aim. 3. The ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... different view, also present in Aristotle, and truer to the essence of his thought. It is a view instinct with that reverence for all existence of which I spoke at first, and it holds that all the different natural types, high or low, could all be united in one harmony, like an ordered army, as Aristotle himself would say, in ...
— Progress and History • Various
... were without help; that neither could assist the other; and above all, that for one, the water would hold out longer than for two. I felt no remorse, not the slightest, for these thoughts. It was instinct. Like a desperado giving up the ghost, I desired to gasp ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... who were tall and of youthful appearance, whether soldiers or civilians, were cut down indiscriminately.[228] While their rage was fresh they sated their savage cravings with blood; then suddenly the instinct of greed prevailed. On the pretext of hunting for hidden enemies, they would leave no door unopened and regard no privacy. Thus they began to rifle private houses or else made resistance an excuse for murder. There were plenty ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... I should be more than commonly affected by the death of Peregrine Langton[55], you were not mistaken; he was one of those whom I loved at once by instinct and by reason. I have seldom indulged more hope of any thing than of being able to improve our acquaintance to friendship. Many a time have I placed myself again at Langton, and imagined the pleasure with which I should walk to Partney[56] in a summer morning; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... current taste and the fashions of the age.' His epic represents a successful, because a vivid, reaction against conventionality. The life that throbs in it is incontestable, even though that life may be nothing better than ephemeral. With like brutality of instinct, healthy because natural, the barocco architects embraced ugliness, discord, deformity, spasm, as an escape from harmony and regularity with which the times were satiated. Prose-writers burst the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... which time Camille continued to play, Beatrix rose and retired to her apartments. Camille at once took Calyste into her chamber and closed the door, fearing to be overheard; for women have an amazing instinct of distrust. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... we called ourselves boys. "You must not stop in the Hall this time, but come to my home and we will talk over what Talladega is doing and what we ought to do," he insisted. Precious days were those, as I now recall them, with this scholarly man, so instinct with faith, so earnest and hopeful in his work, so happy in his family, and so full of plans for the time to come. We talked together of the interests of the institution which, within seventeen years, he ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... this rambling anatomy if I did not insist that Don Marquis regards his column not merely as a soapslide but rather as a cudgelling ground for sham and hypocrisy. He has something of the quick Stevensonian instinct for the moral issue, and the Devil not infrequently winces about the time the noon edition of the Evening Sun comes from the press. There is no man quicker to bonnet a fallacy or drop the acid just where it will disinfect. For instance, this comment ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... certainly, laying her whole life waste. Therefore I would have to be my own tribunal, judge, and executioner in my own cause. What mattered to me the arguments for or against? I was bound to give heed first to my final instinct, and it ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... sermon he sat with folded arms and eyes cast down, looking very sad and abstracted. When depressed, the very hue of his face seemed more dusk than when he smiled, and to-day cheek and forehead wore their most tintless and sober olive. By instinct Caroline knew, as she examined that clouded countenance, that his thoughts were running in no familiar or kindly channel; that they were far away, not merely from her, but from all which she could comprehend, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the path of pleasure. Bridge was just beginning to take hold of them; its grip was tightening with new coils as each night went by. Nobody thought of dinner; the thought was of the delay in getting at the game; an instinct that was not even a thought urged them to abhor the food that had come into ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... that I saw this extraordinary being whenever it was possible. But her chef-d'oeuvre, in my eyes, was the "wife of Macbeth." The character seemed made for her, by something of that instinct which in olden times combined the poet and the prophet in one. It had the ardour and boldness mingled with the solemnity and mystery that belonged to the character of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... will fly from the cage. 'Tis instinct. Besides, coop a young man up for loving a young woman? These burgomasters must be void ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... principle involved in this, as Hume pointed out in his Essay on the Balance of Power, is as old as history, and was perfectly familiar to the ancients both as political theorists and as practical statesmen. In its essence it is no more than a precept of commonsense born of experience and the instinct of self-preservation; for, as Polybius very clearly puts it (lib. i. cap. 83): "Nor is such a principle to be despised, nor should so great a power be allowed to any one as to make it impossible for you afterwards to dispute with him on equal terms concerning your manifest rights." It was not, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... accomplished. The pupils are required to spell words, define words, write words, and parse words day after day as if these words were lifeless and meaningless blocks of wood to be merely tossed up and down and moved hither and thither. So soon as a word becomes instinct with life and meaning, it kindles the child's interest at its every recurrence and it becomes as truly an entity as a person. It is then endowed with attributes that distinguish it clearly from its fellows and becomes, to the child, a vivid reality in the scheme of ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... crevice of the house. Each man then turned into his bunk for the night, "all rejoicing much in the warmth and prattling a long time with each other." At last an unaccustomed giddiness and faintness came over them, of which they could not guess the cause, but fortunately one of the party had the instinct, before he lost consciousness, to open the chimney, while another forced open the door and fell in a swoon upon the snow. Their dread enemy thus came to their relief, and saved ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... look at it, anyway," said his wife; and he admired how, when she was once within, she began provisionally to settle the family in each of the several floors with the female instinct for domiciliation which never failed her. She had the help of the landlord, who was present to urge forward the workmen apparently; he lent a hopeful fancy to the solution of all her questions. To get her from under his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... born to be a man of action. Your instinct is always to do something energetic. But supposing, for argument's sake, that we had him arrested to-night, what on earth the better off should we be for that? We could prove nothing against him. There's the devilish cunning of it! If he were acting through a human agent we could get some evidence, ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... Anne Bradstreet made one of the spectators. Her instinct would have been to remain away, for the sympathy she could not help but feel, could not betray itself, without at once ranking her in opposition to the judgment of both husband and father. Anne Hutchinson's condition was one to excite the compassion and ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... only human beings, and when the time comes and the horrible necessity for parting approaches, our courage goes, our hearts fail, and we think we are preaching reason and good sense while it is only a most natural instinct which leads us to cling to that to which we are used and ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... son, Jonathan, was born in '90. He grew like his father in physique and temperament, and his migrating disposition led him to Kentucky. The commercial instinct, which had never appeared in his father, was strong in him, so that he turned naturally to trading. He began in a small way, but he succeeded at it, and amassed what was ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... of that olden rite, wherein our ancestors showed forth the death of Christ day by day, as if it had been a mere mechanical service. It was a dead form only to those who brought dead hearts to it. To our Martin it was instinct with life, and it satisfied the deep craving of his soul for communion with the most High, while he pleaded the One Oblation for all his present needs, just ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... which rose between the beach and the mainland, to the height of two or three hundred feet, afforded in their crevices shelter for unnumbered sea-fowl, in situations seemingly secured by their dizzy height from the rapacity of man. Many of these wild tribes, with the instinct which sends them to seek the land before a storm arises, were now winging towards their nests with the shrill and dissonant clang which announces disquietude and fear. The disk of the sun became almost totally obscured ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... sere, there was new-fallen snow on Lizard Head, and winter was coming. He had the animal's instinct to den up, to seek winter quarters. Certain ties other than those of Mary's love combined to draw him back to Marmion for the winter. If he could only shake off his burdening notoriety and go back to see her—to ask her advice—perhaps she could aid him. But to sneak back again—to ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... time in the Long-Ago of human decay the Morlocks' food had run short. Possibly they had lived on rats and such-like vermin. Even now man is far less discriminating and exclusive in his food than he was—far less than any monkey. His prejudice against human flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And so these inhuman sons of men——! I tried to look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all, they were less human and more remote than our cannibal ancestors of three or four thousand years ago. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... equilibrium of battalions, carnage, executed according to rule, war regulated, watch in hand, nothing voluntarily left to chance, the ancient classic courage, absolute regularity; on the other, intuition, divination, military oddity, superhuman instinct, a flaming glance, an indescribable something which gazes like an eagle, and which strikes like the lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteries of a profound soul, associated with destiny; the stream, the plain, the forest, the hill, summoned, and in a manner, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Bob heard before he recovered sufficiently from the shock to move a limb. The officers were urging their prisoner forward, grinning and nodding to each other, whilst several voices from the crowd shouted abusively at the poltroon whose first instinct was to betray his associate. Bob turned his face away and walked on. He did not dare to run, yet the noises behind him kept his heart leaping with dread. A few paces and he was out of the alley. Even yet he durst not run. He had turned in the unlucky direction; ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... you do not believe me. It is but natural at your age, when one doubts as if by instinct. Would ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... attention. Also, I was pressed by an eagerness to get my over-night work into the hands of the publisher. To be exact, I wanted to put the manuscript out of reach of the Thing at the house. Without reason, I had awakened with that instinct strong within me. ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... time of peace, they say, Two awful portents gloom the public mind: All Mexico is arming for the fray And Colonel Mark McDonald has resigned! We know not by what instinct he divined The coming trouble—may be, like the steed Described by Job, he smelled the fight afar. Howe'er it be, he left, and for that deed Is an aspirant to the G.A.R. When cannon flame along the Rio Grande A citizen's commission will ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... affair and laughing. She was a little vulgar; some times she said "I seen" and "If I had've known." But what would grammar matter if he really loved her? He could not make up his mind whether to like her or despise her for what she had done. Of course he had done it too. His instinct urged him to remain free, not to marry. Once you are married you ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... be little doubt that this began in the nest-building idea, and then, because it was necessary to protect his home, cactus leaves and thorny branches were piled on it. The instinct grew until to-day the nest of a Pack-rat is a mass of rubbish from one to four feet high, and four to eight feet across. I have examined many of these collections. They are usually around the trunks in a clump of low trees, and consist of a small central nest about ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... wondered at that the colonel loved a good dinner. To dine well was with him an inherited instinct; one of the necessary preliminaries to all the important duties in life. To share with you his last crust was a part of his religion; to ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to what a length good intention, (zeal apart,) will go in leading men right, even when they have not paid very particular attention to a subject. There is a feeling of what is wise, as well as of what is right, that partakes a little of instinct, perhaps, but is more unerring than far fetched theory on many occasions. This was seen in a most exemplary manner, at the time that the principles of the French revolution were most approved of here. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... part of the analogy that the pressure of sex is always and by its very nature like the attraction of atoms. Aside from the fact that character consists largely in the steady inhibition of instinct and passion by the will, there is this momentous difference between atoms or molecules, on the one hand, and souls on the other: the character of the atom or molecule is constant, that of the soul is highly variable. There is no room here for remarks on free will and determinism; suffice it to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... own phrase, to "sanctify" it.... For this should be noted: that every natural habit, every natural institution (the state, the administration of justice, marriage, the care of the sick and of the poor), everything demanded by the life-instinct, in short, everything that has any value in itself, is reduced to absolute worthlessness and even made the reverse of valuable by the parasitism of priests (or, if you chose, by the "moral order of the world"). The fact requires ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... was always there to help his judgment; but though the natural instinct of the parent is to misdoubt a child's opinions—generally with tolerable good reason—it happened in this case that love lit the girl's mind to good purpose. She'd laugh with her father sometimes, that Sam hadn't no dazzling sense of fun himself, and it entertained her a lot to see ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... officials had from time to time considered the advisability of increasing the restrictions—and yet why should they? The Japanese people had submitted to the prohibition of the marriage of the unfit, but they loved children; and, with their virile outdoor life, the instinct of procreation was strong within them. True, the assignable lands in Japan continued to grow smaller, but what reason was there for stifling the reproductive instincts of a vigorous people in a great unused world half ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... will have to say, and the more impossible will it be to read your work. Never notice people's manner, conduct, nor even dress, in real life. Walk through the world with your eyes and ears closed, and embody the negative results in a story or a poem. As to Poetry, with a fine instinct we generally begin by writing verse, because verse is the last thing that the public want to read. The young writer has usually read a great deal of verse, however, and most of it bad. His favourite authors are the bright lyrists who sing of broken hearts, wasted lives, early deaths, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... in darkness prowl; This coward brood, which mangle, as their prey, By hellish instinct, all that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... instinct in me,' said Dunbar literally. 'Whenever there has been fighting where I have been, I have always sat indoors until it ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... plan that despair could suggest, and that, of course, was not the right one. One hour before midnight I left my father's roof, alone, thus completing my dishonour, but resolved on death, if the man who has cruelly robbed me of my most precious treasure, and whom a natural instinct told me I could find here, does not restore me the honour which he alone can give me back. I walked all night and nearly the whole day, without taking any food, until I got into the barge, which brought me here in twenty-four hours. I travelled in the boat with five men and two women, but no one ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and good taste. We then all rose with an English bow, placing the hand on the heart whilst saying adieu; and there was a complete uniformity in the ceremonial, for whatever I did, Mtesa, in an instant, mimicked with the instinct ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... are innumerable, but they are more difficult to catch than those in the stream, a fact which pleases the true fisherman, who fishes to match his skill and science against the instinct and cunning of the fish, rather than with the one sole intention of making his bag larger than that ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... mind; they had also their own quiet room to sleep in, and I often thought the family life, offering as it did a contrast to the bareness and desolation of the noisy barracks, appealed to the domestic instinct, so strong in some men's natures. At all events, it was always easy in those days to get a man from the company, and they sometimes remained for years with an officer's family; in some cases attending ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... turned their backs upon them as unfitted to cultivate intelligence. But now that even the occupations of the household, agriculture, and manufacturing as well as transportation and intercourse are instinct with applied science, the case stands otherwise. It is true that many of those who now engage in them are not aware of the intellectual content upon which their personal actions depend. But this fact only gives an ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... suspect that she had, not with any repugnance, precipitated its death? She feared this passionate man who, by strength of will, made himself calm, alarmed her more than an angry one would have done. Moved by instinct, for she really felt that his sacrifice to her in marrying had condoned for his father's blow at her ancestress, she tried to return him harm for good. But it is not easy for a ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... presupposes exercise) he must allow his pupils to do as much as possible by and for themselves,—place these propositions before him, and the chances are that he will say "Amen" to them. But that lip assent will count for nothing. One's life is governed by instinct rather than logic. To give a lip assent to the logical inferences from an accepted principle is one thing. To give a real assent to the essential truth that underlies and animates the principle is another. The way in which the teacher too ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... transformation is taking place. When most birds moult it is for a period of several months, but these ducks have a partial fall moult which is of the greatest importance to them. When the wing feathers begin to loosen in their sockets an unfailing instinct leads these birds to seek out some secluded pond, where they patiently await the moult. The sprouting, blood-filled quills force out the old feathers, and the bird becomes a thing of the water, to swim and to dive, with no more power of flight than ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... a week, yes, fully ten days more had gone, with the Marshall game only a few more days away. All this while the coach had kept at his constant grind, trying to get the eleven so accustomed to the many plays of the game that they could act through instinct rather than reason. ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... stranger to her pillow, forsook her entirely as she faced this question and realised the gain in peace which might be hers if cap and knife were gone. Why then did she allow them to remain, the one in the closet, the other in the drawer? Because she could not help herself. Instinct was against her meddling with these possible ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... suffering and brevity of their lives. Johannes Ewald (q.v.; 1743-1781) was not only the greatest Danish lyrist of the 18th century, but he had few rivals in the whole of Europe. As a dramatist, pure and simple, his bird-like instinct of song carried him too often into a sphere too exalted for the stage; but he has written nothing that is not stamped with the exquisite quality of distinction. Johan Herman Wessel[12] (1742-1785) excited even greater hopes in his contemporaries, but left less that is immortal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... character at this period is not by any means limited to the appearance of the sexual feelings and their sympathetic ideas; but when traced to its ultimate reach, will be found to extend to the highest feelings of mankind—social, moral, and even religious. In its lowest sphere, as a mere animal instinct, it is clear that the sexual appetite forces the most selfish person out of the little circle of self-feeling into a wider feeling of family sympathy, and a rudimentary moral feeling."—Maudsley, Body and Mind, 2d ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... inner meaning of the text, the scene; also what the composer had in mind when he wrote. Then he learns to express these emotions in his own voice and action, through the imaginative power, which will color his tones, influence his action, render his portrayal instinct with life. Imagination in some form is generally inherent in all of us. If it lies dormant, it can be cultivated and brought to bear upon the singer's work. This is ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... these emigres had vainly urged the Chanceries of the Continent to a royalist crusade against the French rebels; and it seemed appropriate that Gustavus III of Sweden should be their only convert. Now of a sudden their demands appeared, instinct with statecraft; and courtiers everywhere exclaimed that "the French pest" must be stamped out. In that thought lay in germ a quarter of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the wild effort she was making for outward calm, which even when she was alone was her first instinct, strained every nerve and blotted out sight and hearing, and it was not till the sound was very near that she was conscious of the ring of horse's hoofs on ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... Blake, who had a fancy for the mysterious, dropped back into his corner and took out his cigar-case with a little feeling of regret. In traversing the world's pathways, beaten or wild, he always made a point of seeing the story behind the circumstance; and, had he realized it, a common instinct bound him in a triangular link to the peering, winking lamps, and to the Russian boy lying unsociably wrapped in his heavy coat. All three had ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... of personal gratification before the common weal be enough to constitute a state criminal, then the Queen of France was one of the worst state criminals that ever afflicted a nation. The popular hatred of Marie Antoinette sprang from a sound instinct. We shall never know how much or how little truth there was in those frightful charges against her, that may still be read in a thousand pamphlets. These imputed depravities far surpass anything that John Knox ever said ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... rays. A valuable lesson on this point may be learned by observing the lower animals, none of which ever neglect an opportunity to bask in the sun And the nearer man approaches to his primitive condition the more he is inclined to follow the example of the animals. It is a natural instinct which civilization has partially ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... wretch? Why say more of his terror, his misery, his remorse? He held himself in the seat until the middle of the last act of the play. At last, unable to restrain himself longer, he arose and almost ran from the theatre. That instinct which no slayer can control or explain, was overpowering him; it was the instinct which attracts the murderer to the spot where his crime was committed. No man can describe or define this resistless impulse, and yet all criminology records ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... can almost see Frank now by a certain kind of stream, stripped to the waist, waiting while his shirt dried, smoking an ill-rolled cigarette, yet alert for the gamekeeper. Above all, there was an immense volume of learning—or, rather, a training of instinct—to be gained respecting human nature: a knowledge of the kind of man who would give work, the kind of man who meant what he said, and the kind of man who did not; the kind of woman who would threaten the police if milk or bread were asked for—Frank learned ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson |
