"Instinctive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... known better." Something about him reminded her of a bad small boy; and suddenly in spite of her better sense, in spite of her instinctive caution, she found herself on the very verge of laughter. What was it in the man that disarmed and invited a confidence—scarcely justified it appeared? What was it now that moved her to overlook what few overlook—not the fault, but its publicity? Was it his agreeable bearing, his pleasant ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... short in increasing bewilderment. At the slamming of the door the third man had darted forward out of the shadows to fling himself upon the wooden barrier, beating upon it with his fists and cursing like a madman. Judson saw, understood, and acted, all with the instinctive instantaneousness born of his trade of engine-driving. The two men in advance were merely taking the short cut through the mountain to the old workings on the eastern slope, and the door in the bulkhead, ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... pervert—for 'Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.' With all due allowance for honest differences of opinion as to political or religious creeds, for diversities of taste and education, there yet remains to the truly humane, wise, and liberal soul, an instinctive sense of justice, veneration for rectitude, love of the beautiful and the true, which keeps alive their veneration and quickens their higher sympathies despite the venom of faction and the blindness of prejudice; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... eyelids lowered in a sinister fashion—which in the poor girl, reached, stirred, set free that faculty of unreasoning explosive terror lying locked up at the bottom of all human hearts and of the hearts of animals as well. With suddenly enlarged pupils and a movement as instinctive almost as the bounding of a startled fawn, she jumped up and found herself in the middle of the big room, exclaiming at ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... subject of so much amusement and as to where her governess had really been. She didn't feel at all as if she had been seriously told, and no such feeling was supplied by anything that occurred later. Her embarrassment, of a precocious instinctive order, attached itself to the idea that this was another of the matters it was not for her, as her mother used to say, to go into. Therefore, under her father's roof during the time that followed, she made no attempt to clear up her ambiguity by an ingratiating way ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... however a witness to the ineffaceable connection of the idea of power with that of will. And while it does not destroy the completeness of the analysis, as the solution of the intellectual problem proposed, it nevertheless points to the instinctive wish of the heart to resolve the causes of doubt into some ultimate source in the will; and is thus a witness to the truth of the position which we have always asserted,(1013) that the intellectual causes selected ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... of inanition? Might not God pardon them for listening to any messenger who came with His name upon his lips? Surely He who lived in the heavens would pardon them even if it were sin, seeing that it was the instinctive love of His own wandering sheep which brought them crowding round any shepherd who would teach them of Him, even though he did not come in the ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... ii. 237, note. M. Reville's system, it will be observed, differs from mine in that he finds the first essays of religion in worship of aspects of nature (naturisme) and in 'animism properly so called,' by which he understands the instinctive, perhaps not explicitly formulated, sense that all things whatever are animated and personal. I have not remarked this aspect of belief as much prevalent in the most backward races, and I do not try to look behind what we know historically about early religion. I so far agree with M. Reville as ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... were public property, Cuthbert was not surprised, but at the same time he was not altogether pleased. He had never liked the lawyer. He had no particular grounds for not doing so, but he had as a boy an instinctive notion that he ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... attaining of our desires; and how shall these objects be attained unless we know him whom we worship and to whom we pray? But it is plausibly maintained that the reverse is true, namely, that theology rests on cult. In the beginnings of consciousness instinctive reactions precede definite thoughts, and even in mature life thoughts often follow acts instead of preceding them. Our religious consciousness is simply our ordinary consciousness obeying its laws. So unpurposed does cult grow up that it ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... removal of the troopers rendered it impossible for him to leave Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye unguarded—though what he should do with her if Garnache came not back at all, he did not at this stage pause to consider. On the other hand, an instinctive and growing suspicion of this Monsieur Gaubert—who was now entering the inn—inspired him with the opinion that the fat Seneschal had been duped by a wild tale to send the troopers from the spot where they might presently ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... given the option of accepting the schedule of preferences published by the candidate, or of indicating his own. Mr. Dobbs thus gets rid of the compulsory acceptance of a schedule of preferences, a proposal to which most English-speaking electors would have an instinctive dislike. But even to an optional schedule certain objections remain. The system has lost in simplicity, and the order of the candidates in the particular schedules would be determined in most cases by the ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... raised her head. Her eyes met his freely. There was something of the childlike adoration of an instinctive and triumphant purity in the smile which parted her lips. Maraton understood at once that the danger was past. The thunder had ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... generally very bad; and one turns with relief to the author's connecting links, wishing only at times that he would not worry about proving his point quite so thoroughly. The bombast and the bullying, the self-pity and the cruelty, and, most of all, the instinctive claim, typical of Germany to-day, to prescribe one law for themselves but something quite different for the rest of the world, run through all these quotations, even the earliest. But the particular value of this book at the moment is its reminder that twice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... not to be stayed, had broken in upon McCoppet ruthlessly, with perceptions unerring concerning the troubles in the air, when Lawrence was arrested. The gambler consented to an interview with instinctive regard for his safety. That something significant was laid on Trimmer's mind he felt with ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... King's face upon them, were disposed to take sides with the British Company. This may have confirmed Semple in the tyrannical course he had followed, but had he studied the action of the free traders it might have opened his eyes. Just as certain animals of the prairie exposed to enemies have an instinctive feeling of coming danger, so these denizens of the plains felt the approach of trouble, and with their wives and half-breed children betook themselves—bag and baggage—to the far Western plains where the buffalo runs, and remained there to let the storm blow past, to return ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... By an instinctive movement she snatched her fingers away; but, recovering herself, she took the package deliberately into her ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... was large and sweet, but, for a while, perplexing. An almost instinctive leap to catch the trapeze-bar that had hung in his cage brought his hands in contact with only unresisting air. This confused and somewhat frightened him. The world seemed much broader and brighter since the black bars of his ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... muscular, over the back. There had come to be a saying in the gray battalion, when Willett was seen strolling with a comrade, his arm caressingly encircling him, "Well, Willett's doing the bunco act again." Possibly it was the instinctive shrinking of the wounded shoulder; certain it was that Harris drew perceptibly away, and Willett noticed it. "I didn't hurt you, did ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... were, is given to a house of cards, and the whole comes toppling over. This toppling over is what we call action; and when it is the result of the disturbance of certain usual arrangements in certain usual ways, we call it the habitual development and instinctive characteristics of the race. In either case, then, whether we consider the continued identity of the individual in what we call his single life, or those features in his offspring which we refer to heredity, the same explanation of the phenomena is applicable. ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... able, without knowing it, to render to the mother those attentions which she had herself received from the son. Her instinctive kindness had doubly inspired her. In devoting herself to her service, Nadia secured to her youth and beauty the protection afforded by the ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... imagine we know them, and ask nothing more. We watch them hasten from flower to flower, we see the constant agitation within the hive; their life seems very simple to us, and bounded, like every life, by the instinctive cares of reproduction and nourishment. But let the eye draw near, and endeavour to see; and at once the least phenomenon of all becomes overpoweringly complex; we are confronted by the enigma of intellect, of destiny, will, aim, means, causes; the ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... speaking, receive only a disorderly kind of education, seldom attend to with that degree of exactness that men, who from their infancy are broken into method, observe. This negligent kind of guesswork, for what other epithet can be used to point out the random exertions of a sort of instinctive common sense, never brought to the test of reason? prevents their generalizing matters of fact, so they do to-day, what they did yesterday, merely ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... teens, in her mother's brief but repeated retreats to Dresden, to Florence, to Biarritz, weak and expensive attempts at economy from which there stuck to her—though in general coldly expressed, through the instinctive avoidance of cheap raptures—the religion of foreign things. When it was revealed to her how many more foreign things were in Merton Densher than he had hitherto taken the trouble to catalogue, she almost faced him as if he ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... identification with another which Ruth expressed when she said: "Entreat me not to leave thee nor to depart from following after thee, for whither thou goest I will go: where thou livest I will live, and where thou diest there will I die also." That, it seems to me, is the instinctive feeling that a man has. At the same time, this does not exclude the having clear eyes to see the faults of one's country. I think that, as an old President of Harvard College said once to a person who was remonstrating with him: "But charity, doctor, charity." "Yes, I know; but ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... judge if he learn forthwith what the wind Means in its moaning,—by the happy, prompt, Instinctive way of youth, I mean,—for kind Calm years, exacting their accompt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... It was an instinctive move to get out of Deutschland—raucous, hostile Deutschland, lying athwart his soul. But his grip? his overcoat? his umbrella? He faced back toward the town. His mind was in a tumult. No, he must make for the frontier ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... able to examine with any thoroughness, the attempt to systematize one's private and public conduct alike, and to reduce it to spacious general rules, to attempt, if not to succeed, in making it coherent, consistent, and uniformly directed, is an almost instinctive proceeding. ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... instinctive shrinking from approaching the bed, but he did not hesitate, stepping forward with reverence, and even then his heart gave a throb of satisfaction that one of his female companions should have stepped ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... union; and the body is therefore justly entitled to its own degree of thought and care. But the point, indeed, is not one to be argued; it is, as it appears to me, a matter of intuitive judgment and instinctive feeling; and I apprehend that this feeling and judgment have never appeared more strongly than in the noblest of our race. I hold by Burke, who wrote, 'I should like that my dust should mingle with kindred dust; the good old expression, "family ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... in great measure a transfusion from the former, namely, from the superiority in kind;—for only by its co-existence with reason, free will, self-consciousness, the contra-distinguishing attributes of man, does the instinctive intelligence manifested in the ant, the dog, the elephant, &c. become human understanding. It is a truth with which Heraclitus, the senior, but yet contemporary, of AEschylus, appears, from the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... pressed him to hasten his return to Flanders, where the free and social manners of the people were much more congenial to their tastes, than the reserve and stately ceremonial of the Spanish court. The young prince shared in these feelings, to which, indeed, the love of pleasure, and an instinctive aversion to anything like serious occupation, naturally disposed him. Ferdinand and Isabella saw with regret the frivolous disposition of their son-in-law, who, in the indulgence of selfish and effeminate ease, was willing ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... highest eulogy that has yet been passed on Milton, the most discriminating but at the same time the most generous tribute that has ever been offered to Shakespeare—both these are to be found in Dryden. And they are to be found in company with a perception, at once reasoned and instinctive, of what criticism means, that was ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... New Haven, discussing the "instinctive interest of children in bear and wolf stories," observes (192): "The children of European races take more interest in bear and wolf stories than in stories relating to any other wild animals. Their interest ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the hardness of her lot, she often blames her husband's occupation, farming, for her misfortune, and becomes a rural pessimist, urging her children neither to farm nor to marry farmers. Her deep, instinctive protest appears through suggestion in the cravings of her children for ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... dishonouring brand transmuted into the hallowing cross! And when the old man at length recovered consciousness, his head was pillowed on the breast of the spotless, noble Preacher; and the decorous English Trader, with instinctive deference for repute and respect for law, was kneeling by his side, clasping his hand; and as Wife glanced down, confusedly wondering, Hartopp exclaimed, half sobbing: "Forgive me; you said I should repent, if I knew all! I do repent! I do! Forgive ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dressed up, formed fours by the right, extended into sections on column of march and went through the like movements very well—so well that it was a pity they had not an opportunity of adding to their stock of knowledge. They had an instinctive aptitude for skirmishing, and were expert at forming square, the utility of which, by the way, is as questionable ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... live with God until it becomes impossible to live without Him; we learn to lean on Him, until we acquire an instinctive abhorrence of all broken reeds. We begin with cherubim and a flaming sword that turns every way to keep the way of the tree of life; but we end with the same flashing armoury turning us from every path except that which leads to glory and honour and immortality and the city of God. We begin ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... instinctive belief in God which, in common with my fellow-creatures, I had brought into the world with me. I had no disposition to deny my instincts, which told me that if there was a God His laws ought to have my obedience and His interests ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... instinctive and yet awkward. His life was full of arrested half gestures of assistance. And even this prodigy of a big man in green, leaping the wall like a bright green grasshopper, did not paralyze that small altruism of his habits in such a matter as a ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... absorbed in thought, his legs, obeying an instinctive impulse, had brought him to his lodgings. He rang the bell; the door opened, and he groped his way slowly up to the fourth floor. He had reached his room, and was about to enter, when some one, whom he could not distinguish in the dark, called out: "Is that you, ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... your children, encourage and intensify their curiosity and their creative impulses, and cultivate and enlarge their sympathies. That is what you are for. Under your guidance and the suggestions you will bring to bear on them, they have to shed the old Adam of instinctive suspicions, hostilities, and passions, and to find themselves again in the great being of the universe. The little circles of their egotisms have to be opened out until they become arcs in the sweep of the ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Rollo had been asked whether he supposed that Carlos understood what he said, he would have answered no; and yet he continually forgot to act upon this belief, but talked on, under the influence of a sort of instinctive feeling that good plain English, such as he took care to speak, could not fail to convey ideas to any boy that heard it. Under the influence of a similar feeling, Carlos talked Spanish to Rollo, each ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... have always felt that this devotion spoke equally well for both of them. The old man must have had some splendid traits underneath his crusty exterior to awaken such unquestioning love in a person of Mose's instinctive perceptions. Perhaps after all, half idiot though he was, Mose could see clearer than the rest of us. He now lies in the little family burying-ground on the edge of the plantation, a stone's throw from the grave of ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... pride mingled in the chief's contempt for the distiller's money; his righteous soul was not yet clear of its inherited judgments as to what is dignified and what is not. He had in him still the prejudice of the landholder, for ages instinctive, against both manufacture and trade. Various things had combined to foster in him also the belief that trade at least was never free from more or less of unfair dealing, and was therefore in itself ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... is an instinctive feeling that a wrong is done to the proper grandeur of our complex nature—that a violence is offered to the higher consciousness of our immortal being—whenever an intellectual quality is extolled tot he neglect of a moral one. Moral excellence is the most real ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... turbulent, congested, but ever ebullient centre. Certainly Browning was not the man to be ashamed of his being a Londoner, much less to deny his natal place. He was proud of it: through good sense, no doubt, but possibly also through some instinctive apprehension of the fact that the great city was indeed the fit mother of such a son. "Ashamed of having been born in the greatest city of the world!" he exclaimed on one occasion; "what an extraordinary thing to say! It suggests a wavelet in a muddy shallow grimily contorting itself because ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... well-dressed man is so from instinct. And his instinctive neatness would hardly permit him to put his well-kept hat ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... an important principle of the Magian religion that the body should not after death be allowed to mingle with, and so pollute, any one of the four elements. Either from a regard for this superstition, or from the mere instinctive desire to preserve the lifeless clay as long as possible, the Persians entombed their kings in the following way. The body was placed in a golden coffin, which was covered with a close-fitting lid, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... alliance of cleverness and honesty, and treated with the Government as if he were a foreign power. She had grown up in the historical castle of Joinville, bought, restored, and magnificently furnished by her father. Montessuy made life give all it could yield. An instinctive and powerful atheist, he wanted all the goods of this world and all the desirable things that earth produces. He accumulated pictures by old masters, and precious sculptures. At fifty he had known all ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Unamuno. He is a utilitarian, but not of worldly utilities. His utilitarianism transcends our daily wants and seeks to provide for our eternal ones. He is, moreover, a mind whose workings turn in spiral form towards a central idea and therefore feels an instinctive antagonism to the dispersive habits of thought and sensation which such detailed observation of life usually entails. For at bottom the opposition between the lyrical and the dramatic novel may be reduced to that ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... his life, had compelled her respect and confidence, while in his evident education and social culture he had won her deepest admiration. She felt that he was all that Phil was, and more. There was in her feeling toward him, as he offered himself to her now, no hint of that instinctive repulsion and abhorrence with which she had received Professor Parkhill's declaration of spiritual affinity. Her recent experience with the Master of Aesthetics had so outraged her womanly instincts that the inevitable reaction from her perplexed and troubled ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the child had an inborn, mystical something that told him how to preserve his life, or become a social king. Original nature does not work in that way; it is only as the experience of the individual modifies the blind instinctive responses through learning that these results can just as easily come about unless the care of parents provides the right sort of surroundings. There is nothing in the child's natural makeup that warns him against eating pins and buttons and poisonous berries, or encourages ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... progress here she must be a favourite. She must show quickly that she had the brains and could work well. It took a very short time to make her realise that. For a moment she was inclined to be over-confident; but that mood collapsed before a side glance and a titter from two of the girls. Their instinctive ridicule warned and stiffened Sally. They did not know her. She would have to prove her qualities. She then concentrated upon Miss Summers, watching how she turned, how she smiled and frowned, and how she explained what ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... such a moment—awoke no response in his mind. He possessed a soldier's proud confidence in his regiment—the supposition that the old fighting Seventh could be defeated was impossible; the Indians did not ride those uplands who could do the deed! Then there came to him a nameless dread, that instinctive shrinking which a proud, sensitive man must ever feel at having to face his old companions with the shadow of a crime between. In his memory he saw once more a low-ceiled room, having a table extending down the centre, with ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... remember what was right and what was wrong. But Holden felt like a normal man about men whose wives look patient. Even psychiatrists feel that it is somehow disreputable to illtreat a woman who doesn't fight back. This attitude is instinctive. It is what is called the fine, deep-rooted impulse to chivalry which is one of ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... and crash of a couple of German "Fizz-Bang" shells. Probably it was the wet plop of some of the backward-flung bullets about him, possibly it was the movement of the German sergeant that wiped out the instinctive desire to flatten himself close to ground that drove him to instant action. The sergeant half lurched to his knees, thrusting forward the muzzle of his rifle. Ainsley clutched at the revolver in his holster, but before he could ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... opposition to the commissioning of Negroes, there was no one with hardihood enough to bring them forward. Such notions might form the groundwork of a prejudice, but they could not become the reason of a policy. It is an instinctive tribute to the good sense of the American people that the opponents of colored officers were compelled to find reasons of ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... personality sees in it a chance for accomplishing its own ends. The pre-menstrual period is the blooming-time, the mating-time, the springtime of the organism. That means eminently a time for coming into notice, that one's charms may attract the desired complement. But if the rightfully insistent instinctive desires are held in check by unnatural repressions and misapplied social restrictions, the starved instinct can obtain expression only by a concealment of purpose. The disguise assumed is often one of indifference or positive ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... not troubled about the rightness of their methods, provided they escape the toils of the law, able to command men and successfully to carry through large policies. They are not without their personal attractions, for it is instinctive to admire that which is big and able to achieve. Many of them also make permanent contributions to the upbuilding of the nation. Oriental history is also full of analogies: Nebuchadrezzar, Cyrus, ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... pulling off her hood, and stood before her visiter, blushing in a way that perhaps Mrs. Carleton looked at as a novelty in her world. Fleda did not know how she looked at it, but she had nevertheless an instinctive feeling, even at the moment, that the lady wondered how her son should have fancied particularly anything that went about under ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... a difficult hold upon existence. To depreciate the work achieved for humanity during the Middle Ages would be ridiculous. Yet we may point out that it was done unconsciously—that it was a gradual and instinctive process of becoming. The reason, in a word, was not awake; the mind of man was ignorant of its own treasures and its own capacities. It is pathetic to think of the mediaeval students poring over a single ill-translated sentence of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... at first that our acquaintance was a stroke of art, and that I was somehow fortifying Carthew. I told myself, I say; but I was no such fool as to believe it, even then. In these circumstances I displayed the two chief qualities of my character on the largest scale—my helplessness and my instinctive love of procrastination—and fell upon a course of action so ridiculous that I blush ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ship's deck at sea is a piece of household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... force, who thought of winning his brother's crown by a bold and open stroke, but a cut-purse who stole the diadem from a shelf and put it in his pocket. He had the inclination of natures physically weak and morally small towards intrigue and crooked dealing. His instinctive predilection was for poison: this was the means he used in his first murder, and he at once recurred to it when he had failed to get Hamlet executed by deputy. Though in danger he showed no cowardice, his first thought ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... England a second time. He finds that the charm has vanished, and that the English are no better than their neighbours. It is a cynical little book, abounding in such sayings as. "Make acquaintances, not friends; intimacy breeds disgust;" "The best fruit of travelling is the justification of instinctive dislikes." Monbron, like Byron, ridicules the traveller's passion for collecting ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... meet again this handsome man who had seen so much and who talked so well. He was something different from the rest, and so far superior to them all. But, not being one of those instinctive girls who yield without pressure and fall in love at first sight, there were no flushings nor palpitations as Edgar came up; only a grave little smile stole half timidly over her face, and she forgot that he had insulted her mother's country by calling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... enemies of the king and queen have an instinctive feeling of this, and their hate makes them sympathetic, in order to teach them to invent new ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... himself—there was little fear that in the sequel they shouldn't see enough of each other. The principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive—the fruit of a sharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking, after so much separation, into his comrade's face, his business would be a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... totally unfixed in his principles, and wants to puzzle other people. I said his principles had been poisoned by a noted infidel writer, but that he was, nevertheless, a benevolent good man. JOHNSON. 'We can have no dependance upon that instinctive, that constitutional goodness which is not founded upon principle. I grant you that such a man may be a very amiable member of society. I can conceive him placed in such a situation that he is not much tempted to deviate from what is right; and as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... started to speak, but as instantly paused. An instinctive dread of uttering those plain words he would much prefer she should never hear ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... for its services in ridding houses of rats. It is easily tamed; and such is the dread of it common to all murine animals that not one will approach a house wherein it is domiciled. Rats and mice seem to have an instinctive sense of its hostility to them, so much so that when it is introduced into a house they are observed to hurry away in all directions, being apprised, no doubt, of its presence by the peculiar odour it ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... shelter of the house. Her first sign of restoring consciousness consisted in avoidance of Morin. He had been most assiduous in his efforts to bring her round; quite tender in his way, Pierre said; and this marked, instinctive repugnance to him evidently gave him extreme pain. I suppose Frenchmen are more demonstrative than we are; for Pierre declared that he saw his cousin's eyes fill with tears, as she shrank away from his touch, if he tried to arrange the shawl they had laid ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... her lips as they suddenly turned pale. She had an instinctive, sudden persuasion that she had been led into a snare. If not, why was Madame Strahlberg now absorbed in conversation with three other ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... earlier and two later generations of their mother's family—making five generations in all. But in no case did it pass from parent to child, always passing in these examples, by a sort of Knight's move, from uncle to nephew. Another peculiarity of Yule's more difficult to describe was the instinctive association of certain architectural forms or images with the days of the week. He once, and once only (in 1843), met another person, a lady who was a perfect stranger, with the same peculiarity. About 1878-79 he contributed some notes ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was to be respected. Nevertheless the Countess and the manufacturer's wife, who nourished in their hearts the unreasoning hatred of all well-bred people for the Republic and at the same time that instinctive weakness of all women for uniformed and despotic governments, felt drawn, in spite of themselves, to this woman of the street who had so much sense of the fitness of things and whose opinions so ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... generation after generation, in Mexico and elsewhere. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions, particularly among the higher clergy; but, so far as I have been able to ascertain, education in clerical schools has generally been of this kind. It is instinctive to talk a little, as one occasionally finds an opportunity of doing, to some youth just out of these colleges. I recollect speaking to a young man who had just left the Seminario of Mexico, where he had been through a long course of theology and philosophy. He was astonished ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... in order to be convinced that he is not a mere soldier winning battles by superior tactics, but that he is also a man of a very high order of general talent, with an unusual insight into human nature, and possessing almost an instinctive knowledge of how mankind are to be governed. By that wonderful exposition of the comprehensive, wise, and philanthropic mind of the man, even ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... have got together. She very nearly said to the clerk at the window: "Don't you mean shillings?" But in spite of nervousness, blushings, and all manner of sensitive reactions to new experiences, her natural sang-froid and instinctive knowledge of the world saved her from such a terrible lapse, and she put down a bank-note without the slightest hint that she was wondering whether it would not be more advantageous to throw the ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... in Japan at the time of the cherry-blossom festival—but these fetes merely serve to bring out this national passion for beauty and color, which finds expression not only in the gardens throughout the empire but in painting, drawing and in working on silks and other fabrics. The same instinctive art sense is seen in the work of the cabinet-maker and even in the designs of gateways and the doors of houses. The eye and the hand of the common worker in wood and metal is as sure as the hand of the great artist. Such is ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... one hand in instinctive protest. But he might as well have sought to stem Niagara ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... as these was my young friend fully imbued; and thus is it especially worthy of observation that the uninterrupted enjoyment which distinguished his life was in great part the result of preconcert. It is, indeed evident, that with less of the instinctive philosophy which, now and then, stands so well in the stead of experience, Mr. Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary successes of his life, into the common vortex of Unhappiness which yawns for those of preeminent endowments. But it is by no means my present ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... art, at their noblest, function in that instinctive way. They become the unconscious expression of a civilization. A nation passes out of its adolescent preoccupation with plans and with materials. It learns to do its work, precisely as Goethe bade the artist do his task, without ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... bird, the highly developed reasoning power of both, were absent in the dinosaur as in the lizard or crocodile. We may imagine the Allosaurus lying in wait, watching his prey until its near approach stimulates him into a semi-instinctive activity; then a sudden swift rush, a fierce snap of the huge jaws and a savage attack with teeth and claws until the victim is torn in pieces or swallowed whole. But the stealthy, persistent tracking of the cat or weasel ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... young—and was unfamiliar with their ways. This one, he thought, had evidently copied the airs of a dancing-master; the wave of Oliver's hand—it was Richard's in reality, as were all the boy's gestures—and the fine speech he had just made to his wife, proved it. Instantly the instinctive doubt of the Puritan questioning the sincerity of whatever is gracious or spontaneous, was roused in Silas's mind. From that moment he became ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... aloud. Like Ruskin, another nineteenth-century master of English prose, he was finely affected by these two powerful inductors. They worked alike upon his piety and his imagination which was its true servant, and they helped to foster his seemingly instinctive style and his feeling for ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... in the new-born infant is entirely involuntary, there being no voluntary acts until about the end of the third month. Sucking and licking are largely instinctive. The movements of the arms and legs are impulsive acts, and occur during sleep, just as they did in the intra-uterine life. The act of raising the head, which is attempted about the fourth month in healthy children, is volitional, ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... generally divided into provinces. The inhabitants of these provinces, each community within its own borders, went on, from year to year, in their various pursuits of peaceful industry, governed mainly, in their relations to each other, by the natural sense of justice instinctive in man, and by those thousand local institutions and usages which are always springing up in all human communities under the influence of this principle. There were governors stationed over these provinces, whose main duty it was to collect and remit to ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... murmurs Florence, falling upon her knees before her, "do not hesitate; follow up this instinctive feeling, and who knows but something may come of it! Dora, do not delay. Soon, soon—if not already—it may be too late. Alas," she cries, bursting into bitter tears, "what do I say? Is it not too late even ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... respects his strength; the latter in some respects his weakness. As an ordinary lowland peasant, he inherited the really valuable historic property of the Scots, their independence, their fighting spirit, and their instinctive philosophic consideration of men merely as men. But he was not an ordinary peasant. If he had laboured obscurely in his village till death, he would have been yet locally a marked man; a man with a wild eye, a man with an air of silent anger; perhaps a man ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... agreeable. One was called Isabelle, whom they had nicknamed , the other's name was Fanchon, and her name had been abbreviated to "." The latter had much talent, and even brought to Versailles with her, an instinctive spirit of diplomacy which would have done honor to a practised courtier. She would have been thought simple, unsophisticated, and yet was full of plot and cunning. I was soon much pleased with her, and the king became equally ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... knows, of course, that it is impossible to deny that responsibility, that our errors in the past have been due not to any lack of readiness to fight or quarrel with foreign nations, but precisely to the tendency to do those things and our indisposition to set aside instinctive and reasonless jealousies and rivalries in favour of a deeper sense of responsibility and a ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... little pleased as any one with the report of Sir Marcus Wardhill's intended return. Poor Lawrence had that instinctive dread of his guardian which a cat or a dog has of the person who takes every occasion of giving them a kick or a buffet when they meet. He felt that he was unjustly and tyrannically treated, yet he had no means of breaking away from his thraldom. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosom the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breast is soon converted ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... highway. It is in vain that philosophy and reason contend with early impressions, and poor Caesar was even without the support of either of these frail allies. He was, however, well mounted on a coach horse of Mr. Wharton's and, clinging to the back of the animal with instinctive skill, he abandoned the rein to the beast. Hillocks, woods, rocks, fences, and houses flew by him with the rapidity of lightning, and the black had just begun to think whither and on what business he was riding in this headlong ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... long talk alone with her father in the library later in the day. She had thought out her reasons, and understood better, herself, the instinctive feeling that led her not to resume her place in the choir under ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... of repentance and he uses more than once the Koranic phrase (chapter vii., 148) "Sukita f aydhim," lit. where it (the biting) was fallen upon their hands; i.e. when it repented them; "sukita" being here not a passive verb as it appears, but an impersonal form uncommon in Arabic. The action is instinctive, a survival of the days when man was a snarling and snapping animal (physically) armed only with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... serious discussion; its prevalence in all ages and countries, and even among newly-discovered nations, that have had no previous interchange of thought with other parts of the world, prove it to be one of those mysteries, and almost instinctive beliefs, to which, if left to ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... impulses assert themselves, the verdicts of right and wrong which his temperament pronounces unconsciously, it may be. Here is the true revelation of character, Hearn thinks, even though our habitual and instinctive ethics may differ widely from the ethics we quite sincerely profess. Whether we know it or not, we are in such matters the children of some educational or philosophical system, which, preached at our ancestors long ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... there is the same earnestness of purpose, though stimulated by resentment altogether different. The latter only think of rescuing their dear ones, while the former are stirred by soldier pride and the instinctive antagonism which a Texan Ranger feels for a Tenawa. Many of them have old scores to settle with the Horned Lizard, and more than one longs to send a bullet ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... of his instinctive precaution, the poor animal, which had no light to guide him, struck against a stone and nearly fell. The rider soon perceived that his horse was lamed, and on seeing a trail of blood upon the snow, ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... lightly heard a greater, God be praised; the Lord strengthen thee, Cardmaker. The Lord Jesus receive thy spirit."[477] Every martyr's trial was a battle; every constant death was a defeat of the common enemy; and the instinctive consciousness that truth was asserting itself in suffering, converted the natural emotion of horror ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... heard the bell of the sabbath sound, who had never beheld the solemn ceremonies of authorized adoration, was told that those awful and splendid piles, which filled his eyes with wonder, and his mind with instinctive reverence, were raised for other purposes than those of becoming auxiliary to the ferocity of war. That genius and taste, and toil and cost, had not thus expended their unrivalled powers, and lavished their munificent resources, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... the day of Oxford Convocation was June 20th. I was engaged to the Worcester College Gaudy for the 21st. Had I known that on the 20th you were to receive the degree, I should have been tempted to come and 'assist,' though I have always had an instinctive hatred ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... her breath come quick and sudden, as if under a hypnotic force, and following the prompting of some instinctive mentor, he held ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the right, in which he still finds firm footing for continued resistance, he will gradually adopt those opinions, which were the least remote from his own convictions, as not less congruous with his own theory than with that which he reprobates. In like manner with a kind of instinctive prudence, he will abandon by little and little his weakest posts, till at length he seems to forget that they had ever belonged to him, or affects to consider them at most as accidental and "petty annexments," the removal of which leaves the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... became aware that this was not a simple Indio girl. Something deep within my soul suddenly shrank back with instinctive revulsion. My skin seemed to crawl with a sort of terror. I began to shake so that it was difficult to draw ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... the German surgeon. Ignatius Wetzel was still at the bed, bending over the body, and apparently absorbed in examining the wound which had been inflicted by the shell. Mercy's instinctive aversion to the old man increased tenfold, now that she was left alone with him. She withdrew uneasily to the window, and looked out at ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... position into a strange whole, transcending all limits of race and language. The conception of brotherhood was new, and the realisation of it in Christian love was still more astonishing. The world wondered; but to the Christians the new affection was, we might almost say, instinctive, so naturally and spontaneously ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... but it's a big jump!" he said; and then the instinctive fear with which the consciousness of the hideous wrong he had done the now escaped convict inspired him, made him add: "A desperate villain like that wouldn't stick at a murder if you pressed him hard. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... of his day, and probes with his remorseless brush or graver to the hidden roots of its follies, its vices, and crimes. "He may be said to have created," says one of his early biographers,[2] "a new species of painting, which may be termed the moral comic;" meaning, thereby, that the instinctive humour of the man's art is generally (not, as we shall see, always) directed to some moral purpose, some lesson of conduct to be thence derived. That is just where Hogarth connects himself, inevitably and intimately, with the Puritan England which had preceded him. Not for ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... a mathematician by instinctive preference and early training, but I have never been able to cross the 'Ass's Bridge,' the Forty-seventh problem of Euclid. Incidentally, I may mention that I am a golf-player with a ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... through such a length of years, The Shepherd, if he lov'd himself, must needs Have lov'd his Help-mate; but to Michael's heart This Son of his old age was yet more dear— Effect which might perhaps have been produc'd By that instinctive tenderness, the same Blind Spirit, which is in the blood of all, Or that a child, more than all other gifts, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts, And stirrings of inquietude, when they By tendency of nature ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... rose, only their glittering eyes and the glowing cigarette-ends could be seen. When the soldier had gone out, they returned to their subject, the word "Woman" forming the theme of talk that became at times grotesque in its obscenity. Sarudine's instinctive longing to boast, and to eclipse Volochine led him at last to speak of the splendid woman who had yielded to his charms, and gradually to reveal his own secret lasciviousness. Before the eyes of Volochine, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... seen in huge hordes, raising their trunks in the air, and snorting defiance to all who dared approach them. The latter are objects of great fear to the natives, scarcely one of whom dare approach them, but they appeared to have an instinctive sense of the superiority of the English, for they no sooner made a movement against them, than they hurried away with the speed of the forest deer, and were soon lost in the depths of their native forests. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... already made to himself and refuted, could not shake the Duke of Parma in his purpose. Not in ignorance of its inseparable dangers, not from thoughtless overvaluing his forces had he taken this bold resolve. But that instinctive genius which leads great men by paths which inferior minds either never enter upon or never finish, raised him above the influence of the doubts which a cold and narrow prudence would oppose to his views; and, without being able to convince his generals, he felt the correctness ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... made to play with puppets like you, mademoiselle," said the comtesse, addressing herself to the unconscious little being as she took it in her arms, but belying her words by the grace and instinctive maternal expertness with which she handled and soothed the infant. "Yes, you can go, Sarah—au revoir, Mademoiselle Madeleine. Fie the little wretch, what faces she pulls! And you, Margery, you need not wait either; I shall keep this creature for a while. Poor little one!" sang the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... should grow up refined, and was distressed by little Shaggy Spaniel having brought up the Comic Section of a Sunday paper. With childhood's instinctive taste for primitive effects, the puppies fell in love with the coloured cartoons, and badgered him ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... with instinctive skill, And loving neither most nor least, Stood out from Philip's grasping will, And gave, where he desired a feast, The taste that left him ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... think—no language. I shall have more to say upon this point in another chapter. One trait they do show which is the first step toward knowledge—curiosity. Nearly all the animals show at times varying degrees of curiosity, but here again an instinctive feeling of possible danger probably lies back of it. They even seem to show at times a kind of altruistic feeling. A correspondent writes me that she possessed a canary which lived to so great an age that it finally became so feeble it could not ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... submit to the exact method of progress approved of and desired by the European servants of their government, without their taking any part in the transaction save to ratify terms that might be harsh and exorbitant. Fortunately, the instinctive caution of our Foreign Office was not laid aside on this occasion. Mr. Lay was informed that no notice could appear in the "London Gazette" except after the approval of the Pekin authorities had been expressed; and Prince Kung wrote, on October ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... weapons of the devil. Sociability, cheerfulness, hopefulness were characteristics of himself and of the Order in its early days. Here it is impossible to tell the fascinating story of his own life, to describe his own graphic preaching, or to illustrate his instinctive sympathy with animal life. But it must be noted that his passionate love for Christ the Sufferer caused him to desire to reproduce in detail the last hours of the Saviour's life on earth, until the ecstasies may have ended in producing those physical marks of the crucifixion ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... which she had in a present from the wife of a skipper in Swansey. One would imagine she had distinguished this beast with her favour on account of his ugliness and ill-nature, if it was not, indeed, an instinctive sympathy, between his disposition and her own. Certain it is, she caresses him without ceasing; and even harasses the family in the service of this cursed animal, which, indeed, has proved the proximate cause of her breach with ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... with which they conformed to the numerous, and in most cases vexatious, port regulations, their quiet behavior on shore, and the many novelties and luxuries that they freely distributed to the port officers, completely blinded them to the instinctive disposition to trade that characterizes my beloved countrymen, especially the New Englanders, who were the first to carry our flag into the Pacific, as they were also the first to ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Nyssia—was it an instinctive presentiment, or was her skin, virginally pure from profane looks, so delicately magnetic in its susceptibility that it could feel the rays of a passionate eye though that eye was invisible?—Nyssia hesitated ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... direct contact with the Jap that Donald is trying to beat, and the thing I saw in his face put fear into my heart and it has been there ever since. I have almost an unreasoning fear of that Jap, not because he has said anything or done anything. It's just instinctive. I may be wholly wrong in having come to you and in taking up your time, but there are two things I wanted to tell you. I could have told Donald, but if I did and his mind went off at a tangent thinking of these things he wouldn't be nearly so likely to be in condition to give his best ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... apparent simplicity of the young man; but just as he was making ready to depart they were interrupted by the entrance of Bernardo del Nero, one of the chief citizens of Florence, Bardo's oldest friend, and Romola's godfather; and Bernardo felt an instant, instinctive distrust of the handsome, ingratiating stranger, and did not hesitate to say so ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... absorption at the outset in the physical object of sense hampers this growth. (c) A thoroughly false psychology of mental development underlay sensationalistic empiricism. Experience is in truth a matter of activities, instinctive and impulsive, in their interactions with things. What even an infant "experiences" is not a passively received quality impressed by an object, but the effect which some activity of handling, throwing, pounding, tearing, etc., has upon an object, and the consequent effect ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... prepared for opposition—the instinctive opposition which men manifest to having this embarrassing subject dragged out into the light of day. Even men who have been chaste themselves—good fathers of families like the major—cannot be unaware of the complications incidental to frightening their women-folk, and ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... inglorious was the catastrophe of Susy and her friend. The strong, elastic stalks of the tall grain broke their fall and enabled them to scramble to their feet, dusty, disheveled, but unhurt, and even unstunned by the shock. Their first instinctive cries over a damaged hat or ripped skirt were followed by the quick reaction of childish laughter. They were alone; the very defection of Pedro consoled them, in its absence of any witness to their disaster; even their previous slight attitude to each other was forgotten. They groped their ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... smooth, slow voice of Captain Freccia, "our silence was caused by the instinctive consciousness of something wrong with our party—a little inequality—which I dare say our noble host has not thought it worth ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... published in 1839, and subsequently appeared Merry Mount, a Romance of Massachusetts. It is curious to trace in these first flights of a genius that has since learned its legitimate field, a tendency to the breadth of Motley's later efforts, an instinctive and evidently unconscious passion for the descriptive, an admirably curbed yet still powerful impatience of the light fetters, the toy regulations of the realm of Fiction, and an earnestness that has since bloomed in the world of Fact and History. The very imperfections of the novelist have ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... rustling leaves of the stately elms. Perhaps it was not astonishing poetry even for a child, but was there not something in the fancy, the sentiment, and the rhythm which bespoke far more than ordinary appreciation? Is it not this same quality of alert and instinctive sympathy which has run through Eugene Field's writings and touched the ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... Jones's birth-fairy had endowed him with one priceless gift: the power of inspiring an instinctive confidence in himself. Sylvia Graham felt, suddenly, that a hand, sure and firm, had been outstretched to guide her on a dark path. In one of those rare flashes of companionship which come only when clean and honorable spirits recognize one another, all consciousness of sex ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... whom you love is related to me, as: you wish to hide his name even from me," said Madame Desvarennes with instinctive anguish. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... such a length of years, 140 The Shepherd, if he loved himself, must needs Have loved his Helpmate; but to Michael's heart This son of his old age was yet more dear— Less from instinctive tenderness, the same Fond spirit that blindly works in the blood of all— 145 Than that a child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts, And stirrings of inquietude, when they By tendency of nature needs must fail. 150 Exceeding ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the nature of gutta-percha, hardening rapidly on exposure to the air, and glueing the little animals in self-dug graves. The habit of boring holes in trees in which to deposit their eggs, was not accompanied by a sufficient instinctive knowledge of which trees were suitable, and which destructive to them. If, as is very probable, these trees have an attractive odour to certain species of borers, it might very likely lead to their becoming extinct; while other species, to whom the same odour ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... burning is not a proper place to seek safety in. When an ostrich fears danger he buries his head in the sand, under the impression that if his head is out of sight he is safe from danger. This is his instinctive plan of procedure in the presence of danger, and it is the plan of every ostrich, everywhere, always. A little reasoning would show them how foolish the idea is—but they cannot reason. That is the province of man alone. If the first member of a flock ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... The cattle seek the shed; the birds fly back to their nests; and the gentle flower folds its delicate petals, as if for sleep. Is It wonderful that as life closes in, especially when protracted to a good old age, the human spirit should feel an instinctive consciousness of approaching dissolution? or that the aged Christian, after long and patient endurance in his Master's service, should joyfully anticipate the hour of rest? Yes, REST, not death; "For whosoever liveth, and believeth in me," ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... little. But to believe that the spirits of the departed are the mediators between God and us is essential paganism—to call it nothing worse; and a bad enough name too since Christ has come and we have heard and seen the only-begotten of the Father. Thus the instinctive desire for the wonderful, the need we have of a revelation from above us, denied its proper food and nourishment, turns in its hunger to feed upon garbage. As a devout German says—I do not quote him quite correctly —"Where God rules not, demons will." ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... or curiosity—he knew Indians too well to do either. His stoicism was theirs under similar circumstances. Had they been of his own race, his hope would have lain in throwing himself upon their mercy; for twice the instinctive sympathy of the white man for the under dog, for the individual who fights against overwhelming odds, had saved his life; but no such tactics would avail ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... now Borrow's Court, off Willow Lane. George Borrow, therefore, again attended the Grammar School of Norwich. He could then, he says, read Greek. His father's dissatisfaction was apparently due to some instinctive antipathy for the child, who had neither his hair nor his eyes, but was "absolutely swarthy, God forgive me! I had almost said like that of a Gypsy." As in Scotland and Ireland, so now at Norwich, Captain Borrow probably let the boy do what he liked. As for Mrs. Borrow, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... deliberately standing upon one of the spokes of the stationary wheel, he leaned over the Duc d'Epernon, and, whipping a long, stout knife from his sleeve, stabbed Henry in the breast. The King, who was in the act of reading a letter, cried out, and threw up his arms in an instinctive warding movement, thereby exposing his heart. The assassin stabbed again, and this time ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... had yielded the point gracefully, and convinced, instead of launching out into a voluble farrago of irrelevant rubbish, as ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have done in order to have "the last word." That argued sense, judgment, tact. Further, she had avoided that vulgar commonplace, instinctive to the crude and unthinking mind, of whatever sex, of importing a personal application into an abstract discussion. This, too, argued tact and mental refinement, both qualities of rarer distribution among her sex than is commonly supposed—qualities, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... instinctive gesture of horror, he pushed the velvet away, not touching the serpent and ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... striking dissimilarities. The similarities may be summed up by saying that man exhibits in common with all the animals the phenomena of courtship, that is, of the male seeking to win the female, also the phenomenon of male jealousy, and we may perhaps add an instinctive aversion to crossing with the other species. These characteristics of his family life man shares with the brutes below him. There are, however, many things peculiar to the human family life that are found in no animal species ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... class, to Sunday school, and to every funeral which took place within our precincts. But I never looked upon the dead; perhaps that sight would have marred the slumbrous security which possessed me—the instinctive faith in the durability of ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... bond-servant's right hand went to his hip, as if instinctively seeking something there. The traveller's eyes followed the impulsive gesture, even while he, too, made a motion more instinctive than conscious, by stepping backward, as if to avoid something. This motion he ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... wildfire from mouth to mouth, reaching the ear of Don Felix, even before his eye caught the rapidly advancing soldier, whom he recognized at once as one of his Sovereign's private guards; impelling him, with an almost instinctive movement, to catch the upraised arm of the executioner at the very instant he was about ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... for the community concerned. Every important principle which is developed by litigation is in fact and at bottom the result of more or less definitely understood views of public policy; most generally, to be sure, [36] under our practice and traditions, the unconscious result of instinctive preferences and inarticulate convictions, but none the less traceable to views of public policy in the last analysis. And as the law is administered by able and experienced men, who know too much to sacrifice good ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... entity, a second cause. This is not lunacy, nor pretence, but a genuine state of mind very effective in practice, and often carrying the public with it, so that the poor Columbus is found to be a very faulty adventurer, and the continent is named after Amerigo. Lighter examples of this instinctive appropriation are constantly met with among brilliant talkers. Aquila is too agreeable and amusing for any one who is not himself bent on display to be angry at his conversational rapine—his habit of darting down on every morsel ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... that supporting thought, and during the rest of the evening she was untroubled by the instinctive knowledge that even the law cannot make right what the individual ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... his horse—the boy Charley beside him—listening in sullen wrath. As Darke ended, the general's hand went to the hilt of his sword, and he half drew it, by an instinctive movement, from the scabbard. "Well!" added the Federal officer, in the same low tone, with a deeper flush in his cheeks, "draw your sword, sir—strike me if you think proper. For myself, I am done with murder, and shrink from it, so that, if my father wishes to kill me, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke |
