"Second nature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old man raised an oratorical hand, and looked round on his audience, like one to whom public speaking was second nature. ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and that on the waterfront from James Bay bridge all around to the Hudson's Bay Company's wharf? We bathed there at all times, and to our heart's content, and never was exception taken to it by the authorities, or in fact by anyone. Use is second nature, and I suppose that ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... boundless forest, until an inhabited street cramps my breast and stifles my breath; nor am I ever less alone than when alone with God. Ask me not, then, though thy intentions be kind, to renounce a mode of life which habit hath made a second nature." ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Poor devils! Each one, after the enormous excitement of the relief, had come back mechanically to his accustomed place, because this strange life of ours, imposed by the discipline of events, has become a second nature, which we scarcely know how to shake off. Like tired dogs, we still creep into our holes. The youngest were moaning and tossing, as they have done every night for weeks past—shaking off sleep like a harmful ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... said Burns comfortably. "A man means it when he swears he'll never do again something that has become second nature to him to do. He'll do it—he's made that way. You will do this thing, and do it with all your old grip and skill. But I'm not going to discuss it with you. Some day, if you are good, I'll describe the case to you. It's one you can handle better than I, and ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... weak? It is a natural and I suppose a healthy feeling. I don't understand it myself because I never had any. Isolation is my second nature. The only human being that ever treated me with tenderness and loyal friendship is yourself, and what you have been to me, what I feel toward you, none can know, for ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... days more, so that his life was despaired of; and yet he brought all his equipments safe into camp. Some of these men had led such wandering lives, in woods and swamps, that to hunt them was like hunting an otter; shyness and concealment had grown to be their second nature. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... ready for the planting, and the sweet, moist odour rises when you open the seed papers with fingers almost trembling with eagerness, it seems second nature to be lavish. If a few seeds will produce a few plants, why not the more the merrier? If they come up too thick, they can be thinned out, you argue, and thick sowing is being on the safe side. But is it? Quite the contrary. When the seedlings appear, ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... expressions, Pratt; they come to me somehow like second nature, and I can't help them; just let 'em pass; and tell me what you'd like to visit to-day, and what you'd like to see, and I'll show it to you; for there's no sight in this city that I ain't as used ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... and yet through all, a keen observer might have seen the lurking effects of pride and power, a consciousness of her own extraordinary beauty, and the control it gave her over the hearts of those of the other sex with whom she associated. Alas! that such a trait should have become a second nature to one with so heavenly a form and face. Perhaps it was owing to the want of the judicious management of a mother, of timely and kindly advice, that Isabella had grown up thus; certainly it seemed hard, very hard, to attribute it to her ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... they rode without speech. Eddie in the lead, Bud following, alert to every little movement in the sage, every little sound of the night. That was what we rather naively call "second nature", habit born of Bud's growing years amongst dangers which every pioneer family knows. Alert he was, yet deeply dreaming; a tenuous dream too sweet to come true, he told himself; a dream which he never dared to dream until the cool stars, and the ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... deep conviction, or, perhaps, I ought to say my deep feeling born from personal experience, that it is not the sea but the ships of the sea that guide and command that spirit of adventure which some say is the second nature of British men. I don't want to provoke a controversy (for intellectually I am rather a Quietist) but I venture to affirm that the main characteristic of the British men spread all over the world, is not the spirit of adventure so much as the spirit of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... "Inspections! They are second nature to us!" said a new army man. "We were inspected and inspected at home and we are inspected and inspected out here. If there is anything wrong with us it is the general's own fault if it isn't found out. When a general is not inspecting, some man from the medical ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... field flowers whose heads fall fading beneath his tread while he follows her through the long grass. He has watched her playing with the innocent school children—little more than a child herself—and then, with the calm assurance that to him is second nature, joins the merry throng unasked. The children greet him eagerly, after scrambling for a handful of silver from the stranger's pocket, for is it not the great, grand ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... shoulders be the burden!" They must "stoop to conquer." Every miserable detail becomes of moment, until by-and-by the art of intrigue and conspiracy begins to lose proportion in their minds. The detail has ever been so important, conspiracy so much second nature, that they must needs be intriguing and conspiring when the occasion is trifling and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thought; and in expressing our thoughts we give expression to ourselves. When once the art of writing is learned we are no longer conscious of the mental and manual effort required to form the letters. It becomes, as it were, a second nature to us. We do it mechanically, just as we form our words when talking, without realizing the complex processes of mind ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... enemy of reason, who likes to rule and dominate it, has established in man a second nature to show how all-powerful she is. She makes men happy and sad, healthy and sick, rich and poor; she compels reason to believe, doubt, and deny; she blunts the senses, or quickens them; she has her fools and sages; and ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... mornings, preparatory to the weekly inspection. Every branch and department of military life has a variety of inspections to undergo at periodical times. The inspections keep the boys in khaki on the alert; cleanliness becoming second nature. Nowhere can a vast body of men live bachelor-like as soldiers do and maintain the degree of tidiness and general sanitary healthfulness, as the thorough arm of camp inspection and discipline ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... his Bible, he got them to listen; and then, pointing to God's Word, asked them whether such and such things could be right in His sight. Thus by degrees they were induced to give up a habit which had become with most of them a second nature. ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... ventilation having been a thing the citizens of Pleasantville had overlooked. But the judge was a reasonable soul; he was disposed to accept his immediate personal discomfort with a fine true philosophy; also, hope was stirring in his heart. Hope was second nature with him, for had he not lived all these years with the odds ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... account; besides he runs no risk of being overcharged, which is a greater advantage than the cost. All this may be different when Panama's electric line, all the way from Balboa docks to Las Sabanas, is opened—but that's another year. Meanwhile the lolling in carriages comes to be quite second nature. ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... accuracy with which a hawk strikes his prey, firing is equivalent to hitting, and excitement only makes the aim surer and more prompt; but such must have been hunters from youth; and no training of the army can give this second nature. American volunteers are the only material, outside the little districts of Switzerland and the Tyrol, who can ever be trained to this point, because they are the only nation of hunters beside the Swiss and Tyrolese. The English game-laws, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... intended to scowl, but the tone, sharply authoritative, roused his automatic convict second nature, and he answered, almost despite himself, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... straight in the eyes, with that lazy nonchalance which had become second nature to him. She returned his gaze for a moment, then her eyes softened, as she came up quite close to him, to the foot ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... both man and brute, it is susceptible to cultivation. Training the faculty of observation develops the habit of paying attention, and this habit, though less efficient than the inborn gift, may be so confirmed as to become second nature. ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... "The Last Muster" is too well known to need more than a passing comment. The scene it represents is enacted every Sunday in the Hospital at Chelsea. Twenty thousand men have ended their days peacefully in the semi-military life which in their long service has become second nature to them, and 500,000 have passed through the list ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... ground rapidly. From time to time he paused to listen. But he was always listening, and his eyes were ever roving. This alertness had become second nature with him, so that except in extreme cases of caution he performed it while he pondered his gloomy and fateful situation. Such habit of alertness and ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... right principle; by qualities, I mean what is spontaneous. Constitutional good qualities are spontaneous. Such as natural sweetness of temper—natural delicacy of feeling—natural intrepidity; others are the result of habit, and end by being spontaneous—by being a second nature: justly are habits called so. Gentleness of tone and manner—attention to conventional proprieties—to people's little wants and feelings—are of these. This same politeness being a sort of summary of such, I will end this little didactic digression by advising all those who ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the serious news which deprived me of a valuable leader and several picked men, a shell pitched a few yards from the spot I occupied. The light went out, and I was half covered with dust and rubbish. To move was second nature. Followed by Taylor I 'moved' 100 yards down the road to the rest of my company. My kit and maps were later rescued from the dirt and brought to my new position. Company Headquarters should be mobile, and on occasions like ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... been on a plain, I doubt not that the Flemings would have stood against many times the number of Welshmen that Owen had with him; but this hill warfare was altogether strange to them, and of course they had not the habit of quickly rallying, and meeting the attack, that is second nature with our men-at-arms. The affair is serious, and unless the king comes hither with an army, Glendower is likely to have it all his own way on his side of the border; and, ere long, there won't be an Englishman left ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... enormous gulf between him and this man—the gulf the books had made; but he found no difficulty in crossing back over that gulf. He had lived all his life in the working-class world, and the camaraderie of labor was second nature with him. He solved the difficulty of transportation that was too much for the other's aching head. He would send his trunk up to Shelly Hot Springs on Joe's ticket. As for himself, there was his wheel. It was seventy miles, and he could ride it on Sunday ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Henrik Ibsen's home in Christiania, where the hall was strewn with goloshes. So much is this the fashion that we actually saw people walking about in indiarubber "gummies," as our American friends call them, during almost tropical weather. Habit becomes second nature. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... developing in him a substitute for a conscience; for since he had begun to consider everything that he said or did in the light of its probable effect upon his idol, it had become a habit with him to follow a definite code of conduct, and the saying that habit is second nature finds an example ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... of hatred itself, independent of and apart from its object, was distasteful and foreign to her. Never in her life had Lloyd hated any one before. To be kind, to be gentle, to be womanly was her second nature, and kindness, gentleness, and womanliness were qualities that her profession only intensified and deepened. This newcomer in her heart, this fierce, evil visitor, that goaded her and pricked and harried her from day ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... to be disconcerted.] The truth of that saying has become my second nature. In believing it I probably find myself at variance with Schiller and Gustav Freytag, but not at all with Lessing and Diderot. I have spent the past two semesters in the study of these two great dramaturgic ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... So urged the wisest counselors, like Stephens of Georgia. But men rarely act on a deliberate and rational calculation of their interests. They are swayed by impulse and passion, and especially by the temper and habit which have become a second nature. The leaders in Secession acted in a spirit generated by the very nature of slavery, and fostered by their long defense of slavery. That genesis of the movement is all the more impressive when we recognize the high personal character of its leaders, and acquit them ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... through his own experience. The experience of others must be expressed in terms of his own before it becomes wisdom. Wisdom, as I have elsewhere said, is knowing what it is best to do next. Virtue is doing it. Doing right becomes habit, if it is pursued long enough. It becomes a "second nature," or, we may say, a higher heredity. The formation of a higher heredity of wisdom and virtue, of knowing right and doing right, is ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... fears the cage. You, my dear lady—you and Harry—have got so used to wealth, its trammels no longer gall you. You carry the weight of it, as the horse of the Middle Ages carried his trappings; it's second nature. And you can enjoy, you can move, you can feel, in spite of it. You have risked your soul, without knowing it; but you have kept your soul! This girl, I take it, is afraid to risk her soul. She is not ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tail. The gait of a popular actress, dressed as a young officer, affords, next to that actually in question, the best exemplification of our meaning. Habitual dancing before a looking-glass, by begetting a kind of second nature, which will render the movements almost instinctive, will be of great ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... holding on. A little thing made her happy, yet in her deepest happiness there was much gravity. His theories were that certain qualities brought to pass certain results. He forgot that there were no such things as pure temperaments, and that environments made second nature different from what the first might have been. The child puzzled him by her contrariety, yet she ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... polished perfection. She is "icily regular, splendidly null," for culture is more of the heart than of the mind. But as eloquence means that an orator has so mastered the laws of posture, and gesture and thought and speech that they are utterly forgotten, and have become second nature, so knowledge becomes culture, and physical perfection becomes beauty, only when ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... transplanted to French soil. The theological school in which Calvin and Beza taught, moulded the destinies of France. The youths who came from the shores of Lake Leman were no neophytes, nor had they to unlearn the casuistry of the schools or to throw off a monastic indolence which habit had made a second nature. They embraced a vocation to which nothing but a stern sense of duty, or the more powerful attraction of Divine love, could prompt. They entered an arena where poverty, fatigue, and almost inevitable ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... of the back streets of France from Cherbourg to Marseilles. But, as a rule, the priest did not protest, except by the example of keeping his own tongue clean. "What is the use?" said one of them. "That kind of thing is second nature to the men and, after all, it is part of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... not be seen in the Kharsa until I went there in the Dry-town disguise which had become, years ago, a deep second nature, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... either of inspiration or artistic confidence about them. But little slovenly work will be found bearing his name, for he was a thoroughly trained writer; a suave and seductive workmanship had become a second nature to him, and there was always a flavour of scholarly, subacid and quasi-ironical modernity about his style. There is little doubt that his quality as a stylist was better adapted to the studies of modern London life, on its seamier side, which he had observed at first hand, than to ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... for the scholars are held; and as the schools are open to the public, the scholars are instructed to be loyal to whatever Church they happen to belong. In England such broadness would be regarded as a miracle; to the German Moravians it is second nature. In their boarding-schools they pursue the same broad principle. At present they have nine girls' schools and five boys' boarding-schools; the headmaster is always a Moravian minister; the teachers in the boys' schools are generally candidates for the ministry; ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... [Lat.]; laudator temporis acti [Lat.]. rule, standing order, precedent, routine; red-tape, red-tapism^; pipe clay; rut, groove. cacoethes [Lat.]; bad habit, confirmed habit, inveterate habit, intrinsic habit &c; addiction, trick. training &c (education) 537; seasoning, second nature, acclimatization; knack &c V. be wont &c adj.. fall into a rut, fall into a custom &c (conform to) 82; tread the beaten track, follow the beaten track, tread the beaten path, follow the beaten; stare super antiquas vias [Lat.]; move in a rut, run on in a groove, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... eyes keen for a sight, his ear down to the earth for a sound, of danger. No security relaxed his vigilance, but his vigilance became so habitual, so entered into him, that his mother ceased to notice it and it became a second nature to himself. That it might miss nothing, it was universal; the merest stranger came within its ken. He watched all mankind lest some one among men should be seeking to take his treasure from him. Mr Cholderton's Imp had not ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... an Englishman's pride in the prowess of mine own people, been compelled to bear witness to the wonderful smartness and courage shown by the American whalemen, to whom their perilous calling seems to have become a second nature. And on other occasions I have lamented that our own whalers, either at home or in the colonies, never seemed to take so kindly to the sperm whale fishery as the hardy "down Easters," who first taught them the business; carried it on with increasing ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... second nature to me. I really felt that for the time being I was Marta, but a different Marta from the real one. I always enter into my roles with all my being, so I set the role of a real thief for myself and played up to it so intently that I all but lost my own personality. It was the kind of Marta that Bender ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... man is a prophet. His mind elevated to the highest degree of intelligence, his heart bent constantly to love what is good, he has almost assumed a second nature, and he lives upon earth a purely spiritual life. Of all that surrounds him, nothing is of any value in his eyes but that which may contribute to the accomplishment of the Divine design; in all passing events he sees but as many dispositions of Providence calculated ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... ourselves; and it is to keep the balance between our wants and our needs that he has caused our tastes to change and vary with our way of living. The further we are from a state of nature, the more we lose our natural tastes; or rather, habit becomes a second nature, and so completely replaces our real nature, that we have lost all ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... interest in, that vast mass of suffering humanity, both bond and free with which the Roman dominion was populated; to disregard misery, except when they found it among the privileged classes, had become second nature to them. We can better realise this if we reflect that even at the present day, in spite of the absence of slavery and the presence of philanthropical societies, the average man of wealth gives hardly more than a passing thought to the discomfort and distress of the crowded ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... said David solemnly, "you know, an' I know, that I've got the repitation of bein' a hard, graspin', schemin' man. Mebbe I be. Mebbe I've ben hard done by all my hull life, an' have had to be; an' mebbe, now 't I've got ahead some, it's got to be second nature, an' I can't seem to help it. 'Bus'nis is bus'nis' ain't part of the golden rule, I allow, but the way it gen'ally runs, fur 's I've found out, is, 'Do unto the other feller the way he'd like to do unto you, an' do it fust.' But, if you want to keep this thing a-runnin' ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... at imitating any kind of illiberality or baseness, lest from imitation they should come to be what they imitate. Did you never observe how imitations, beginning in early youth and continuing far into life, at length grow into habits and become a second nature, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... astonishing thing is that this law was esoteric.[6] The people knew of it only by its irresistible force, and by the constant pressure or the rare easing of its iron hand. Those who executed the law were drilled in its routine from childhood, and this routine became second nature. Only a few copies of the original instrument were known, and these were kept with a secrecy which to the people became a sacred mystery guarded by a long ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... fondness for being very well dressed; it had become a second nature, especially her fondness for beautiful French boots and shoes, an instinct inherited from ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... tabloids—the sedative? I'm—I'm obliged to take something when my nerves go wrong—" In his weakness and nervous tremor he forgot that Loder was the sharer of his secret. Even in his extremity his fear of detection clung to him limply—the lies that had become second nature slipped from him without effort. Then suddenly a fresh panic seized him; his fingers tightened spasmodically, his eyes ceased to rove about the room and settled on his companion's face. "Can you see ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... asserted itself. Although Harry had been in charge, Dick had not failed to notice everything about the place where they made their cache that would help to identify it. That was instinct with him by this time, after two years as a scout; it was second nature. And, though it had been light, he had pictured pretty accurately what the place would look like at night. He remembered, for instance, that certain stars would be sure to be in the sky in a particular relation to the cache. ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... is what causes the trouble. Well, if it showed in the glass, why was it not there? You probably have lived long enough in the world to know that there are a great many boys in it, and it seems to be second nature with them to turn everything on an engine that is possible to turn. All glass gauge cocks are fitted with a small hand wheel. The small boy sees this about the first thing and he begins to turn it, and he generally turns as long as it turns easy, and when it stops he will try the other one, ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... military career has accustomed you to surprising the enemy to such an extent that it has become second nature with you, and you cannot avoid carrying your favorite tactics even into ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... he will during the third. Frequent resistance offered to the executive powers of conscience will at last lay them asleep. The beginning of this downward career is always the most difficult; but when once fairly begun, it grows every day more easy, till the habit of sin becomes like a second nature. ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... Wellington, of Foch, and of many of the most famous generals of history. "A man thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of Napoleon's warfare would hardly fail in all circumstances to make his enemy's communications his first objective; and if Wellington's tactical methods had become a second nature to him it would be strange indeed if he were seduced into delivering a purely frontal attack. . . . The same tactical principles regulate the combat of a large force and a small, and it is the thorough grasp of the principles, combined with courage ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... to exchange the liberal menage of Beaujardin for the scarcely disguised poverty of Valricour, but it was second nature with him to cringe and flatter: "I could not desire to quit so noble a family, except, indeed, for the service of so exalted and gracious a personage as ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... and rooted was I in these things, that they became as a second nature to me; the which, as I have also with soberness considered since, did so offend the Lord, that even in my childhood he did scare and affrighten me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with fearful visions. For often, after I have spent this and the other ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... minds in the coming generation. Of Maurice, Arthur Hallam had written to Gladstone (June 1830) exhorting him to cultivate his acquaintance. 'I know many,' says Hallam, 'whom Maurice has moulded like a second nature, and these too, men eminent for intellectual power, to whom the presence of a commanding spirit would in all other cases be a signal rather for rivalry than reverential acknowledgment.' 'I knew Maurice well,' says Mr. Gladstone ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... plaiding; but the bonnet is frequently taken off, and wrung like a dishclout, and then put on again. They have been accustomed from their infancy to be often wet, and to take the water like spaniels, and this is become a second nature, and can scarcely be called a hardship to them, insomuch that I used to say, they seemed to be of the duck kind, and to love water as well. Though I never saw this preparation for sleep in windy weather, yet, setting out early in a morning ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... bar-room as he passed, not in any anticipation, but merely from the vigilance which becomes second nature upon the frontier. Hawley stood leaning against the bar, where he could see anyone passing through the hall. The eyes of the two men met, but the gambler never moved, never changed his attitude, although Keith noted that his right hand was hidden beneath the skirts of his ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... beautiful ideas, are still able, by reason of being imbued with this suggestion, to mold the conditions of their consciousness in the subjective world in accordance with the sort of ideas which have become a second nature to them. Within the limits of these ideas the dominant suggestion to these entities is that of a Law which confers Liberty, so by using this Law of the constructive power of thought they can determine the conditions of their own consciousness; and thus instead of being ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... all the lessons I learned in Sightless Land." Then, conscious that her emotion was producing in her voice a resonant depth which might remind him too vividly of notes in The Rosary, she paused, and resumed in the high, soft edition of her own voice which it had become second nature to her to use as Nurse Rosemary: "Mr. Dalmain, it seems to me I learned to understand how that which is loneliness unspeakable to ONE might be Paradise of a very perfect kind for TWO. I realised that there might be circumstances ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... a second nature, and we'd got not to mind a storm, When misery came upon us,—came in a hideous form. My poor little wife fell ailing, grew worse, and at last so bad That the doctor said she was dying,—I thought ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... we do without you!" lamented Grace. "Positively I have sorrowfully accompanied departing friends to the station so many times since school began that it's becoming second nature to me." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... same room during the night, but the men 'cleared out' early in the morning, leaving the ladies to themselves. The dirt and vermin of their habitation were abominably offensive to people to whom scrupulous cleanliness was a second nature. But the captives were allowed to take exercise within a limited range; they had among them a few books, and an old newspaper occasionally came on to them from Jellalabad, with which place a fitful correspondence in ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... a catastrophe which appears inevitable if I invite it by exposing myself to its too well ascertained cause? The habit of these deadly seizures has become a second nature. The strongest and the ablest men have found it impossible to resist the impression produced by the most insignificant object, by the most harmless sight or sound to which they had a congenital or acquired antipathy. What prospect have I of ever ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... doubt that she would have to piece the under-arm sleeve. Simultaneously she wondered if she could do it so skilfully that Mrs. Abram Pantin would not see the piece. Then she frowned in vexation at the realization that it was becoming second nature to wonder what Prissy Pantin would think. Was it possible that there had been a time when she had debated as to whether she wanted to know Mrs. Abram ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... manner of wilderness dwellers he had learned resourcefulness and self-possession. It is indeed a part of the daily training of every lad of the wilderness, that he acquire these attributes, until at last they become second nature to him, and instinctively he does the thing he should do when he comes suddenly face to face with unexpected dangers. And so it was with both Bobby and Jimmy, and thus it came about that Bobby did not lose his head when ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... a habit into the very first rise and imperfect beginnings of it; and can tell by how slow and insensible advances it creeps upon the heart; how it works itself by degrees into the very frame and texture of it, and so passes into a second nature; and consequently he has a just sense of the great difficulty for him to learn to do good, who has been long accustomed ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... break up the little conversation between herself and Kinraid, Sylvia forced herself to be as active in the service going on as became a friend of the house; and she was too much her mother's own daughter to feel comfortable at leaving all the things in the disorder which to the Corney girls was second nature. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... "filled with all unrighteousness," having "from a child" in his "tender years," "but few equals both for cursing, swearing, lying and blaspheming the holy name of God." Sins of this kind he declares became "a second nature to him;" he "delighted in all transgression against the law of God," and as he advanced in his teens he became a "notorious sinbreeder," the "very ringleader," he says, of the village lads "in all manner of vice and ungodliness." ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... what were the requisites of a pure mind. Perhaps, had the libertine presumption to imagine, that there was no difference in heart, nor any but what proceeded from difference of education and custom, between the pure and impure—and yet custom alone, as she observed, if I did so think, would make a second nature, as well in good as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... That second nature which grows up through habit instantly told the young Iroquois that he was alone with enemies. Dashing the water aside, he sprang at the throat of Chingachgook, and the two Indians, relinquishing their hold of the canoe, seized each other like tigers. In the midst of ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... myself go with you—I couldn't say all that was in my heart—it wouldn't have been wise. Don't ever doubt that the tenderness was there. Even though one is only a civilian in khaki, some of the soldier's sternness becomes second nature. ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... perfectly to express it in expressing ourselves. Thus, as we gradually grow into the habit of finding this inspiring Presence within ourselves, and of realising its forward movement as the ultimate determining factor in all true healthful mental action, it will become second nature to us to have all our plans, down to the apparently most trivial, so floating upon the undercurrent of this Universal Intelligence that a great harmony will come into our lives, every discordant manifestation will disappear, and we shall find ourselves more and ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... singer, one must have a voice; that is of the first importance. In handling and training that voice, breathing is perhaps the most vital thing to be considered. To some breath control seems to be second nature; others must toil for it. With me it is intuition; it has always been natural. Breathing is such an individual thing. With each person it is different, for no two people breathe in just the same way, whether natural or acquired. Just as one pianist touches the keys of the ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... lad for risking his life to save my child's?' Then it came to me, 'I can teach him telegraphy.' When I offered to do this, he smiled and said, 'I'd like to learn,' and learn he did. I never saw any one pick it up so fast. It was a sort of second nature with him. After the conductor treated him so badly, throwing off his apparatus, boxing his ears and making him hard of hearing, Al seemed to lose his interest in his ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... is not necessary for you to know the names of these different feet in order to enjoy poetry, but it is interesting information. What you must do is to notice whenever you read poetry the kind of feet that compose the lines and how many there are in the line. After a while this becomes second nature to you, and while you may not really pause to think about it at any time, yet you are always conscious of the rhythm and remember that it is produced by a fixed arrangement of the accented syllables. If you would look over the poems in these volumes, beginning even ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... She was a bloodless, thin-necked, lackadaisical young person, in little-eyed spectacles, who, in her youth, had been compared to a drooping lily. From that time onward, she had given all her thought to the cultivation of slow, graceful, lily-like motions, until it had become second nature for her to ogle and smirk and roll her head gently this way and that. It had not only rendered her intolerable to the unprejudiced observer, but it had made her physically incapable of turning about quickly enough to catch the culprits in the corner. Every disturbance in the ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... connection, knew anything of our heroine's actual relation to the captain and his family. It is true, some of the oldest of the blacks had once some vague notions on the subject; but their recollections had become obscured by time, and habit was truly second nature with all of the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... habit is most uncomfortable. Nature—at least that "second nature" which is habit—calls aloud for the customary performance. Strenuous effort is required to get out of the rut, and the slipping back into the rut which is almost sure to occur in moments of inadvertence is humiliating. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... creature! Incidentally, are you not still attempting to make love indirectly? I suppose making love has become a sort of second nature, and you do not know you are breaking ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... inhabitants of the Icelandic capital, our traveller says: "Nothing struck me so much as the great dignity of carriage at which the Icelandic ladies aim, and which is so apt to degenerate into stiffness when it is not perfectly natural, or has not become a second nature by habit. They incline their head very coolly when you meet them, with less civility than we should use towards an inferior or a stranger. The lady of the house never accompanies her guests beyond the door of the room, after a call; if the husband is present, he goes a little further; but ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... denied his engagement to Lucy. He had left her presence without a word of encouragement, because of that engagement. But he believed that Lizzie was sincere. He believed, now, that she was genuine; though he had previously been all but sure that falsehood and artifice were second nature to her. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... notice the difference between the two. As I thought that it was impossible for me ever to go away, it seemed to me a wise policy to adapt myself to the life I had to live. It was a lie at first; later it became second nature...." ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... on leaves of his notebook, in place of that which he had destroyed, went in with the morning's milk. In half an hour after he was with her. And when he came out again he had seen a wonderful thing—a beautiful woman to whom emotion was life, and the expression of it second nature, running through the gamut of twenty moods in a quarter of an hour. At the end, John departed in search of a licence and a church. And Miriam Gale put her considering finger to her lip, and said, "Let me see—which dresses ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... of the Syndicate met at Hawkes' apartment and planned each step of the crime in great detail, drilling and re-drilling until it was second nature for each man to recite his particular part in the robbery. Alan's was at once the simplest and most difficult; he would have nothing to do until the others had finished their parts, but then he would have ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... our way among the throng again. It is curious, in the most crowded part of a town, to meet with living creatures that had their birthplace in some far solitude, but have acquired a second nature in the wilderness of men. Look up, Annie, at that canary-bird, hanging out of the window in his cage. Poor little fellow! His golden feathers are all tarnished in this smoky sunshine; he would have glistened ...
— Little Annie's Ramble (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... start till half-past twelve. At that moment the court was occupied in deciding whether a certain tradesman, living at Devizes, should or should not be on the jury. The man himself objected that, being a butcher, he was, by reason of the second nature acquired in his business, too cruel, and bloody-minded to be entrusted with an affair of life and death. To a proposition in itself so reasonable no direct answer was made; but it was argued with great power on behalf of the crown, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... Rad's respectful fingers on his visitor's sleeve signed to him a change of route. The corridors, too, as is the custom in Arabia, where coolness is the first consideration, were dimly lit; and with the caution which had grown to be his second nature, Kettle instinctively kept all his senses on the alert for inconvenient surprises. He had no desire that Rad el Moussa should forget his submissiveness and stab him suddenly from behind, neither did he especially wish to be noosed or ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... he'll lecture on his own singing. I shall be on the platform to make a sort of introductory speech and Monti, of course, will accompany. He is the only accompanist that counts. But then I suppose he's been accompanying somebody or other ever since he was a little boy, so it's second nature to him. And you must come, and bring your husband. Does he go with you to places? Very nice of him. Nowadays if husbands and wives don't occasionally go to the same parties they have hardly any opportunity of meeting at all; that's what I always say. But ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... the reader that I sent for the above-mentioned articles, but habit is second nature, and although two days before, when I set out on my pilgrimage, I had resolved to discard these superfluities, yet now in my distress I felt as if they would comfort me. That evening, after rectifying a few mistakes on the ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... in small towns and villages. The weathercock on the spire and the barometer on the back piazza are studied as they are not studied by dwellers in cities. A habit of keen observation of trivial matters becomes second nature in rural places. The provincial eye grows as sharp as the woodsman's. Thus it happened that somebody passing casually through Nutter's Lane that morning noticed—noticed it as a thing of course, since it was so—that no ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that memoirs would speak of him as a useful nobleman,—and he was contented. He was not only not ambitious himself, but the effervescence and general turbulence of ambition in other men was distasteful to him. Loyalty was second nature to him, and the power of submitting to defeat without either shame or sorrow had become perfect with him by long practice. He would have made his brother Duke such as he was himself,—had not his brother Duke been ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... lady sighed: she was not prepared to begin a long way off in morals. Honour was, to her, second nature, and she had never tried to find out on what principle its laws were based. So, telling the lad that she wished to see Mr. Horner when he returned from Warwick, she dismissed him with a despondent look; he, meanwhile, right glad to ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the importance that should be attached to the time of youth. At this period of life sin has not yet taken deep root in the heart,—it has not at least assumed the frightful magnitude of one of those inveterate habits, justly called habits of second nature, which invade and pollute the sacred sanctuary of both body and soul, forming in the earliest instincts, inclinations and desires so violent, so obstinate, that superhuman efforts with a life-long struggle are the consequences entailed upon the unfortunate victims, who desire to hold ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... him, "to the voice of Reason! It is the second nature of all such canines to pursue vermins, nor are they at all capable of comprehending the Why and Wherefore of a shocking flagellation. If it is your wish that this hound should play the part of a Tantalus, ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Governor for some years, I was prevented from the practice of the law, and in the meantime had been engaged in public life until it commenced to be a kind of second nature to me. Moreover, I was then young, ardent, and ambitious, so that I really thought it was right for me to offer for Congress; and I did so, in the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... populous graves of the sea. Then came Allan Campbell into her life, and his influence in the Promoter household had been to intensify the quiet and order, which David and Maggie both distinctly approved. The habit of being quiet became a second nature to the girl, every circumstance of the last years of her life had separated her more and more from the girls of her class and age. She was not to blame, but what then? People suffer from circumstances, as well ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... purpose never occurred to Follett; he fitted the thought to its place; the word to the thought; and allowed the action only to take care of itself, as it always will with an earnest speaker. His, therefore, was rather the artlessness than the art of advocacy— its second nature— justly appreciated by those to whose interests it was devoted; but not fully understood even by the spectator of its exertion; dying with the causes in which it was engaged, and leaving no vestiges except in their success. ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... in the heart of Tayoga. His second nature, which was that of his white training and association, prevailed. He was sorry that he had been compelled to take life, and, dragging the heavy body much farther away, he hid it in the bushes. Then, making a circle through the forest to assure himself that no other enemies were near, ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... formed, becomes truly a second nature, as the common saying is; but unskillfully and unmethodically directed, it will be as it were the ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... name should make her sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, with a click, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, intensely poignant situation. But our excitable old friend was an Englishwoman: dissimulation would be her second nature; you could trust her to pull the wool over your eyes with a fleet and practised hand. Instinctively, furthermore, she would seek to extract from such a situation all the fun it promised. Taken off her guard, for the span of ten heart-beats she sat up straight and ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... witnessing a marvelous instance of automatism, that wonderful power of the mind working through the body to reproduce, apparently without effort or thought, operations which have been repeated so many times that they have become "second nature." More than this, it indicated clearly that while the better part of the man's body was "dead to the world," the faculty he had cultivated to the highest extent still remained alive. Some years later this man ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... at the Astor Library wore them. At the time it seemed to be the thing to do, and of course they soon became second nature to me. But I daresay no one ever had a sounder ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... our danger to-day. We tend, through deliberate idealism or deliberate material purpose, to destroy the soul in its first nature of spontaneous, integral being, and to substitute the second nature, the automatic nature of the mechanical universe. For this purpose we stay up late at night, and we rise late ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... returns of business, except he be either tedious and of no despatch, or lightly and unworthily ambitious to meddle with things that may be better done by others." Thus many great things have been done during such "vacant times of leisure," by men to whom industry had become a second nature, and who found it easier to work ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... struggle, and the fact of there being a struggle produced failure. The rector's servants treated the daughter of the house with special awe, and the marchioness herself moved, and spoke, and ate, and drank with a cold magnificence, which I think had become a second nature with her, but which was not on that account the less oppressive. Even the archdeacon, who enjoyed something in that which was so disagreeable to his wife, felt a relief when he was left alone after dinner with his son. He felt relieved as his son ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... for the colonel. The brigade clerks, the signallers, and the cooks had dug hard, and made use of trench-covers, with the swift resource that long experience of trench-life had developed into a kind of second nature. Hubbard had arranged an "elephant," raised on two rows of ancient sandbags, for himself and me ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... chiefly formed in the cradle; and, not only his character, but the habits which are learnt in the great schoolroom of the world were fixed beyond any possibility of change. The strange eccentricities which had now become a second nature, amazed the society in which he was for over twenty years a prominent figure. Unsympathetic observers, those especially to whom the Chesterfield type represented the ideal of humanity, were simply disgusted or repelled. The man, they thought, might be in his place at a Grub Street pot-house; ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... opportunity for furthering his efforts, for Lucas never referred to the matter in her hearing. If he had yet made his decision he imparted it to none. He seemed to her to be like a soldier awaiting orders to move, with that steadfast patience which had become his second nature. She knew that he would never act upon impulse, and she admired ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... no time for dullness. Every hour had its duty, and these soon became second nature to the zealous young warriors. Such rivalry to best master the manual, to hold the most soldierly stature in the ranks, to detect the drill-sergeant when, to test their attention, he gave a false command! And then the coronal joy of a reward of merit for efficiency ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... coupled together, and Erle's weakness and love of pretty faces had drawn the net round him. And there were other considerations that had moved him—his dread of poverty; the luxurious habits that had become a second nature; and above all, reluctance to disappoint the old man who, in his own way, had been good to him. Erle knew that in spite of his hardness and severity, his uncle clung to him as the ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... this unfortunate result of their performance, Billy Brackett and Bim sang and howled in concert, until their repertory was exhausted, when they lay down on the floor of the hut, and with the facility of those to whom camp life has become a second nature, were quickly asleep. From this slumber Billy Brackett was startlingly awakened, some time later, by Bim's bark, and a pistol shot that rang out from the profound stillness of the forest like a thunder-clap. He grasped the dog's collar and sat ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... expected that you should know all the tricks of the trade that you have known about not much more than a day. I've been doing this sort of work for twenty years now, and naturally many little bits of knowledge such as that are second nature to me, as natural as breathing or sleeping. Wait a minute while I go up ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... politeness is a proof at once of self-respect, and of respect for your friend." Though irksome at first, these trifles soon cease to be matters for memory, and become things of mere habit. To the thoroughly well-bred they are a second nature. Let no one neglect them who is desirous of pleasing in society; and, above all, let no one deem them unworthy of attention. They are precisely the trifles which do most to make social intercourse agreeable, and a knowledge of which distinguishes ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... literary self-consciousness to blemish their expression. He recorded these thoughts at the instant of their birth, for a constant habit of observation and analysis had early developed with him into a second nature. His ideas were penned in the same fragmentary way as they presented themselves to his mind, perhaps with no intention of publishing them to the world. But his ideal of art depended intimately, none the less, on the system he had thrown out seemingly in so ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... be highest and noblest, from a vivid natural perception (natural, though cherished and strengthened by prayer, natural, though unfolded and diversified by practice, natural, though of that new and second nature which God the Holy Ghost gives), from an innate, though supernatural perception of the great vision of Truth which is external to him (a perception of it, not indeed in its fulness, but in glimpses, and by fits and seasons, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... unchallenged to a third-class smoking compartment and deposited it on the rack. There were three other passengers in the compartment. 'Good Lord!' ejaculated one, as the millionaire stepped out to purchase an evening paper. 'Isn't that Markham? Well!—and travelling third!' 'Saving habit— second nature,' said another. 'That's the way to get ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... my debts, which amounted to about two hundred ducats, and I made preparations for starting for Breslau, the day after, with Count Clary, each of us having his own carriage. Clary was one of those men to whom lying has become a sort of second nature; whenever such an one opens his mouth, you may safely say to him, "You have lied, or you are going to lie." If they could feel their own degradation, they would be much to be pitied, for by their own fault at last no one will believe them even when ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... expected from them, and in order to fulfill the very hard terms of their contract with the Government, and keep their places, they are forced to resort to trickery, deception and perjury, until these, in their attitude toward their employer, the Government, become second nature, readily resorting to lies to clear themselves from blame, even in trivial matters, to save themselves from a sixpence fine. There are jealousies among themselves, but when it is a question of deceiving or keeping any neglect of duties or violences against prisoners from the superior authorities ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... his turn, lifted his cap from his clustering brown curls with that serene and stately court manner which was to him second nature. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... words he uttered Pauline felt that the time had come, and in the drawing of a breath was ready for it, with every sense alert, every power under full control, every feature obedient to the art which had become a second nature. Gilbert had seized her hand, and she did not draw it back; the sudden advent of the instant which must end her work sent an unwonted color to her cheek, and she did avert it; the exultation which flashed into her eyes made it unsafe to meet his own, ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... the habit of thinking so; and habit's a second nature. However, I dare say we shall yet meet in the arena, so I must not betray my weak points. How is it, Maltravers, that they see so little of you at the rectory? You are a great favourite there. Have you any living ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... indispensable to the physician who wishes to eradicate the results of a bad method. The very first principle of a vocal method should be, to establish so correct a use of the vocal organs that nature in this respect becomes second nature. For correct action of the voice-organs can develop into a habit so perfectly acquired that the singer acts upon it automatically; and the most disastrous result of poor teaching is that a bad habit also becomes second nature and is almost ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... in that That only of but following me, be happy, Reputed worthy to be made my Rival; For 'tis not, Lords, unknown to those about me, (My fellow Souldiers) first, with what a confidence I led them on to fight, went on still, and As if I could have been a second Nature, As well in heartening them by my example, As by my exhortation, I gave life To quicken courage, to inflame revenge, To heighten resolution; in a word, To out-doe action: It boots not to discover, How that young man, who was not fledg'd nor skill'd In Martial play, ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... It was second nature for the other fellows to depend on their leader whenever a knotty problem arose that needed solving. And seldom did Rod disappoint their expectations. He came up ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... and qualify their possessor for positions of trust and responsibility; it is a pledge that the amount of labour will be forthcoming to render equal to the position. "Practice makes perfect" says the proverb. "Habit becomes second nature" and the facility and aptitude which nature sometimes bestows as a free gift can be acquired at the cost of application ...
— The Aural System • Anonymous
... capabilities, he cannot create and control his chances to succeed, until he develops skill in salesmanship, which is necessary to market his qualifications profitably. He must practice "selling himself" until the habit of using sales skill in everything he does and says becomes second nature to him. Sales skill is the dynamic factor of success. It transforms potential powers into actual accomplishments. It enables the qualified man to turn his individual capabilities to ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... could hesitate, and yet love the little sufferer; for to one of his order of mind and habits of acting and feeling, a self-indulgence like that of the pipe, or a regular draught of beer, becomes so much like second nature, that it is as it were a part of the very life; and to give it up, costs more than a ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... hesitation and uncertainty, and with more intelligence; and this is well conveyed in M. Ribot's next sentence, for he says—"It is only when variations have been firmly rooted; when having become organic, they constitute a second nature, which supplants the first; when, like instinct, they have assumed a mechanical character, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... insight, the dependent person who always wants to go further will lead himself into doubtful situations. The three important factors, school, newspaper, and theater, have reached an extraordinary degree of power. People apperceive, think, and feel as these three teach them, and finally it becomes second nature to follow this line of least resistance, and to seek intellectual conformity. We know well enough what consequences this has in law, and each one of us can tell how witnesses present us stories which we believe to rest on their ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden |
