"Instinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that she was, or she had been, in the French capital; but to find her in that immense city was like looking for a haystack in a league-long desert. However, Ware had an idea—foolish enough—that some instinct would guide him to her side, and, therefore, as soon as he recovered sufficiently to travel he crossed the Channel with Trim. He left Rickwell about three weeks after his interview with Morley. Time enough, ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... Mr. Clarke, with the instinct of a true-hearted Yankee, immediately saw into the snare laid for the faith of the young orphans; and he thanked his God mentally that he had come to the knowledge of these facts, for he was the man to expose and reprobate such foul play. "I now well remember, Paul," said he, "the advertisements ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... be too dull for their readers. In real life, how many men and women fall in love? Not one in every ten thousand, I am convinced. Not one married pair in ten thousand have felt for each other as two or three couples do in every novel. There is the sexual instinct, of course, but that is quite a different thing; the novelists daren't talk about that. The paltry creatures daren't tell the one truth that would be profitable. The result is that women imagine themselves noble ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... tree, only twelve or fifteen feet from the trail. The bird, evidently trusting to its protective coloring, sat on the limb without moving a muscle. Mr. Waterman had just begun to explain to the boys that the bird was undoubtedly trusting to its instinct in remaining in quiet when, with a flutter of the wings, down fell the partridge from the tree to be grabbed ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... roaming through the swamp, on the way to and from school, too, and when he went to bring home the cows he remained longer than even Granny could excuse. For that simple task should have been performed in a very short time. He could trace the cattle through the woods with the sure instinct of a sleuth-hound, could distinguish Spotty's tracks from Cherry's, and might have found his own little heifer's in the midst of the public highway. But his skill did not help to make him any more expeditious, for he often forgot his errand and would ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... be said to amount to a passion, and cannot be restrained. The saying that the poet is born, not made, applies with equal force to the inventor, who, though indebted like the other to culture and improved opportunities, nevertheless invents and goes on inventing mainly to gratify his own instinct. The inventor, however, is not a creator like the poet, but chiefly a finder-out. His power consists in a great measure in quick perception and accurate observation, and in seeing and foreseeing the effects of certain mechanical combinations. He must possess the gift of insight, as well ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... gleaming in the noonday glance, Their steps symphonious with the drum's deep notes, While high the buoyant, breeze-borne banner floats! O, let not allied hosts yon band deride! 'T is Harvard Corps, our bulwark and our pride! Mark, how like one great whole, instinct with life, They seem to woo the dangers of the strife! Who would not brave the heat, the dust, the rain, To march the leader of that valiant train?" Harvard Register, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... innate striving toward artistic creation, is to become (as with Wycherley and Sheridan) a man who waives, however laughingly, his sole apology for existence. The proceeding is paltry enough, in all conscience; and yet, upon the other side, there is much positive danger in giving to the instinct a loose rein. For in that event the familiar circumstances of sedate and wholesome living cannot but seem, like paintings viewed too near, to lose in gusto and winsomeness. Desire, perhaps a craving hunger, awakens for the impossible. No emotion, whatever ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known by those who know it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... young Standish floated along with his head in the clouds, swinging his cane in the air, when suddenly he was brought sharply down to earth again. A figure darted out from behind a tree, an instinct rather than reason caused the artist to guard himself by throwing up his left arm. He caught the knife thrust in the fleshy part of it, and the pain was like the red-hot sting of a gigantic wasp. It flashed through his ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... knows the secret of making a willow whistle! He must know the best kind of willow for the purpose, and the exact time of year when the bark will slip. The country boy seems to know these things by instinct. When the day for whistles arrives he puts away marbles and hunts the whetstone. His jackknife must be in good shape, for the making of a whistle is a delicate piece of handicraft. The knife has seen service in mumblepeg and as nut pick since whistle-making time last year. Surrounded by ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... her too. At that point she stopped seeing him.—Lisel Liblichlein needed a man with whom she could discuss her important, ordinary experiences. After the quarrel with Schulz she chose Kohn out of some vague instinct. Thus it happened that she made an appointment to meet him at the Kloesschen at noon on the day of the fight, in order perhaps to consult with him about choosing a dress, or about his interpretation of a role, or about some little ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... see this?" I added, holding up the wrench, which, from an instinct of self-preservation, I had kept ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... not to feel that all her charms were lost on Christophe, and too adroit not to adapt herself at once to his character. She did not even need to do so deliberately. It was a natural instinct with her. She was a woman. She was like water, formless. The soul of every man she met was a vessel, whose form she took immediately out of curiosity. It was a law of her existence that she should always be some one else. Her whole personality was for ever shifting. She was ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... wholesome warning, should run off into the belief that language and race have absolutely nothing to do with one another, he had better have gone without the warning. For in such a case the last error would be worse than the first. The natural instinct of mankind connects race and language. It does not assume that language is an infallible test of race; but it does assume that language and race have something to do with one another. It assumes, that though language is not an ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... else parts were uniting and union was becoming organization—and neither geographical remoteness nor unwieldiness of number nor local interests and differences were untractable obstacles to that spirit of fusion which was at once the ambition of the few and the instinct of the many; and cities, even where most powerful, had become the centres of the attracting and joining forces, knots in the political network—while this was going on more or less happily throughout the rest of Europe, in Italy the ancient ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... please, is merely the courtier which I am not, though I have written "Napoleon III. in Italy." It is time to limit the significance of certain terms, or to enlarge the significance of certain things. Nationality is excellent in its place; and the instinct of self-love is the root of a man, which will develop into sacrificial virtues. But all the virtues are means and uses; and, if we hinder their tendency to growth and expansion, we both destroy them as virtues, and degrade them to ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... were seldom elsewhere so impressive or seemed so genuine as a devotional act. They needed, for their perfect effect, the influence of a leader with whom worship was an habitual mental attitude, and who, combined with the instinct of religion the art of a poet and of a musician."[12] The form of service thus initiated was adopted in many other churches, and slowly had its influence in giving greater beauty and spiritual expressiveness ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... world's ways and usages attracted the world-hardened man more than her face. He had not spent a roue life in a great city for nothing; he had lived enough with gentlemen, broken-down and lost, it is true, but well-bred, to be able to ape their manners; and the devil's instinct that such people possess warned him of Hitty Hyde's weakest points. So, too, he contrived to make that first errand lead to another, and still another,—to make the solitary woman depend on his help, and expect his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... beauty. All spiritual life is primordially an inspiration or intuition from the Father of spirits, whose offspring all men are, and who is not far from every one of them. This intuition prompts men to "seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him." Thus prayer becomes an instinct; and to worship is as natural as to breathe. But man is a being with five senses, and as his contact with his fellow-creatures and with the whole creation is at one or other of those five points, he is necessarily sensuous. Endowed with native intelligence, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... sharp instinct, intensified by dread, Eleanor sees that her doom is not yet; but the thought of another burns like fire in her brain. Her own miserable thread of life, what does it matter? She holds it as nought compared with the one she loves. She would die a thousand deaths if such a sacrifice would ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... south Italians hate and distrust all governmental control and despise any appeal to the ordinary tribunals of justice to assert a right or to remedy a wrong. It has been justly said by a celebrated Italian writer that, in effect, there is some instinct for civil war in the heart of every Italian. The insufferable tyranny of the Bourbon dynasty made every outlaw dear to the hearts of the oppressed people of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Even if he robbed them, they felt that he was the lesser of two evils, and sheltered him from the authorities. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... sidewise, as a horse does that sees a snake by the roadside, every nerve and sinew keyed to the tightest pitch—eye, ear and instinct working together. And she, in the same second, turned to meet him smiling, with outstretched arms, as if she would meet him half-way and hug him to her bosom, only she stepped a pace backward, instead of forward as she ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... minds the powerful retort of Butler's Analogy, and the biting sarcasm of Voltaire's Candide. Pope, accepting the doctrine without any perception of these difficulties, unintentionally fell into sheer pantheism. He was not yielding to the logical instinct which carries out a theory to its legitimate development; but obeying the imaginative impulse which cannot stop to listen to the usual qualifications and safeguards of the orthodox reasoner. The best passages in the essay are those in which ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... It may be that one grows too critical as the years go on and possesses too little healthy instinct. And I consider instinct the best guarantee of ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... There was about him, as he talked, a trace of timidity, almost of apology, which Montague noticed and wondered at. It was only later, when he had time to think about it, that he realized that Hegan had begun as a farmer's boy in Texas, a "poor white"; and could it be that after all these years an instinct remained in him, so that whenever he met a gentleman of the old South he stood by with a little deference, seeming to beg pardon for his hundred ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... man of quick mind, his brain having been too many years bemuddled with drink, but he had a rough instinct which showed him all the wondrous shrewdness of her casting that last word at him to wheedle him, even though she looked sullen in the saying it. It made him roar again ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and with a bound she was across the room, pouring out another wild flood of protestations, in which the words "il dottore" and "la bambina" occurred over and over again. Higher and higher rose her voice, more shrill and hysterical her outpourings, and Anstice's professional instinct warned him that such abnormal excitement must end in disaster—though of the nature of that ending he had at the moment ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... them; "Upon my word," said the Queen, "these folks are civiler when you visit them, than when they visit you." This marked both spirit and good -humour. For my part, I am so shocked at French barbarity, that I begin to think that our hatred of them is not national prejudice, but natural instinct; as tame animals are born with an antipathy to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... little friend Ayoosheh, and some sugar-plums for Mohammed, but they laid them aside in order to devote themselves to the stranger, and all quietly, and with no sort of show-off or obtrusiveness. Even the baby seemed to have the instinct of hospitality, and was full of smiles. It was all of a piece with the good old lady, their grandmother at Luxor, who wanted to wash my clothes for me herself, because I said the black slave of Mohammed washed badly. Remember that to do 'menial offices' for a guest is an honour and pleasure, and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... some frank communion, his confidence being won by the plain tale of who I was and what I had endured. The Lord indeed was pleased, throughout that period of fears and tribulation, marvellously to endow the persecuted with a singular and sympathetic instinct, whereby they were enabled at once to discern their friends; for the dangers and difficulties, to which we were subject in our intercourse, afforded no time for those testimonies and experiences that in ordinary occasions are required to ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... tangle caught his eye. He ran to it, and found a nest he had never seen before. It was full of purple eggs, and there was the rare bird he had seen but once. It was chanting the weird song he had often heard, but never traced. But the eggs were the marvelous things. His old egg-collecting instinct broke out. He reached forth to clutch the wonderful prize, and—in an instant all the lights went out. There was nothing but the black woods about him. Then on the pathway shone again the soft light. It grew brighter, till in the middle of ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... speed of their gallop and the strength of the currents of air were like some narcotic that drowned and that dizzied perception. In the intense darkness neither could see, neither hear, the other; the instinct of the beasts kept them together, but no word could be heard above the roar of the storm, and no light broke the somber veil of shadow through which they passed as fast as leopards course through the night. The first faint streak of dawn grew gray in the east when Cecil felt his charger stagger ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... has now made an appeal to us to help her, and not only every principle of wisdom but every generous instinct within us bids us respond to the appeal. It is not of the slightest consequence whether we grant the aid needed by Santo Domingo as an incident to the wise development of the Monroe Doctrine or because ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... as a beacon-light, saying "Follow me, believe in me, let me guide you, all will be well." And it is the man who allows himself to be guided by that mysterious something, which for the want of a better name we may call "instinct," who benefits, both spiritually and ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... with it a habit of community life, in contrast with the individualistic democracy of the Southern element. The colonizing land companies, the town, the school, the church, the feeling of local unity, furnished the evidences of this instinct for communities. This instinct was accompanied by the creation of cities, the production of a surplus for market, the reaching out to connections with the trading centers of the East, the evolution of a more complex and at the same time a more integrated industrial society than ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... and a hare finds itself being gradually covered by the flakes, it does what it can to bury itself deeper; but always with this eye on life—that it assiduously keeps a hole open that it may breathe, and always to the leeward. Such is one of many evidences of clever instinct to be met with for ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... to him. He has also become very fond of fire, but has not acquired a liking for money; for though he takes it he does not keep it, but gives it to his landlord or landlady, which I suppose is a lesson they have taught him. He retains so much of his natural instinct that he has a fore-feeling of bad weather, growling, and howling, and showing great disorder before it ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... reign of hideous cruelty in the administration of the penal law, with its torture-chambers, its burnings of heretics and witches, its cruelties of every sort, its repression of so much of sane human instinct and noble human thought, arose from this source, directly or indirectly; and that even such ghastly scenes as those of the French Revolution were provoked by a natural reaction in the minds of a people whom the church, by its theory of divine retribution, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... journey to the Thibet, the doctor had remained nearly two years without hinting at new explorations; and Dick, supposing that his friend's instinct for travel and thirst for adventure had at length died out, was perfectly enchanted. They would have ended badly, some day or other, he thought to himself; no matter what experience one has with men, one does not travel always with impunity among ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... Cleary. "You're becoming more and more of a soldier as you get promoted. You have the true military instinct, I see. Of course it makes no difference who holds the country, but I'm a little disappointed in the Moritos. As for San Diego, Colonel Booth of your old regiment is in command, and I half think he didn't back up ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... every exchange paper, familiarising himself with discussions in Congress, and imbibing a deadly hatred of England because of Indian barbarities excited by British agents, and cruelties to American seamen impressed by British officers. With the true instinct of his fine nature, he made his friends and companions among the wisest and highest of his time, although he loved all company that was not vicious and depraved. He knew Gerrit Smith in 1814; a few months' stay, as a journeyman printer, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of all their grants. Keep your eye on Lagunitas. It may come into the market. Gold will be the fool's beacon here for some time. These great valleys will yet be the real wealth of the new State. Land is the rock of the wealth to come. Get land, my boy!" he cries, with the lordly planter's instinct. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... famous moonlight night in Onteora. And he acknowledged his defeat at once, and like a man. He realized fully his own unsavory condition. He retired to a far corner of the small estate, and for a week, prompted only by his own instinct, he kept to ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... one in a nightmare of agony and terror, and her instinct rather than her reason responded to his ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... say, whether the days of Purim were instituted to be holidays or not, yet there was some more than ordinary warrant for them, because Mordecai, by whose advice and direction they were appointed to be kept, was a prophet by the instinct and revelation of the Spirit, Esth. iv. 13. Non multum fortasse aberraverimus, saith Hospinian,(848) si dicamus hoc a Mordochcaeo et Hesthera, ex peculiari Spiritus Sancti ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... its master. We may as well deal frankly with each other in this matter. You confessed last night that you hated me. I acknowledge to-day that I have hated you ever since I first saw you. It was an instinct." ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... of him might be, his feet were light; they flipped a bar of a hornpipe at a touch of the ground. Perhaps they were allowed to go with their instinct for the dance, that his master should have a sample of his wakefulness. He quenched a smirk and stood to take orders; clad in a flat blue cap, a brown overcoat, and knee-breeches, as the temporary bustle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with the easy affability of a man to whom good breeding had ceased to be a habit, and had become an instinct. Only once did anything pass between us bearing on the extraordinary relationship which he had established with me—the relation of victor and victim, I considered it. We had been left together for a ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... cemented, With human filth that column is defiled, As if the peasant's coarse contempt were vented To show his loathing of the spot he soiled:[ek] Thus is the trophy used, and thus lamented Should ever be those blood-hounds, from whose wild Instinct of gore and glory Earth has known Those sufferings Dante saw ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... and the counterpoise of the Greek virtues was absent. The reasoning powers assisted rather than prevented the degradation of morals, for they dissected and represented as nothing all the motives which had hitherto kept men upright. The healthy and uncorrupted instinct left to itself would have been a sufficient restraint, but sophistry argued and said, What is there in it?—and so the very strength and prerogative of man hired itself out to perform the office of making ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... the steady eyes upon him, but was carrying enough liquor to make him reckless. Still his was naturally the instinct of the New York gunman, seeking for some adventure. He stepped backward, feigning a laugh, watchful to catch ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... in one letter, "my mind has, for the present, lost its temper and its fine edge, and I have an instinct that I had better keep quiet. Perhaps I shall have a new spirit of vigor if I wait quietly for it; perhaps not." In another: "I hardly know what to say to the public about this abortive Romance, though ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... King's first instinct was to retreat as quietly as he'd advanced; to get away from the place and report failure to Dennis. But as he went back downstairs, the thought of Dennis' disapproval began weighing more heavily. Maybe something unforeseen had happened. ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... hour, during which time Camille continued to play, Beatrix rose and retired to her apartments. Camille at once took Calyste into her chamber and closed the door, fearing to be overheard; for women have an amazing instinct of distrust. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... a little pause at that—it was a puzzling question to answer; not to speak of a slight warning which the Squire received from his instinct. But ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... held tightly by Jem's wrist, and mastering his dread of the unknown, crept softly in, turning from time to time to watch Ramsden, who came on as if some instinct told him that those he sought for ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... As by instinct, he comprehended all. He felt as fully aware as though he had been plainly told so, that the echo of his hurried pace had been caught by the quick ear of the night guardians, and he was pursued as a midnight assassin. Thinking that the safest course would be to hurry straight ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... an artificer in his own art should be preferable to the opinion of another man; at least where he is not bribed by interest, or prejudiced by malice. And this, I suppose, is manifest by plain inductions: For, first, the crowd cannot be presumed to have more than a gross instinct, of what pleases or displeases them: Every man will grant me this; but then, by a particular kindness to himself, he draws his own stake first, and will be distinguished from the multitude, of which other men may ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... had always been his master-passion. He would have sold his soul for the time and freedom to write plays! It was IN HIM—he could not remember when it had not been his deepest-seated instinct. As the years passed it became a morbid, a relentless obsession—yet with every year the material conditions were more and more against it. He felt himself growing middle-aged, and he watched the reflection of ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... think you had better apply at once? Jack will give you a character, I am sure, on the side of the art of ruling, and I will speak for the science—also of hereditary (on mother's side) instinct. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... indeed. Nancy would normally have told him everything that happened to her in the exact order of its occurrence; but partly because she did not wish to exaggerate her eccentricity in eyes that looked upon her so kindly, and partly because she had the instinct to spare him the realization that there was no way in which he might come to her rescue in the event of disaster,—she did not inform him of her legacy. She knew that he was shrewdly calculating to stand behind her ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... first who (in 1736) demanded what was called the succor of the swords. Montgeron says,—"She was prompted by the supernatural instinct which guided her to select the strongest and sharpest sword she could find among those worn by the spectators. Then setting herself with her back against a wall, she placed the point of the sword just above her stomach, and called upon him who seemed the strongest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... little to the left of the spot where this shocking disaster occurred, a small clump of whitethorn trees, so closely matted together, that it was impossible to see through them. We all, therefore, ran round as if by instinct, to watch the tumbling body of poor Raymond, when what was our surprise to see a powerful young man, about eight or ten yards below us, dashing into the stream; where, although the current was narrower, it was less violent, and holding by ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... circumstances. In their case the mesmeritic trance may be said to be ever in existence, while in the performance of their proper functions. It is only while crowded into bales, or thrust into drawers for the vulgar purposes of trade, that this instinct is dormant, a beneficent nature scorning to exercise her benevolence for any but legitimate objects. I now mean legitimacy as connected with cause and effect, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... was very sore. He stamped about the room and kicked unoffending chairs out of the way. His unfailing instinct told him that a rare opportunity had been lost. It was well for Winter that he was beyond reach of the barrister's tongue. A valid defence would have availed ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... until I found myself gagged and powerless. It was so sudden that I could scarce bring myself to realise it, or to comprehend what it all meant. I heard the gang round me speaking in short, fierce whispers to each other, and some instinct told me that my life was the question at issue. Goring spoke authoritatively and angrily—the others doggedly and all together, as if disputing his commands. Then they moved away in a body to the opposite side of the deck, where I could still hear ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that Sir John Sebright had raised wild ducks under a hen, which built their nests on tufts of grass as if they had been in the fens. Dr. Edwards begged of me to inquire for how many generations that instinct lasted. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... Instinct told me not to let my attention be diverted from my regular business to what I considered a gamble. "Unreal estate," I would call it. My friend Nodelman was of the same opinion. "It's a poker game traveling under a false passport," was his way of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... occasionally at Madame Dalibard's, but no intimacy had been established between them. Varney was formal and distant to Ardworth, and Ardworth felt a repugnance to Varney. With the instinct of sound, sterling, weighty natures, he detected at once, and disliked heartily, that something of gaudy, false, exaggerated, and hollow which pervaded Gabriel Varney's talk and manner,—even the trick of his walk and the cut of his ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the elan de la vie, is thus dispersive; and if we are to interpret the evolution of mental on the analogy of physical life, we shall find, M. Bergson says, nothing in the latter which compels us to assume either that intelligence is developed instinct, or that instinct is degraded intelligence. If that be so, then, we may say, neither is there anything to warrant us in assuming either that religion is developed magic, or magic degraded religion. Spell is not degraded prayer, nor is prayer a superior form of spell: ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... strength may be with his partner and himself, in which case it is important for him now to show his colors; yet he must always keep in mind that conservatism, in the long run, is the main factor of Auction success. It is the ability (possibly "instinct" is the proper term) to act wisely in such cases that makes a bidder ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... a time when a simple instinct for poetry was possessed by all nations, as it still is by uncivilised races and children. Among European nations this instinct appears to be dead for ever. We can name neither a mountain nor a flower. Our Mount Costigan, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... to be moved by religious emotion; if your spirit is no longer exalted by music, and you do not linger over certain lines of poetry, it is because the love-instinct in your heart has withered to ashes of roses. It is idle to imagine Bobby Burns as a staid member of the Kirk; had he been so, there would now be no Bobby Burns. The literary ebullition of Robert ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the much-talked-of Werther period, we discover that it does not belong to the course of universal culture, but to the career of life in every individual, who, with an innate free natural instinct, must accommodate himself to the narrow limits of an antiquated world. Obstructed fortune, restrained activity, unfulfilled wishes, are not the calamities of any particular time, but those of every individual man; and it would be bad, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... herself from a deliberately insulting precision into an hysterical, and it is to be feared a virtuous, conviction of her wrongs. Beginning only with the instinct to taunt and wound the man before her, she had been led by a secret consciousness of something else he did not know to anticipate his reproach and justify herself in a wild feminine abandonment of emotion. But she stopped at his words. For a moment ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... moment, her face alight with eagerness, but some instinct stopped her from expressing too much delight. In the softened feeling which had crept into her heart, she realised that to her grandmother the move ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... decision as to the wisdom of a course of action rested always upon her own thought. Never did she seek to make a fellow-being her conscience. When the day of judgment came, the hour of trial or vital demand, it found her standing boldly, because her love was made perfect, not through instinct alone, but through conformity with the certain knowledge that he who lacks wisdom may find it in the right thought of God and man. And so, when on the next day she joined Hitt and Haynerd in the office of the Social Era, and learned ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... enigmatical to the uninitiated. And since a newspaper man writes for the world at large rather than for any specific class or group, he cannot afford to take chances on muddying his sentences by the use of slang. The best test of a good journalist is the instinct for writing for heterogeneous masses of people. That word is not a good one which is clear only to select readers, whether select in ignorance or select in intelligence. The news story permits no such selection. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... natural science or aesthetics: history, in so far as it endeavours to comprehend the manifestations of the individualities of peoples in ever new images, and the prevailing law in the disappearance of phenomena; natural science, in so far as it strives to fathom the deepest instinct of man, that of speech; aesthetics, finally, because from various antiquities at our disposal it endeavours to pick out the so-called "classical" antiquity, with the view and pretension of excavating the ideal world buried under it, ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Corelli's younger days the church had a stronger claim on musicians than the theatre or concert-room. So we find him getting his earliest instruction from the Capuchin Simonelli, who devoted himself to the ecclesiastical style. The pupil, however, yielded to an irresistible instinct, and soon put himself under the care of a clever and skillful teacher, the well-known Bassani. Under this tuition the young musician made rapid advancement, for he labored incessantly in the practice ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... definition, is the bond which binds the soul of man to God.[1] It begins as the relation of a tribe to its God. Personal religious conviction grows out of the tribal (corporate) religious bond. But the social instinct is strong. Men owning the same religious convictions will naturally draw together into some sort of association. Using the word religion to cover all the imperfect ways in which men have felt after God, we note that in every case men have found the need alike of a teacher and of fellowship. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... quietly, without frightening him. The instant he found I saw him, he walked back again, and deposited the soap nearly in the same place from whence he had taken it. There was certainly something more than instinct in that action: he evidently betrayed a consciousness of having done wrong both by his first and last actions—and what is reason if that is ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... not speak very loud, but as an animal senses the truth of a danger far off with an unshakable certainty, the crowd at the station seemed to know by instinct ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rarely has on them that "go down to the sea in ships." Blown out of his course by head-winds, his very mishaps ripened into the rarest fortune, for he discovered Brazil, and thus added to his master's realm what was destined to be one of the richest kingdoms of the world. With the instinct of genius, and a courage as rare as it was heroic, he did not return to notify his king of the new continent which had risen out of the deep before him, but sending back a single caravel with the marvellous news, he turned his battered prows to that point of the compass where he judged ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... forward and bowed slightly; she was very pretty, this girl, as she stood there with the rich red light from the silk lamp shades behind her. She was one of those dark, seductive women that look their best in a warm light; and that evening her face and figure seemed instinct with ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... Jan and Abel. He was stunned by the suddenness and the weight of the calamity which had come to him. He was very kind to Mrs. Lake, but the poor woman was almost past any feeling but that which, as a sort of instinct or inspiration, guided a constant watching and waiting on her sick children. She never slept, and would not have eaten, but that Master Lake used his authority to force some food upon her. At this time Jan's chief occupations were cookery and dish-washing. His constant habit of observation ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... breeding. Darwin in his "Descent of Man" says: "It is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, whilst the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... scientific manipulation of the bony structures, nerves and nerve centers, muscles and ligaments. A later development of manipulative science is Chiropractic, originated by Dr. Palmer of Davenport, Iowa. Thus the simple pioneers of German Nature Cure, every one of them gifted by Nature with the instinct and genius of the true healer, who is born, not made, laid the foundation for the ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... willing to conceal as much as possible, and to throw the blame on other people. And when the real facts were confessed she did not seem able to comprehend why she was regarded with displeasure; her instinct of truth and obedience was lost for the time, and Eleanor saw it with the utmost pain. Adeline had been her especial darling, and cold as her manner had often been towards the others, it ever was warm towards the motherless little one, whom she ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fled on and on, with only the blind instinct to hide her disgrace. The village was empty of all but the sick and the bed-ridden. There was not an eye on Mauryeen Daly as she fled by the open doors. With a mechanical instinct she turned in at the door of her mother's house. The cool darkness of it after the glare outside was ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... man must give according to his station, the strong man of strength, the wise one of wisdom; the one who knew beauty must give it somehow, not huddle it like a miser's hoard.... All men must work; that was as natural an instinct as the law that men must eat: and work did not mean grinding, but justifying one's existence fully.... None may hold back, for that is ignoble, and all that is ignoble dies, dies and is used again.... The murderer's dead body may nurture a green bay-tree, such beautiful economy nature has.... ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... to the fact that the invitation and response exactly halve each stanza between them—song followed by countersong. "Ingenious" seems hardly the right word for a division so obviously natural and almost automatic. It is a simple art beauty that a poet of culture makes by instinct. Bowring's "Watchman, tell us of the night," is not the only other instance of similar countersong structure, and the regularity in Thomas Scott's little hymn, "Hasten, sinner, to be wise," is only a simpler case of the way a poem plans itself by ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... began to crawl towards the water. So great was the agony she suffered that she was unable to make any resistance, or to seize the head of the crocodile in her mouth. While she shrieked with pain, the crocodile slowly drew her on towards the river, into which, her instinct told her, should the saurian once dive, her fate would be sealed. In vain the tigress struggled to free herself, and drag back the crocodile. The monkeys, meantime, seemed to think the affair great fun; ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... took them to the shore of the lake. Here they halted for a minute while the Indian closely examined the locality. With the wonderful power of making their way straight through the forest to the required spot, which seems to be almost an instinct among Indians, Deer Tail had struck the lake within two hundred yards of the point which he aimed at. He led the way along the shore until he came to a spot where a great maple had fallen into the lake; here he turned into the ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... greatest mathematician of his time; none less than John Locke, the most learned philosopher of the day. Strong company this, for a young and unknown man, yet in the belief of Montague, himself a young man and a gambler by instinct, not too strong for this young Scotchman who had startled the Parliament of his own land by some of the most remarkable theories of finance which had ever been proposed in any country or to any government. As Law had himself arrogantly announced, he was indeed a philosopher and a mathematician, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... get on; his noisy talk and brusque manners scared the German, who was unused to such behaviour. One poor devil detects another by instinct at once, but in old age he rarely gets on with him, and that is hardly astonishing, he has nothing to share with ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... really and truly believed that only accident had disconcerted a plan for concealing the will till Elvira should have been safely married to Allen Brownlow, and that thus it was the fixed purpose of the family to keep her and her fortune in their hands, a purpose which every instinct bade Mrs. Lisette Gould to traverse and overthrow, if only because she hated such artfulness and meanness. Unfortunately, too, as she had been a governess, and her father had been a Union doctor, she could put herself forward as ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... studded with monasteries and shrines. Flights of white steps lead to the principal summits where golden spires gleam and everywhere are pagodas of all ages, shapes and sizes. Like most Asiatics the Burmese rarely repair, but build new pagodas instead of renovating the old ones. The instinct is not altogether unjust. A pagoda does not collapse like a hollow building but understands the art of growing old. Like a tree it may become cleft or overgrown with moss but it remains picturesque. In the neighbourhood of Sagaing there is a veritable ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... reached the level of complete self-consciousness. At that group-soul stage the experience of each animal in the group adds to the knowledge of all. This theosophical teaching on one of nature's most interesting facts enables us to understand many things that would otherwise remain mysterious. Instinct has never been explained by science. Some of its best known expressions are altogether mysterious. Why does a young wild animal hide from the enemies of its kind but not from friends, when it has never seen ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... ourselves or our own likeness. I swear I believe we two have so shared natures in hate that no power can untwist and separate them to render each his own. But I swear also I believe that if you lift that revolver to kill, you will take aim, not at me, but by instinct at a worse enemy—yourself, vital ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... shouted and screamed, for they thought the poor girl was being carried off, no one knew where, by the Evil One himself; but the strange cries, which they took to be the language of the Lower Regions, were only a foreign tongue, and the horse made for its own stable by instinct. ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... My first instinct would have endeavored to shake off the question of the other side of that wall. I would, perhaps, if younger, have rejected the whole impression, declared the girl delirious, and would not now be reciting a story, the conclusion of which ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... own ideas of utility, efficiency, and economy were being shattered—broken in pieces like a potter's vessel. Her sense of proportion, her instinct for relative values, her abhorrence of waste motion, her inborn system and method, all were swept away as a thief in the night. Could she reform this giddy whirl? Could she bring chaos out of cosmos? Was her own ego sufficient to egg her on ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... By a common instinct all of the Grammar School boys gathered closely around the stove, extending their ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... in sheer excitement. Here was one man at any rate who wasn't content to miss his kingdom. He might have known it. He could see Braithwaite's bleak look as clearly as if he stood before him. His instinct was to join him and say to him, in the words of the coster, "You and me was pals out there." He'd never lost ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... in the instinct of that capricious and fluctuating conscience which belongs to weak minds, which remains still, and drooping, and lifeless, as a flag on a masthead during the calm of prosperity, but flutters, and flaps, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... game as we can," he said, "and it's likely that we can find plenty of it up here. The horses, too, have had all the grass they want and we'll tether 'em for the night, though there's not one chance in a thousand that they'll wander from the valley. Animals have instinct, and if there's no powerful enemy near they always stay where food and water are to be had. I tell you what, Will, if a man could only have all his own senses coupled with those of a deer or a wolf, what a mighty scout and hunter he could be. Suppose you could ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... pretence which was probably the only possible form of tact in such a discussion, with no affectation of a hope that progress would remove it or of a desire that the ordinary white man should lose the instinct that kept him apart from the black. But this only makes more apparent his simple recognition of an equality and fellowship which did exist between him and his hearers in a larger matter than that of social intercourse or political combination. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... wherefor then do you pause? Go forward like your father did, go forth and seek your mate, For till you know a wife and home, you know not Heaven's Gate. It's the deep inherent longing for a baby on your knee, For the sound of children's voices, beneath your own fig tree. The male instinct to have a mate, to love, to guard, to hold, The one instinct that's left to us, that triumphs ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... had from an early time, for that matter, the instinct of the right estimate of such values and of its reducing to the inane the dull dispute over the "immoral" subject and the moral. Recognising so promptly the one measure of the worth of a given subject, the question about it that, rightly answered, disposes of all others—is it valid, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... honestly believes there is any danger of another really big fire here?" rejoined Mr. Hurd, almost contemptuously; but under the surface Charlie believed that his attitude of contempt was more or less assumed. He believed he had made a distinct impression, and it was therefore almost with a gambler's instinct that he ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... in a few words the creepy and sinister story of Madame de Merret. At each sentence my hostess put her head forward, looking at me with an innkeeper's keen scrutiny, a happy compromise between the instinct of a police constable, the astuteness of a spy, and the ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... came up, she gave him a glare of her dark brown eyes that astonished him, and made off with a quick step to a part of the field where she could pick strawberries at a distance from everybody. She picked them somehow by instinct; she did not know what she was doing; her face rivalled their red bunches; and she picked with a kind of fury. That being the only way she had of venting her indignation, she threw it into her basket along with the strawberries. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... did not remember anything about it. But a vague instinct warned him that the woman was probably telling the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that I could disconcert her, and probably obtain some interesting admissions from her—and have a thrilling fencing match, but some instinct warned me not to do so—I might win out for the time being, but if she has a secret which she does not wish me to discover, she will take care not again to put herself in a situation where this can happen. I have the apprehension always hanging, like Damocles' sword, over my head, ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... of the mental powers of animals with those of man, proving, as Darwin contends, that they therein also show traces of community of descent, was certain to provoke much more debate, for the term "instinct" and the use made of it by naturalists and psychologists as signifying untaught, unlearnt ability, largely tended to obscure the question, and to create prejudices against believing that instincts could be built up by inherited ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Forrest's effect that, although reason told Ballin to doubt this cataclysmic statement, instinct convinced him that it was true. Yet what its truth might mean to him did not so convincingly appear. That he might be ousted from all that he looked on as his own did not yet ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... breath, and standing quite still as she caught sight of the wonderful marble, instinct with life, at the end of the long corridor below stairs. "Why, she's smiling at us," as the afternoon sunshine streamed across the lovely face, to lose itself in the folds of the ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... gesture of command to June which answered this, was as imperious as it was slight. It was characteristically like Mrs. Randolph; graceful and absolute. June obeyed it, as old instinct told her to do; though sorely against her will. She had held hands before, though not Daisy's; and she knew very well the look of the little whip with which her mistress stepped back into the room, having gone to her own for it. In a Southern home that whip had been wont to ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... the unconscious freedom of childhood, before his actions and manners have been modified by the restraints of artificial life, affords the best model of gesture. His instinct prompts him to that visible expression of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... came round like a top. The proas saw there was no time to lose, and attempted to close before we could fill again; and this they would have done with ninety-nine ships in a hundred. The captain knew his vessel, however, and did not let her lose her way, making everything draw again as it might be by instinct. The proas tacked, too, and, laying up much nearer to the wind than we did, appeared as if about to close on our lee-bow. The question was, now, whether we could pass them or not before they got near enough ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... that I was hemmed in by potential homicides, whose arms were lifted in the desire of murder and whose features were changed from the likeness of man into the corporeal form of some pure and terrible instinct. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... stood the test. Therefore I have always taken for granted that I did help Charles out of his troubles, by ancestral proxy. My instincts have persuaded me, too. Whenever we have a strong and persistent and ineradicable instinct, we may be sure that it is not original with us, but inherited—inherited from away back, and hardened and perfected by the petrifying influence of time. Now I have been always and unchangingly bitter ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... had changed; to know whether she still had that funny little Scotch accent that manifested itself in certain phrasings, certain vowel sounds at variance with good English pronunciation. He wanted to know just how much Pocatello had done to spoil her. Beneath all was the primal instinct of the young male dimly seeking the female whom his destiny had ordained ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... smugglers, Billy," cried Hilary eagerly; "and there must be some way here up the rock. Hallo! what have you got there?" he exclaimed, as the gunner, true to his instinct, dropped upon his knees and scraped the sand away from something against which ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... course a good many bees are away from home and have not heard the news. When they return and find the ground flowing with honey, and piles of bleeding combs lying about, they apparently do not recognize the place, and their first instinct is to fall to and fill themselves; this done, their next thought is to carry it home, so they rise up slowly through the branches of the trees till they have attained an altitude that enables them to survey the scene, when they seem to say, "Why, this is home," and down they come again; ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... and melancholy appear places once instinct with life, when deserted by those familiar forms and faces that have long inhabited them. There is no desert, no uninhabited isle in the far ocean, no wild, barren, pathless tract of unmitigated sterility, which could for ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Master!" answered Conrade, "all augurs ill for this affair. The strange discovery by the instinct of a dog, the revival of this Scottish knight, who comes into the lists like a spectre,—all ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... species of instinct (the source of which they are ignorant of), and decide all questions that come before them by its aid, ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... failed to recognize. Surface paced the floor and spoke his mind. It seemed that an irresistible impulse had led him back to his old home city; that he had settled and taken work there; and there meant to end his days. Under these circumstances, some deep-hidden instinct—a whim, the old man called it—had put it into his head to consider the claiming and final acknowledgment of his son. After all the Ishmaelitish years of bitterness and wandering, Surface's blood, it seemed, yearned for his blood. But under no circumstances, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to consider what his experience of the railway servant is from the time of his departure to his arrival at his destination. I know what mine is. Here he is, in velveteen or in a policeman's dress, scaling cabs, storming carriages, finding lost articles by a sort of instinct, binding up lost umbrellas and walking sticks, wheeling trucks, counselling old ladies, with a wonderful interest in their affairs- -mostly very complicated—and sticking labels upon all sorts of articles. I look around—there he is, in a station-master's uniform, directing ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... service both in peace and war. Poplicola himself was now deceased, as is told in the history of his life; but Valeria lived still, and enjoyed great respect and honor at Rome, her life and conduct no way disparaging her birth. She, suddenly seized with the sort of instinct or emotion of mind which I have described, and happily lighting, not without divine guidance, on the right expedient, both rose herself, and bade the others rise, and went directly with them to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... was a powerful, gigantic fellow,—a native-born African; and he appeared to have the rude instinct of freedom in him to an uncommon degree. He was a regular African lion. They called him Scipio. Nobody could do anything with him; and he was sold round from overseer to overseer, till at last Alfred bought him, because he thought he could ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... full benefit of his portion. It was a strange sight for the furtive eyes that looked on, and a tantalizing one, but they dared not draw near, for the fire threatened them, and, besides, they possessed a keen instinct ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... foolish the wisdom of the wise, of hampering the orderly and inexorable treatment of people just as, according to the best modern lights, they ought to be treated, this lawless love was strong in Beaumaroy. Not as a principle; it was the stronger for being an instinct, a wayward instinct that might carry him, he ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... to-day or in the past you find human beings gambling, and you will find the gambling instinct stronger than any other—stronger than the love of drink, infinitely stronger than the love of normal, ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane |
