"Instinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... half the circumference of the lake before they found it. And even when they reached it, there were no oars to be found, the party rowing last having carefully hidden them in the deep grass of the slough by the outlet. George Gray's quick frontiersman's instinct supplied the deficiency with sticks broken from a fallen tree. But with the time consumed in finding the boat, and the time lost in searching for the oars, and the slowness of the progress made in rowing with these clumsy poles, and the distance of the boat's starting-point from ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... 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. Maybe he could still pull this ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... the young man to know what he meant. Mr. Lindsay talked in a very easy way for a serious young person. He was puzzled. He did not see to the bottom of this description of the Deacon. With a lawyer's instinct, he kept his doubts to himself and tried his witness ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... taketh up the isles as a very little thing—shall not He be trusted to find a ship for His servants who trust in Him, to enable them to perform His will?' As the clear bell-like tones died away the little company, impelled by a united instinct, sank into a silence in which time passed unnoticed. Suddenly, at the same moment, a weight seemed to be removed from the hearts of all. They clasped hands and separated. And at that very moment, although they knew it not, far away on the broad seas, a man, wrestling on his knees in the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... love with the Duke of Padua was only less manifest than that the Duke of Padua was in love with Jill. Something, however, was wrong. So much our instinct reported. Our reason refused to believe it, and, with one consent, we pretended that all was well. For all that, there lay a shadow athwart the babies' path. Yet the sky was cloudless.... The thing was too hard ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... taking their own way, were wandering home. Any exercise of control or guidance over them on my part was inspired by an instinct to avoid being seen. Of conscious direction there was none. Somewhere between the ferry and the ranch I remember being awakened from my torpor by the horse which I was leading showing an inclination to graze. Then I noticed their gaunted condition, and in sympathy for ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... unerring skill and instinct. They were rising fast on the slope, and the great forest received and hid them as if they were its wild children returned to their home. The foliage was so dense that Dick caught only flitting glimpses of the camp below, although many fires ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... blurts out the words which come to hand. It is curious how much more Alice takes to him than to Fred, for he bullies her and orders her about as if she were one of his fags, while Fred is as courteous and polite to her as if she were a young Countess. I suppose it is instinct, for children's opinions about people are seldom far wrong. I thought when I brought Alice here that she would help ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... during her Sunday-school days the usual formulas of dogmatic religion, but upon matters of morality her ideas were of the vaguest possible description. The guide of her life had always been her instinct for happiness, her "genial sense of youth." She had never formulated any rule of life to herself, but that which she sought was joy, primarily for herself, and incidentally for other people, because unhappy people were disturbing ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... never went so far as actually to tell a falsehood, it was evident that she was 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
... have put them where he could see them, there was no pose in their arrangement. They were all good, and his delight in them was plain; but he was evidently in no sense a connoisseur beyond that of natural instinct. Some of those he had picked up in India I could tell him about, but I had no impression that he would remember what I said. There was one Bokhara tapestry I examined with ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... by their unfailing instinct that summer has departed, and winter is near. They no more warble their rich melodies, or flit in and out of the bowery recesses of the honeysuckles or peep with knowing look under the eaves, or into the arbour. Other purposes prompt to other acts, and they are taking their ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... sensibilities, might have hesitated to walk along the highways surrounded by half a dozen boys and girls, all chattering as hard as their tongues could wag, and munching cream-peppermints; but Miss Preston's motto was "Vis in ute," and, with the fine instinct so often wanting in those who have young characters to form, she looked upon the question from their side, feeling sure that sooner or later would arise questions which she would wish them to regard from hers; and therein lay the key-note of ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... He was not menacing; he was almost playful; and this gesture, marvellous in its economy of effort, disclosed all the might and insolence of his power. It had the unerring efficacy of an act of instinct. It was instinct. He could not know how he dismayed us by that shake of the finger. The tall girl dropped her candlestick with a clatter, and fled along the gallery like a shadow. La Chica cowered under ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... back to an extremely remote epoch, before man had arrived at the dignity of manhood, he would have been guided more by instinct and less by reason than are the lowest savages at the present time. Our early semi- human progenitors would not have practised infanticide or polyandry; for the instincts of the lower animals are never so perverted (62. A writer in the 'Spectator' (March 12, 1871, p. 320) comments as follows on ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... and Venetian crystal, amid the perfume of flowers and the gleam of jewels, she had seen Maitland's eyes fixed upon the Countess with an expression which almost caused her to cry out, so clearly did her instinct divine its impassioned sensuality, and once she thought she saw ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... instinct, however, Darwin soon found himself studying marine zoology and other branches of natural science. This was in a large measure due to his intimacy with Dr. Grant, who, in a later article on Flustra, made some allusion to a paper read by Darwin ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... austere in the degree suitable to an unsimulated panic, would have taken a different direction. Gossip may be addressed to anybody. He that will listen is sought for; and not he that can co-operate. But earnest business, soaring into national buoyancy on the wings of panic, turns by instinct to the proper organs for giving it effect and instant mobility. Yet, on the other hand, if the letter really had been addressed to the Primate (as in all reason it would have been, if thoroughly in earnest), that change must have consummated the false step, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... against their neighbors, whose war junks exercised undisputed authority on the Eastern Sea. While this strife continued a trade also sprang up between the two peoples, who share in an equal degree the commercial instinct; but as the Chinese government only admitted Japanese goods when brought by the embassador, who was sent every ten years from Japan, this trade could only be carried on by smuggling. A regular system was adopted to secure the greatest success and profit. The Japanese ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... outward appearance would seem to indicate a relationship with the wild dog. Buffon was of opinion that he was the true dog of nature, the stock and model of the whole canine species. He considered the Sheepdog superior in instinct and intelligence to all other breeds, and that, with a character in which education has comparatively little share, he is the only animal born perfectly trained for the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the man frankly that he was prompted not only by a desire upon his part to return the beast to the liberty of his native jungle; but also because his wife feared that in some way her son might learn the whereabouts of the ape and through his attachment for the beast become imbued with the roving instinct which, as Tarzan explained to Paulvitch, had ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... eternal youth. ("I do not understand the making Idealism less undying (on this scene of existence) than Science."—Commentator. Because, granting the above premises, Idealism is more subjected than Science to the Affections, or to Instinct, because the Affections, sooner or later, force Idealism into the Actual, and in the Actual its immortality departs. The only absolutely Actual portion of the work is found in the concluding scenes that depict the Reign of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... her to the squire. Now this soft, almost tuneless whistling was to Mr. Gibson what purring is to a cat. He could no more have done it with an anxious case on his mind, or when he was annoyed by human folly, or when he was hungry, than he could have flown through the air. Molly knew all this by instinct, and was happy without being aware of it, as soon as she heard the low whistle which was no music after all. But Mrs. Gibson did not like this trick of her husband's; it was not refined she thought, not even 'artistic;' if she could have called it by this fine word it ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... marvellous accuracy the villainy and craftiness of such characters as Bumble, Bill Sykes, Pecksniff, Uriah Heep and Squeers. Undoubtedly from his earliest childhood he had possessed the quick perception, the instinct, which could read in people's characters their tendencies toward good and evil, and throughout his life he valued this ability above literary skill and finish. Mr. Forster makes a point of this in his biography, speaking ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... girl, frantic with terror, grappled him fast, screaming to him not to let her go—and at the same moment a wave broke over the Abbe. Lanty, almost wild, was ready to leap into it after him, thinking he must be sucked back with it, but behold! he still remained clinging to the rock. Instinct seemed to serve him, for he had stuck his knife into the rock and was holding on by it. There seemed no foothold, and while Lanty was deliberating how to go to his assistance, another wave washed him off and bore him to the next rock, which was only separated from the mainland ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at the remorseless might of dulness in compelling us to a concrete performance counter to our inclinations, if we would deceive its terrible instinct, gave Willoughby for a moment the survey of a sage. His intensity of personal feeling struck so vivid an illumination of mankind at intervals that he would have been individually wise, had he not been moved by the source of his accurate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... think their mission accomplished. The pupils are required to spell words, define words, write words, and parse words day after day as if these words were lifeless and meaningless blocks of wood to be merely tossed up and down and moved hither and thither. So soon as a word becomes instinct with life and meaning, it kindles the child's interest at its every recurrence and it becomes as truly an entity as a person. It is then endowed with attributes that distinguish it clearly from its fellows and becomes, to the child, a vivid reality in the scheme of life. To our two boys ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... of the truth, do from time to time cause the overthrow of given societies, and arouse the horror and alarm of pessimist votaries of myth, nature is not thereby overcome; she still triumphs, and restores the order which has been interrupted, so far as the instinct of conservatism and the hereditary impulse to that special form of association to which each people are accustomed are opposed to the revolutionary spirit, and in this way the balance which has been disturbed ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... first place, that indefinable quality of taste, which means so much in portraiture. His was an unerring instinct for poise, drapery, color, and composition. Each of his figures seems to assume naturally an attitude of perfect grace; the draperies fall of their own accord in ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... his remarkable beauty, his manly figure, his swift graceful movements and his handsome face suffused with the brightness of fiery youth. Through their long black lashes his eyes were shining and glowing and full of spirit, and indeed his whole personality was instinct with verve and fire. Anyone watching his approach would have said—"Here comes a youth made to lead a rattling ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... blank; and a sudden impulse turned down the corners of her mouth with a little tremble across the lips. But the instinct of native refinement and delicacy overcame the disappointment; and, coming to her father's side, the child put her hand in his with a brave ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... come," he said, leaning over and looking down into the water. He looked up and in her eyes he thought he saw a gentle rebuke, but it was gone in a moment. She must have had it in her mind to tell him that he ought to be bolder, but another feeling seemed swiftly to come, and she said: "Your instinct is right." She held out her hand. He grasped it, looked into her eyes, turned about and ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... terrific storm, and myself who had heard the sound of the phantom-hoofs. As he ascended the hill, she looked after him, with wide and pale but unshrinking eyes; then turning in, shut and locked the door behind her, as by a natural instinct. After two or three of her significant nods, accompanied by the compression of her ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... he had forgotten the river, and it was not till the cold water touched his feet that he stood still by instinct. The Yara saw that he was wavering, and suffering herself to sway gently backwards and forwards on the surface of the river, she began to sing. The song floated through the trees, now far and now near; no one could tell whence it came, the whole air seemed full of it. ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... surface, and the general grey-brown tints. Now it was gone, there was a vacant space its plumage had filled up that vacant space with hues so similar, that, at no farther distance than two yards, I did not recognise it by colour. Had the bird fully carried out its instinct of concealment, and kept its head down as well as its body, I should have passed it. Nor should I have seen its head if it had looked the other way; the eye betrayed its presence. The dark glittering eye, which the sunlight touched, caught my attention ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... of course, I'll have a better idea of what to do. But I've been thinking that this exquisite and beautiful animalism known as the maternal instinct can sometimes emerge from its exquisiteness. Children are a joy and a glory, but you pay for that joy and glory when you see them stretched out on a bed of pain, with the shadow of ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... would feel degraded in his own estimation were he to forgive. Revenge is the central sun round which his spirit revolves; and to gratify the feeling no hardships are too severe. For such a purpose he will traverse, with an unerring instinct, pathless forests for hundreds of miles, swim wide rivers, climb lofty mountains, sleep, unrepining, on the bare ground, exposed to all vicissitudes of heat and cold, supporting himself by the chase and fishing, and sustained throughout by his vindictive passion and the glory he connects ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... was at one time in the army, for every Mackay has the fighting instinct in him. (Reay is one of the few townships in the North that possess a drill-hall and a military instructor. It is impossible adequately to describe the consternation in the Mackay country at the time of our South ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the order of the rimes in the first eight lines and added a ninth line of twelve syllables, thus affording more space to the copious luxuriance of his style and the long-drawn sweetness of his verse. It was his instinct to dilate and elaborate every image to the utmost, and his similes, especially—each of which usually fills a whole stanza—have the pictorial amplitude of Homer's. Spenser was, in fact, a great painter. His poetry {73} is almost purely sensuous. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... "book farming" or at anything else, but you can hardly succeed without the best books by practical men. Do not let some experienced ignoramus talk you out of experimenting under their guidance. You will learn little without experience, and unless you have the grower's instinct, you will learn ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... moral law, may support his adult offspring according to the requirements of necessity and usefulness. This second cause does not influence animals who are without reason, they being affected only by the prior cause, which to them is instinct. ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... The host, in an informal way, sees to the distribution of the guests, and when his arrangement is not acceptable to any of the interested parties, a rearrangement is made and all seat themselves. This proceeding has nothing formal about it. The whole thing seems to be done by instinct. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... has just been rung for. With an instinct which would appear almost the result of reason, the sagacious animal seized the waiter by the calf of the leg when he approached to take him, and made a desperate, though ineffectual resistance. I have not been able ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of Mathematics in Edinburgh College, and the able expounder of Newton's Principia, always dislocated his jaw, and was unable to shut his mouth, when he yawned. At the same time his instinct of imitation was so strong, that he could not resist yawning when he witnessed that act in others. His pupils were not slow in discovering, and taking advantage of this physical weakness. When tired of his lecture, they either began to yawn, or ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... a natural instinct with children," said she "to long for heaven. Perhaps that is the reason they bring so ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... purpose mark the first step from chaos toward cosmos. The mechanical intellect becomes dynamical, and the automatic man becomes autonomic. It may be with a lower or a higher motion. The mind gropes round restlessly by a yearning instinct; it may be driven by the strong impulse of native genius; or, it may rise to the condition of being the facile servant of the forceful will. When the boy at Pisa curiously watches the oil lamp swinging by its long ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... intestines were then torn out and handed to the Indian women, whose duty it was to remove from them the precious fat, after which the carcasses were left to the vultures and fisher-eagles, which flocked from afar to the scene of carnage with that unerring instinct which has so often been commented on by travellers, but which ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... List ii.—Mr. Romanes spoke on Mr. Darwin's essay on Instinct at a meeting of the Linnean Society, December 6th, 1883, and some account of it is given in "Nature" of the same date. But it was not published by the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... this letter? Whose hand this? He wondered. He had never seen "Her" writing before, yet instinct told ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... someone sitting at a table are suddenly and unexpectedly covered from behind, the natural instinct is to jerk backwards so that the head may be turned to see who it is. That is exactly what occurred with Challoner. He jerked backwards, and the barrel of the pistol grazed the skin and was deflected still more towards the ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... centuries civilized Europe has been discussing, pro or con, the question of religious liberty, but from instinct and with passion far more than with a serious understanding of what is at the bottom of things. Even in our own day it is not without difficulty that a beginning is being made to understand and accept that principle in its true sense and in all its bearings. Men were ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 1: In judging those ancients Daniel exercised an authority delegated to him by Divine instinct. This is indicated where it is said (Dan. 13:45) that "the Lord raised up the . . . spirit ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... train himself to be too feelingless to all those usual sympathies and respects, whether for persons or for things that make for conservation. Yet," he says, "the fact remains that war is a school of strenuous life and heroism and, being in the line of aboriginal instinct, is the only school that as yet ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the rumbling ambulances roll in but among their human freight is some poor wretch snoring into unconsciousness or in the throes of epileptiform convulsions. Custom has sharpened our clinical instinct, and where, in civil life, we would look for meningitis, now we only write cerebral malaria, and search the senseless soldier's pay-book for the name that we may put upon the "dangerous list." As this name is flashed 12,000 miles to England, I sometimes wonder what conception of malaria ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... in an alderman, was not wearing gloves. It was he, Denry, who had broken the ice, so that the alderman might plunge into the water. He first had danced with the Countess, and had rendered her up to the alderman with delicious gaiety upon her countenance. By instinct he knew Bursley, and he knew that he would be talked of. He knew that, for a time at any rate, he would displace even Jos Curtenty, that almost professional "card" and amuser of burgesses, in the popular imagination. It would not ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... stage-play and, withal, a certain lack of artistic unity. But its sonorous verse, its fine phrasing of large ideas, and its noble dignity of style settled forever the question of Schiller's power as a dramatic poet. The third act especially is instinct with the best ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... have to say to me?" she said at length, pressing her hand against her heart to still its beating. Her woman's instinct told her what was coming, and she was trying to nerve ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... village is very dull. There is nothing to break the monotony of the days, and one season passes by in precisely the same way as another. Days and seasons, in fact, make no difference whatever in the villager's existence. There is no pack of hounds to fire the sporting instinct; no excitement of elections; no distraction of any kind. All is quiet, regular, and uneventful, and when their days are over they sleep with their fathers naturally enough, for only too often have they been half ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... the other books, I think, less so. Tolstoy and Zola see none of the traditional beauty of battle; they apply themselves to a devoted—almost obscene—study of corpses and carnage generally; and they lack the American's instinct for the rowdy commonplace, the natural, the irreverent, which so materially aids his realism. In "The Red Badge of Courage" invariably the tone is kept down where one expects a height: the most heroic deeds are accomplished with ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... her back to England, but another instinct equally strong said: 'As soon as I am rested, nothing shall prevent me ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... stroke of ten, and Dick had been half asleep for some time against the bank, when Esther came up the road carrying a bundle. Some kind of instinct, or perhaps the distant light footfalls, recalled him, while she was still a good way off, to the possession of his faculties, and he half raised himself and blinked upon the world. It took him some time to recollect his thoughts. He had awakened with ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wonderful to what a length good intention, (zeal apart,) will go in leading men right, even when they have not paid very particular attention to a subject. There is a feeling of what is wise, as well as of what is right, that partakes a little of instinct, perhaps, but is more unerring than far fetched theory on many occasions. This was seen in a most exemplary manner, at the time that the principles of the French revolution were most approved of here. Those principles were plausible, though flimsy, and founded ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... had coupled their names together. She had not before made a real friend, and Irene's happy-go-lucky, affectionate, confiding disposition appealed to her. She began to try to protect her and look after her. It was really something of the mother instinct cropping out. She had never possessed a sister or anything little of her own to love, and it was a new experience to find a girl, rather small and younger than herself, who clung to her and seemed actually fond of ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the day decreed had dawned Loud rang the bull-horn; and on every breeze Floated the banners, saffron, green, and blue; While issuing from the horizon's utmost verge The full-voiced People flocked. So swarmed of old Some migratory nation, instinct-urged To fly their native wastes sad winter's realm; So thronged on southern slopes when, far below, Shone out the plains of promise. Bright they came! No summer sea could wear a blithsomer sheen Though ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... others are very hurtful; yet, seeing they have no moral faculty, or sense of desert, and do not act from choice guided by understanding, or with a capacity of reasoning and reflecting, but only from instinct, and are not capable of being influenced by moral inducements, their actions are not properly sinful or virtuous; nor are they properly the subjects of any such moral treatment for what they do, as moral agents are for their faults or ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... chevalier never passed the door, which usually stood open, without giving something to his little ducks,—chocolate, bonbons, ribbons, laces, gilt crosses, and such like trifles adored by grisettes; consequently, the kind old gentleman was adored in return. Women have an instinct which enables them to divine the men who love them, who like to be near them, and exact no payment for gallantries. In this respect women have the instinct of dogs, who in a mixed company will go straight to the man to ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... be sure?" said Mrs. Sennacherib, retiring from instinct. "In old days there used to be a sort of kindness between you; at ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... I laid me down to rest, Yet not to slumber. Tenderly, the sky Glanced like a loving spirit through the leaves; And, ever and anon, like fleecy gold, The yellow sunbeams dropped amid the gloom Startling the shadows. Twas a hallowed scene! Each waving leaf seemed Instinct with glad life, And every sound was richly freighted ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... cynique baiser cherche a se prodiguer; Il semble qu'on pourrait a peine distinguer De ces hommes les loups, les chiennes de ces femmes; A travers l'ombre, on voit toutes les soifs infames, Le desir, l'instinct vil, l'ivresse aux cris hagards, Flamboyer dans l'etoile horrible ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... expression of polite surprise, but said nothing. Instinct warned him to be sparing of words lest he should ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... us that normal children are born with the same number and kind of instincts. By instinct is meant the tendency to do certain things in a definite way without previous experience. In all children, for example, we find the instinct of fear, the instinct for play, for self-preservation. ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... her hands and turns resolutely.] You see, Hal, I knew it! [He bows his head.] You can't get away from her. [She pauses.] You understand it all now... what my instinct told me. You still love her, you still belong to her. You would have gone away with me, and you would still have been thinking about her—worrying about her. It would have been tearing your soul in half. [She waits; he does not look at her; she goes on, half ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... monument—a gush of light so bright that the air inside the bell seemed to have been illuminated with a golden sunrise. They glanced toward the monument, and saw that it was surmounted by some vibrating object which seemed instinct with blinding fire. The colors that sprang from it changed rapidly from gold to purple, and then, through shimmering hues of bronze, to a deep rich orange. It looked like a sun, poised on the horizon. The spectacle was so dazzling, so unexpected, so beautiful, and, associated ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... death; she felt only joy at her deliverance from the arms of a hated bridegroom. But when the crackling of flames was heard, when a lurid light streamed up against the window, when wreaths of smoke began to pour in from the corridors, the instinct of self-preservation awakened in her breast, and almost unconsciously she shrieked aloud ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... good a place as any, I may say frankly that I never fully understood this side of Ephraim Yeates. Like all the hardy borderers, he was a fighter by instinct and inclination; and I can bear him witness that when he smote the "Amalekites," as he would call them—red skin or red coat—he smote them hip and thigh, and was as ruthless as that British Captain Turnbull who ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... vague instinct of abandoned children who seek to attach themselves to some one or some thing, Jeanne clung to Madame Desvarennes, who, ready to protect, and longing for maternity, took the child in her arms. The gardener's wife acted as guide during her visit over the property. Madame Desvarennes questioned ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... months of suspense; the soldiers and sailors, and many statesman of England, had deprecated, even as the Hollanders had been doing, the dangerous delays of Ostend. Elizabeth was not embodying the national instinct, when she talked of peace; and shrank penuriously from the expenses of war. There was much disappointment, even indignation, at the slothfulness with which the preparations for defence went on, during the period when there was yet time to make ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... seeing everything about him with clear eyes and for the first time, as though he had but just that instant been lifted over the ship's side. His keeper, glancing up, found the prisoner's eyes considering him curiously, and recognized the change. The instinct of discipline brought him to his feet with his fingers at ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... the others, especially at the time of the Consulate, and before the Emperor Napoleon had become so stout. But none of the brothers of the Emperor possessed that imposing and majestic air and that rapid and imperious manner which came to him at first by instinct, and afterwards from the habit of command. Louis had peaceful and modest tastes. It has been asserted that at the time of his marriage he was deeply attached to a person whose name could not be ascertained, and who, I think, is still ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... any appearance of fire upon the southern side of the river. It was true the approaching flames might be driven across, but the stream being for some distance quite wide, this might not take place. In any event, the southern side was the safest, at the present moment. He had faith in the instinct of animals, and for several hours past he had seen cattle and geese leaving their usual places of resort and ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... construes of a tithe of the hard passages marked in the margin of their books, they were all seated round, and the Doctor was standing in the middle, talking in whispers to the master. Tom couldn't hear a word which passed, and never lifted his eyes from his book; but he knew by a sort of magnetic instinct that the Doctor's under-lip was coming out, and his eye beginning to burn, and his gown getting gathered up more and more tightly in his left hand. The suspense was agonizing, and Tom knew that he was sure on such occasions to make an example of the School-house ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... the kind," she answered, in tones of strong vexation. Guided by instinct, she resolved to be as prosaic and matter-of-fact as possible; so she added: "I have only aunt's smelling-salts in my hands, and ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... went on. "I never did read half enough. I'm simply acting by instinct. Julien and I were engaged for three months and at the end of that time we were complete strangers. The idea of marrying a stranger was not attractive to me. Let that go. ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Harberton had admitted him, and he was waiting in the sitting-room, from which the woman he had seen had disappeared, he was in the mood to admire everything. How nice the two women had made it! His own rough life, both before and since the war, had only increased a natural instinct for order and seemliness. The pretty blue paper, the fresh drugget, the photographs on the wall, the flowers, and the delicate neatness of everything delighted him. He went round looking at the pictures and the few books, ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had, of course, less of this profound instinct than his wife, but he had it too; only in him the feeling was adulterated and at the same time imbittered by one less simple and noble. An enemy sat at his gate. That enemy, whose enduring malice had at last begotten equal hostility in the childless ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... forgotten to drive our bullocks to the water, which they had passed not five yards off, and in sight of which they had been unloaded; the poor brutes, however, had not the instinct to find it, and they strayed back. Charley started after them the same night, and went at once to our old camp, supposing that the bullocks had taken that direction; but they had not done so; they had wandered about seven ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... journeys only since the new era of dining-cars, there is a quantity of things you have come too late for, and will never know. Three times a day in the brave days of old you sprang from your scarce-halted car at the summons of a gong. You discerned by instinct the right direction, and, passing steadily through doorways, had taken, before you knew it, one of some sixty chairs in a room of tables and catsup bottles. Behind the chairs, standing attention, a platoon of Amazons, thick-wristed, pink-and-blue, ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... the hope of obtaining a bribe; he had intruded himself time and again, and always with moving stories of his poverty. Mr. Dilworthy said that his heart had bled for him—insomuch that he had several times been on the point of trying to get some one to do something for him. Some instinct had told him from the beginning that this was a bad man, an evil-minded man, but his inexperience of such had blinded him to his real motives, and hence he had never dreamed that his object was to undermine ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... as we tread the varied path of life, Disaster dire demands a valued limb, We with the mood of Stoic bear the pain; While nagging tooth doth ever set us wild. 'Tis vain on deep philosophy to call When stinging gnats, unseen, do us assail; A warring instinct urges us to kill, And we delay not, till Dame Reason speaks. 'Twas but an automatic action of the mind When matter trivial late did rouse a phlegm Within my soul, which irritated sore, And on the instant I did stern resolve ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... neither of books, nor exorcisms, nor characters, but have only their mind and imagination corrupted by the demon." He calls witches "those women who pass for doing a great deal of harm, either by virtue[686] of some imaginary compact, or by their own will, or some diabolical instinct;" and who, having their brain deranged, confess they have done many things, which they never have nor could have performed. "Magicians,"[687] he says, "are led of themselves, and by their own inclination, to learn this forbidden ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... time Dan had leaped to his feet, and stood confronting the man. He felt that he was a trespasser, and perhaps he would be punished. But as he looked into the big man's eyes he read with the instinct of a wild animal that he had nothing to fear, for only pity shone ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... they are gentle and forbearing toward every one whom they suppose does not desire to wrong or offend them; they are generous and unexacting, abounding in the charity of the heart, philanthropic, and seemingly from instinct practising toward all the world all the Christian virtues. They are brave, and quick to resent insult or wrong, and prefer death to dishonor; scrupulously just in all transactions with their fellow-men, forbearing toward the foibles of others, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... in these speculations, which he had drawn from what he observed himself, or had been told him by others; however, I could not reflect without some amazement, and much sorrow, that the rudiments of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal, should have place by instinct in womankind. ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... unsympathetic instinct, I went out for a long tramp on my two feet; and no ache in them came and told me of you! Over Sillingford I sat on a bank and looked downhill where went a carter. And I looked uphill where lay something which might be nothing—or not his. Now, shall I make a fool of myself ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... fixing upon this point at once and by instinct avoiding all the other very doubtful disputations. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... animals and never kills one of them, unless it be for a sacrifice. Sheep and goats are kept at night in enclosures or caves. The shepherd follows his flock wherever the animals choose to find their food, and there are no better herdsmen than the Tarahumares, who wisely trust to the natural instinct of the beasts. They do not pride themselves on breeds. It is astonishing to notice the number of rams with two pairs of horns among the tribe. In every flock two or three specimens may be observed, one pair bending forward, the other to the side. I have seen some with three ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... last—the real woman, passionate, self-centred, undisciplined, but so piteous, after all, in this sudden subjection to the one tenderness that survived in her. She loved him and was jealous of her rival. That was the instinct which had swept all others aside. At that moment she cared nothing for her safety or his. The state might perish if they but fell together. It was the distance ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... his money. I would scorn to profit by so much as a penny of the fortune left by the man who deserted his wife in her sad extremity, and then, when death freed him from the tie which bound him to her, married a woman whom he did not love; who possessed so little of fatherly instinct in his nature, that he never acknowledged his child, nor betrayed the slightest interest in or affection for her. I would never own him for such a purpose; while, were it not for the sake of establishing my mother's honor, I would ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... at that time but four, two close together at each end of the line. I cannot say positively that the nests had fallen while in use, but in another place, a mile away, I know of a long row having fallen, with young in, every one of whom was killed. Where was the "instinct" of the birds whose hopes thus perished? And was the trouble with their material or with their situation? I noticed this: that the nests had absolutely nothing to rest on, not even a projecting board. They were plastered against a ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... soon grew tired of this quiet life. It seemed very stupid and humdrum when compared with Aunt Sheen's marvelous tales of the great ocean, and the strange sights and thrilling adventures that there awaited the voyager. He was larger than his brothers and sisters, his sea-going instinct was strong within him, he longed for the wonders of the great, unknown world, and grew tired of Aunt ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... Morehead, who had urged us to do so. Our host had been one of the leading Whigs of North Carolina in the ante-bellum days, and with his friends and neighbors Gilmer and Graham had opposed secession at the beginning; but with the instinct of politicians, they had striven to lead the current they could not stop when once it had carried them away. The house was a comfortable villa in the Italian style, with a tower overlooking the rolling country for ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... of the battle trumpet to the cavalry horse. This, however, was Harrigan's first night in Honolulu, and there was much to see, much to do. He had rambled through the streets; now he was headed for the Ivilei district. Instinct brought him there, the still, small voice which had guided him from trouble to trouble ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... majestic elephant that roams O'er mountain wilds, so does the King display A stalwart frame, instinct with vigorous life. His brawny arms and manly chest are scored By frequent passage of the sounding string; Unharmed he bears the midday sun; no toil His mighty spirit daunts; his sturdy limbs, Stripped of redundant flesh, relinquish nought Of their ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... first astounded, then hot at the grossness of this insinuation, and his strong, brown hands clinched in the instinct to punish—to retaliate—but his anger cooled to the level of words, and he said: "This interview has more than convinced me of the justice of Lambert's distrust of you. I shall see him again and repeat the warning I have already given." ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... two draw their aprons over their girl's treasures, she had not guessed those possessions aright. What she had imagined in her girl's heart, knowing Primrose's condition, it is not for us to pry at; whatever it was, it was so swift, so born of instinct, as to be holy. But when she saw the crumpled finery, she was suddenly too much of a child again to rate it worth envy. The things that Primrose, all unthinking, stood for, the things of warm hearth and hallowed bed that her house had never known, might have ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... without much thought as to direction, having a definite impression, however, as to the way he should go, which was part instinct and partly remembrance of what the boy on the moving wagon had told him. The people he had left were too inert to think of giving him any instructions. But down the road he passed the big boys of ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... strange intuition, or natural instinct, I knew that people ought to be built like that, before I had ever seen a single statue in that wondrous room. I had divined them—so completely did they realize an aesthetic ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... hunting whip. The horse not appreciating the advantages of this treatment at the hands of its intellectual owner, was resisting by a shuffling, remonstrating sort of gallop; while his rider, who was evidently a practised horseman, seemed to stick to his saddle by a kind of instinct, having little else to guide him, for his hat was completely shaken down ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... rejoined the free-trader, reading, in the imploring eyes of Alida, a petition that he would say no more. "I knew by instinct there was one unusual, and it was not for me to discover that he sleeps. There are dealers on the coast, who, for the sake of insurance, would charge his presence ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... whizzed into the depot at Birmingham; but just before we came in a difficulty was started in the company. "Mr. Sturge is to be there waiting for us, but he does not know us, and we don't know him; what is to be done?" C—— insisted that he should know him by instinct; and so after we reached the depot, we told him to sally out and try. Sure enough, in a few moments he pitched upon a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman, with a moderate but not decisive broad brim to his hat, and challenged ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... warm my slippers. It was only that I wanted her to feel like warming them," he appealed to Billy, and Billy nodded. Billy positively purrs when I make him comfortable after his day's work. He says that it is the homing instinct in men and that women ought ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... instinct of hatred he had believed to be unconquerable he rose and straightened himself before the ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... plan of campaign, but there is difficulty in finding the latter. An unsound scheme, even if worked out to its logical conclusion, can of course be of no value. All the same it is better than no plan at all. And in time one gains by experience, and develops a sort of instinct for rejecting from the large number of possible operations all those which, properly countered, ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... invariably, when startled by our approach, they scampered to their mothers, and immediately began to suck. It would seem as if they sought a draught from the maternal udder, wherewith to fortify and encourage their poor little hearts; but I suppose their instinct merely drove them close to their dams, and, being there, they took advantage of their opportunity. These sheep must lead a hard life during the winter; for they ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prophets, and poets dye, We should not bid men weep, nor ask them why, But the great loss should by instinct impair The nations, like a pestilential ayr, And in a moment men should feel the cramp Of grief, like persons poyson'd with a damp. All things in nature should their death deplore, And the sun look ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... second fact is, the developement of a new instinct, which, as M. Roulin declares, seems to become hereditary in the breed of dogs found among the borderers on the river Madeleine, which are employed in hunting the pecari. I shall cite the author's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... restore the Prophet's failing metabolism. Often in Turkish and Arabian literature, however, we meet with the suggestion that coffee drinking makes for sterility and barrenness, a notion that modern medicine has exploded; for now we know that coffee stimulates the racial instinct, for ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... crowned with Scotch firs, its sides tufted with gorse and heather. It is the Hawk's Lynch, the favorite resort of Englebourn folk, who come up for the view, for the air, because their fathers and mothers came up before them, because they came up themselves as children—from an instinct which moves them all in leisure hours and Sunday evenings, when the sun shines and the birds sing, whether they care for view or air or not. Something guides all their feet hitherward; the children, to play hide-and-seek and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of level there arises a keen and continuous interest, that keeps the attention ever alert and cheerful. Every sensitive adjustment to the contour of the ground, every little dip and swerve, seems instinct with life and an exquisite sense of balance and beauty. The road rolls upon the easy slopes of the country, like a long ship in the hollows of the sea. The very margins of waste ground, as they trench a little farther on the beaten way, or recede again to the shelter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... off her glove before she gave him her hand. That meeting of the flesh was so bitter-sweet that their hands unclasped guiltily by a kind of honest instinct of danger. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... cousin's instinct might perhaps have been shaken had she known what pleasure Lois found in the companionship of Mr. Forsythe, and how that pleasure was encouraged by all her friends. That very evening, while Gifford was pouring his anxieties into her ear, Lois was listening to Dick's pictures of the gayeties ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... face. The snapper-boat slewed wildly as the Connie shot took effect. Rip worked his controls frantically, trying to straighten the rocket out more by instinct than anything else. ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... provides for its own amendment; and we ought to use the elective franchise to effect this object. True, there is such a proviso; but, until the amendment be made, that instrument is binding as it stands. Is it not to violate every moral instinct, and to sacrifice principle to expediency, to argue that we may swear to steal, oppress and murder by wholesale, because it may be necessary to do so only for the time being, and because there is some remote probability that the instrument which requires that we ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the "revolutionary proletariat," we shall find this individualistic instinct quite as strongly developed. It is not the Socialist idea of placing all wealth and property in the hands of the State, but the Anarchist plan of "expropriation," of plunder on a gigantic scale for the benefit of the revolutionary masses, which really appeals to the disgruntled ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... forth the truth, be the predilections of its possessor what they may. And indeed, as Scott nowhere shows in any way that he, for his part, regarded the blind fidelity of the steward as other than admirable, it may be that he was guided rather by instinct than will, in thus pointing out the great evil resulting from a formally aristocratic state of society. Such as it is, it is well worth studying in these times, when the principles of republicanism and aristocracy are brought face to face at war among us, firstly in the contest between the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... truth, the poetic instinct which animates all his activities and particularly his travel. The poetic instinct consists of two itches, the first to comprehend fully in all dimensions the reality which we see before us, the second to express ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... speech, mingled with good-humoured remarks, though not much laughter. The sailors simply acknowledge the compliment their commanding officer has paid them, at the same time feeling that the moment is too solemn for merriment; for their instinct of humanity is yet under control of the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... explanations to him, in order to justify so large an expenditure; but I soon found this unnecessary. His shrewd mind enabled him to understand any piece of apparatus quickly, and to appreciate it fully. I have never had to deal with any man whose instinct in such matters was more true. If a book or scientific specimen or piece of apparatus was necessary to the proper work of a department, he could easily be made to see it; and then it MUST come to us, no matter at what cost. Like the great prince of ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... when he runs a grass, and a great many other plagues, which he might have avoided, if he had kept to that first station of freedom which nature placed him in. How much more desirable is the unconfined range of flies and birds, who living by instinct, would want nothing to complete their happiness, if some well-employed Domitian would not persecute the former, nor the sly fowler lay snares and gins for the entrapping of the other? And if young birds, before their unfledged wings can carry them from their nests, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... verities of the natural order, and could not rest until it had synthetized them into a coherent whole. That was his life-long characteristic. During the years of painful ill health which preceded his death, he often said that he was unlike the Celt, who takes to the supernatural as if by instinct. "But I am a Saxon and cling to the earthy" he would say; "I want an explicit and satisfactory reason why any innocent pleasure should not be enjoyed." He attributed this to his racial peculiarities. Others may differ with him and credit ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... of Traverse! All that was grievous enough to bear; and now to be torn away from the home of my childhood, and from the friend that has always been a mother to me, and by a man, from whom every true, good instinct of my nature teaches me to shrink. I, who have always had full liberty in the house of my dear father, to be forced away against my will by this man, as if I were his slave!" exclaimed Clara, bursting into fresh tears ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... became apparent that Trina would be an extraordinarily good housekeeper. Economy was her strong point. A good deal of peasant blood still ran undiluted in her veins, and she had all the instinct of a hardy and penurious mountain race—the instinct which saves without any thought, without idea of consequence—saving for the sake of saving, hoarding without knowing why. Even McTeague did not know how closely Trina ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... stretched out in blissful elongation—"very extraordinary, that an animal could lead that sort of double life, disappearing completely when summer comes and returning promptly with the fall. I daresay it's a reversion to the old hunting instinct. No doubt we could find him if we knew how to trail him on ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... straighten his tie, and have cozy chats with him in darkened rooms by the light of open fires, and make him tell her his inmost thoughts, and stimulate him to do something really worth while with his life; but this, she held, was merely the instinct of a generous nature to be kind and helpful even to a ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... clearly distinguishable in the gloom. Temistocle had cheated her, had lied in telling her that his master was absent, had taken her bribe and had fled. He would easily find an excuse for having allowed her to enter; and with his quick valet's instinct, he guessed that she would not confess to Del Ferice that she had bribed him. Ugo came forward a step and instantly recognised ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... whole play to themselves. Above all, they have been held up to us, not only as a likeness, but as "a great moral lesson;" and this, not merely with regard to the duties of occupation, but the form of their polity. A monarchical government, it is said, is natural to man, because it is an instinct of nature: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... man, but man to pig. We do not allow time for his education, we kill him at a year old.' Mr. Henry White, who was present, observed that if this instance had happened in or before Pope's time, he would not have been justified in instancing the swine as the lowest degree of groveling instinct[1152]. Dr. Johnson seemed pleased with the observation, while the person who made it proceeded to remark, that great torture must have been employed, ere the indocility of the animal could have been subdued. 'Certainly, (said the Doctor;) but, (turning to me,) how ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... civilization the Thracians scalped their enemies and tattooed themselves; at the other end of the continent the Britons daubed their bodies with ochre and woad. Contemporaneous Egyptian sculptures show the Europeans dressed in skins like savages. It was the instinct of the Phoenicians everywhere to establish themselves on islands and coasts, and thus, for a long time, they maintained a maritime supremacy. By degrees a spirit of adventure was engendered among the Greeks. In 1250 B.C. they sailed round the Euxine, giving rise to the myth of the Argonautic ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... them on the table. No one will know that we want them, and should anyone ask what we were doing up here and by what right we carried them down from the attic, we can honestly say that Abner said we could go over the house and see if there was anything we liked to buy," said Polly, with a collector's instinct for not paying extortionate prices for ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... a blood-dyed field. In like manner did the British people see with disapprobation their Government, while proclaiming neutrality, make new rules, and give new constructions to old ones, so as to favor our enemy and embarrass us. The Englishman's sense of fair-play, and the manly instinct which predisposes him to side with the weak, gave us hosts of friends, but all their good intentions were paralyzed or foiled by their wily Minister for Foreign Affairs, and his coadjutor on this side, the artful, unscrupulous United States ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Washington would not acquiesce in this demand, saying that I should remain a hostage for my father's good behaviour. I must here observe, that when General Washington refused to deliver me up, the noble-minded Putnam, as if it were by instinct, laid his hand on his sword, and with a violent oath swore that my father's request should be granted. The commander-in-chief, whose influence governed Congress, soon prevailed on them to consider me as a person whose situation required ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... herself for first-class literary work,—has no doubt had a transient influence on Harriet Prescott. Add to this, perhaps, the common and fatal necessity of authorship which pushes even second-best wares into the market. It is evident, that, with all the instinct of a student and an artist, she has been a sensation-writer against her will. The whole structure of "Azarian," which is evidently a work of art and of love, indicates these higher aspirations, and shows that she is resolved to nourish them, not by abandoning her own peculiar ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... reason. Dick Hazlewood had come to believe that she would not pass this point, that the down land beyond was a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground on which she would not trespass. He had wondered why, but his instinct had warned him from questions. He had always turned at this spot immediately, as if he believed the excuse ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... Marius guessed almost by instinct that Garnache had drawn back for a lunge. At his side Valerie looked over her shoulder, with eyes that were startled but unafraid. For a second Marius considered whether he might not attempt to elude Garnache by a wild and sudden dash towards his men. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... course, picking with sure instinct the easiest way. Three hours of steady work brought us suddenly beyond the timber-line, and the real joy of the day began. Nowhere else have I see anything approaching the luxuriance and variety of delicate blossoms shown by these high, mountain ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... blow was in store for him! He was so guilelessly in love, and had such unbounded confidence in the success of his projects! Reine was overcome by tender reminiscences. She had always experienced, as if divining by instinct the natural bonds which united them, a sisterly affection for Claudet. Since their earliest infancy, at the age when they learned their catechism under the church porch, they had been united in a bond of friendly fellowship. With Reine, this tender feeling had always remained one of friendship, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... now something past ten by the chronometers. He could hardly do much before dawn, lacking the instinct of a red Indian to guide him through that night-bound waste of woodland. So he felt little need to slight his researches through haste, except in anticipation of his lieutenant's return. And as to that, Lanyard was moderately incredulous: he expected to see nothing more ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... select 19 more to myself throughout the land; gentlemen they should be, of a good spirit and able constitution. I would choose them by an instinct,... and I would teach them the special rules ... till they could play [fence] very near as well as myself. This done, say the enemy were 40,000 strong, we 20 would ... challenge 20 of the enemy; ... kill them; challenge 20 more, kill ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... furthermore, about instinct and reason, and whether the brute creation have souls, and, if they have none, how justice is to be done them for their sufferings here; and Mr. Powers came finally to the conclusion that brutes suffer only in appearance, and that God enjoys for them all that they seem to enjoy, and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... account appears to me a curious instance of the pliability of the affections in the dog; and yet, whether wild or however educated, he has a feeling of respect or fear for those that are fulfilling their instinct of association. For we can understand on no principle the wild dogs being driven away by the single one with its flock, except that they consider, from some confused notion, that the one thus associated gains power, as if in company with its own kind. F. Cuvier has observed ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... might have ended, no one can say, had the two gentlemen actually crossed swords; but Mrs. Polly, with a wonderful presence of mind, restored peace by exclaiming, "Hush, hush! the beaks, the beaks!" Upon which, with one common instinct, the whole party made a rush for the garden gates, and disappeared into the fields. Mrs. Briggs knew her company: there was something in the very name of a constable which sent them ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the eternal laws upon which the cosmos is founded. They constitute the inseparable affinities, attraction and repulsion, of everything within the realm of manifested being. In this mystic constellation, we see the first ideas of maternal instinct arise. This is a necessary result of the impulsive action of the heart in Leo—the reaction from a state of imperious, defiance. The heat of rage or energy and deathless courage results in the IDEAS of something to be encountered, overcome, and of self-preservation. The ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... pack of the High Street, the silly sniggering, the triumphant jangle of the Cathedral bells, thrust through their slow and heavy brains some vision long faded now, but for an instant revived, of their green jungles, their hot suns, their ancient royalty and might. They realised perhaps a sudden instinct of their power, that they could with one lifting of the hoof crush these midgets that hemmed them in back to the pulp whence they came, and so go roaming and bellowing their freedom through the streets and ways of the city. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... which produces the heat of inspiration. Or rather it is often the heat of labour which enables the writer to recall the heat of inspiration. Ben Jonson, who held justly that "the poet must be able by nature and instinct to pour out the treasure of his mind," took care to add the warning that no one must think he "can leap forth suddenly a poet by dreaming he hath been in Parnassus." Poe has uttered a comparable warning against an excessive belief in the theory of the plenary inspiration of poets in ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... on his crutch with incredible speed towards the Push, who stood their ground for a minute and then, with the instinct of the cur, bolted. The sailor stopped, and shook his fist at their retreating forms, showering strange, foreign maledictions on the fleeing enemy. It was evident that he could swear better ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... to leave town, but the fact that White-Eye had recognized him and had not spoken was an insidious challenge, the kind of a challenge which a killer never lets pass. For the killer, strangely enough, is drawn to his kind through the instinct of self-preservation, a psychological paradox to the layman, who does not understand that peculiar pride of the gunman which leads him to remove a menace rather than to avoid it. Curiosity as to a rival's ability, ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... dexterously jumped out on to the pavement; the occupant of the other hansom, whose wheel was locked into theirs, obeying the same instinct, had ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... it myself, of what crimes she is capable; and I see clear in the dark night of her infernal intrigues. I know that this woman with the chaste brow, the open smile, and the soft eyes, has the genius and the instinct of a murderess, and has never counted upon any thing else, but murder for ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... had grown aged like themselves, and was no longer capable of wearing the warm smile of summer on its face. It was really piteous to see the poor, starving cattle and sheep, how they followed behind Ceres, lowing and bleating, as if their instinct taught them to expect help from her; and everybody that was acquainted with her power besought her to have mercy on the human race, and, at all events, to let the grass grow. But Mother Ceres, though naturally of an affectionate ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... from his mind after their first meeting, and for this reason he had felt annoyance when she had again placed herself in his path. But this second meeting had shown another stronger side in the girl before him. That deep in her nature was an instinct of right which her surroundings had not dwarfed. That this instinct was not to be daunted by fear of consequences. She had evidently come to warn him of personal danger to himself. This act carried danger—danger to her, and yet ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... creation, are now found the loudest in applause. What, in its chrysalis condition of principle, affronted their demure reason, never fails, in its maturity of accomplishment, to extort admiration from their instinct of the beautiful or ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... beyond the hills. What copy it would have made for the Gazette! Had ever a journalist such an opening and so little chance of using it—the scoop of scoops, and no one to appreciate it? And then, suddenly, the old instinct of recording came over me. If these men of science could be so true to their life's work to the very end, why should not I, in my humble way, be as constant? No human eye might ever rest upon what I had done. ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for human improvement and happiness, and almost unique in its entire freedom at once from doctrinairism, visionary enthusiasm, egotism, and an undue spirit of system. The genius of the author for generalization is so great, his instinct in political science so sure, that even the falsity of his premises frequently fails to vitiate his conclusions." (Saintsbury, George, in Encyclopedia Britannica, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... to be just to me. My pride is for you, not for myself. I shrink from seeing my mother crawl to the feet of a man, who has disowned and spurned her; I cannot consent that she should humbly beg for rights, so unnaturally withheld. Every instinct of my nature revolts from the step you require of me, and I feel as if you held a hot iron in your hand, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the next instant, they saw Russell's head emerge, and then another wave foaming madly by, made them run backwards for their lives, and hid him from their view. When it had passed, they saw him clinging with both hands, in the desperate instinct of self-preservation, to a projecting bit of rock, by the aid of which he gradually dragged himself out of the water, and grasping at crevices or bits of seaweed, slowly and painfully reached the ledge on which they had stood before they took the leap. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... for those six cold months. And this the Eel and Swallow do, as not being able to endure winter weather: for Gesner quotes Albertus to say, that in the year 1125, that year's winter being more cold than usually, Eels did, by nature's instinct, get out of the water into a stack of hay in a meadow upon dry ground; and there bedded themselves: but yet, at last, a frost killed them. And our Camden relates, that, in Lancashire, fishes were digged out of the earth with spades, where no water was near ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... silent as he repeated his survey of the island; his hands, meanwhile, searching slowly, as if by instinct, round his pockets, and into their most minute recesses, if haply they might find an atom of tobacco. Both hands and eyes, however, failed in their search; so, turning once more towards his dog, Jarwin sat down ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... be made, in order to answer the purpose of the meditated preference? Are "the wealthy and the well-born," as they are called, confined to particular spots in the several States? Have they, by some miraculous instinct or foresight, set apart in each of them a common place of residence? Are they only to be met with in the towns or cities? Or are they, on the contrary, scattered over the face of the country as avarice ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... as the element out of which the dry land came. It is only when the land and sea combine to frame the mighty coast-line of a continent, and to fringe it with weed which the tide uncovers twice a day, that the mind is saluted with health and beauty. The fine instinct of Mr. Thoreau furnished him with a truth, without the trouble of a single game at pitch and toss with the mysterious element; for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various |
