"Instinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may, must indubitably prove the most colossal struggle in the history of human warfare, changes have already occurred which must infallibly mark their effect upon the future destiny of the world. Almost as soon as the first shot was fired the nations of Europe, as if by instinct or under the influence of some power higher than that of international diplomacy, automatically marshalled themselves into the two most mighty hosts that have ever trod the field of battle since ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... stage of thought is past the fetichistic instinct remains in the sacredness attached to the mere letter or paper or parchment of the sacred book or writing, when used as amulet, plaster or medicine. The survivals, even in Buddhism, of ancient and prehistoric Fetichism ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... of Nature, this instinct which prompts one bird to lay its eggs in the nests of others, and thus shirk the responsibility of rearing its own young. The Cow-Buntings always resort to this cunning trick; and when one reflects upon their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... towards the ladder but some one shoved me back. Then I thought of the bucket. It was above ground and I staggered towards it gaining strength at each step. I jumped in and shouted to the engineer to lower me. He obeyed from instinct. I went down, down, down to what seemed like the center of the earth. When the bucket struck the ground I was dizzy again but I managed to get out, heave the unconscious Dan in and pile on top of him myself. When I came to, I was in an ambulance ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... what I shall see. He is either in his chair, or his bunk, or overhauling his clothes, or standing, cigar in mouth, at the open porthole." And then I said to myself: "If I don't look now I shall miss the only opportunity of detection that may occur." One is often urged by a sort of instinct in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... her for a moment passionately. Then suddenly he tore himself away. She heard him run lightly down the stairs. Some instinct led her to the back window. She saw him emerge from the house and pass down the yard. Then she went to the front. The man in the blue serge suit was talking to the landlady below. She sank into a chair, puzzled and unhappy. Then she ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for this cause. The untimely death of a young woman like this-a woman for whom the world has such bitter need-has focussed the attention of the men and women of the nation on the fearful waste of women which this fight for the ballot is entailing. The same maternal instinct for the preservation of life-whether it be the physical life of a child or the spiritual life of a cause is sending women into this battle for liberty with an urge which gives them no rest night or day. ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... only anxious, and perhaps a little disappointed, at my not seeming brighter. For, after all, everything she had done and was doing was for my sake, and I should have trusted her and known this by instinct, instead of allowing myself from the very first beginning of our coming to London to think I was a ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... herd of cattle on the prairie, a herd of thousands, shift and face and, as by instinct, lower their horned heads ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... not for the exhaustive presentation by the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Elliott) of the law, and the only law quoted against us in this case that has been cited, to wit, the Slaughter-House cases. He, with the true instinct of freedom, with a grasp of mind that shows him to be the peer of any man on this floor, be he who he may, has given the full strength and full power of that decision of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... apprehend they resemble the Simon-Pure much as an Englishman's French resembles the native tongue. In New Orleans it is the natural, full-flavored article, lively with French taste and talent, and for a people instinct with a truer Gallic spirit, perhaps, than that of Paris itself. It is antique and colonial, but age and the sea-voyage have preserved more distinctly the native bouquet of the wine after all grosser flavors have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... fairly gluttonous of hate—had tended it with a passion that was like that of love. Now he felt that he had never really had enough of it—had never feasted on the fruit of it till he was satisfied—had never known the delight of wallowing in it until to-day. Deep-rooted like an instinct as the feeling was, he knew now that there had been hours when, for very weakness of his nature, he had almost forgotten that he meant to pay back Fletcher in the end, when it seemed, after all, easier merely to endure and ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... life, though you say little, we see it unconsciously written in your bearing. Some of us, who know just a little about it, can guess something of its burdens, its vigils, and its courages. There is something significant in the obscure instinct that some of your friends have to seize what opportunity they can of seeing you in your own quarters when you are in port. For though a ship in dock is a ship fettered and broken of much of her life and meaning, yet ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... things by just a glance from her, and the hour I spent with that small baby was one of the most delicious of all my life. I never was left entirely to myself with one before and I did all I wanted to this one, guided by instinct and desire. He slept right through and was the darlingest thing I ever saw when I laid him back on the bed by her. I never looked in Doctor John's direction once, though I felt him all ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the side for which she had lived ever since she was a girl of sixteen. The renunciation was tremendous, devastating almost. She thought of a landslide carrying away villages, whole populations. How true had been the instinct which had told her that she was drawing near to a climax in her life! Had ever a woman before her been brought in a flash to such a cruel insight? It was as if a tideless sea, by some horrible miracle, retreated, leaving naked rocks which till that moment had never been seen by mortal eyes, ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... comparative freedom from all responsibility, had relaxed the hard shell of his sensibilities, and the beauty and grace of Hermione had easily fascinated him. She, on her part, had distinguished with a woman's natural instinct the curious duality of his character. The grave, powerful, dominating man attracted her very forcibly; the cold, impenetrable, apparently heartless soul, on the other hand, repelled her, and almost inspired her with horror ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... two great traditions of the past. Of the workmanship little need be said, except that it is wholly Lombard, distinguished from the similar work of Della Quercia at Bologna and Siena by a more imperfect feeling for composition, and a lack of monumental gravity, yet graceful, rich in motives, and instinct with a certain wayward ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... as these? If you did not, not much matter, for you have all acted, more or less, in your better moments as if you had them. There are more things in a man's heart, thank God, than ever come into his head. Many a man does a noble thing by instinct, as we say, without ever THINKING whether it is a noble thing or not—without THINKING about it at all. Many a man, thank God, is led at times, by God's Spirit, without ever knowing whose Spirit it ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... cried Gloria, sincerely moved. Inspired with the narrative instinct, Anthony enlarged on ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Logotheti above using any art that could please her. His instinct about women, finding no scruples in the way, had led him into present favour by the shortest road. It is one thing to say brutally that all women like flattery; it is quite another to foresee just what form of flattery they will like. People who do not know professional artistic life ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... again, and this time Julia joined her hostess, and really enjoyed her tea and bread and jam. It was dark now, and they drew the shades at the two street windows and turned on the electric light. Julia knew by some instinct that she need not be afraid of the gray-haired, eccentric, kindly woman opposite; in that very hour she assumed a maternal attitude that was to be the key to her relationship with Miss Toland for many years. The two, neither ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... was a grace in her movements which it was difficult to see without admiring, but she was vain, intent upon conquest, and without an atom of moral firmness, if all accounts be true. Her mother was sorely tried by her waywardness, but did not live long enough to appreciate her real lack of moral instinct; and her father, in spite of his several marriages, which were almost as numerous as those of Henry VIII. of England, was chagrined to find Urraca as his sole heir, no other children having survived. In the hope that France might again furnish ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... before the hour of seven. He could not see Nigel often, because he could not see any one often; but he had seen him more than once, more than once he had heard gossip about him, and he realized, partly through knowledge, and partly through instinct, his situation with Mrs. Chepstow. Nigel longed to be frank with Isaacson, yet told him very little, held back by some strange reserve, subtly inculcated, perhaps, by the woman. Other men told Isaacson far too much, drawing evil inferences with the happy laughter of ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... "Emily"? If he had told her to call him by his Christian name, she might have done it. How noble he looked, when he got up to go away; he was actually handsome! Women may say what they please and write what they please: their natural instinct is to find their master in a man—especially when they like him. Sinking lower and lower in her own estimation, Emily tried to turn the current of her thoughts in another direction. She took up a book—opened it, looked into it, threw it ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... of women to political activity is often met by the assertion, that they do not themselves wish it; that the best women revolt with profound distaste from every thing of the sort. But is this distaste a veracious instinct? or is it a prejudice, owing to the ideal of feminine character and life, which they have been educated to admire? Men have coveted a monopoly of executive power, and held up passive obedience as the fittest type of ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... 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 ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... of taking them back again. Be this as it may, these tardy claims, which were peremptorily rejected, created an extreme coolness between Napoleon and Pius VII. The public did not immediately perceive it, but there is in the public an instinct of reason which the most able politicians never can impose upon; and all eyes were opened when it was known that the Pope, after having crowned Napoleon as Emperor of France, refused to crown him as sovereign of the regenerated ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... instinct as to possibilities, he did not now, as he had intended, make for the first station beyond the town, but plunged still farther under the firs, which here abounded for miles. Each clasping the other round the waist they promenaded over the dry bed of fir-needles, thrown into a vague intoxicating ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... who presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on the 2nd of March, 1818, his paper on the Parallel Roads of Glen. Roy. In looking over the literature of this subject, which is now copious, it is interesting to observe the differentiation of minds, and to single out those who went by a kind of instinct to the core of the question, from those who erred in it, or who learnedly occupied themselves with its analogies, adjuncts, and details. There is no man, in my opinion, connected with the history of the subject, who ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... he spoke there came a step without, and a loud tap on the outer door, at sound of which Ludar started to his feet, and his hand went by instinct to his belt. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... dates of the reigns of Nabonassar and of Nabopolassar. This watch-maker, this simple artisan, understood modern genius better. This modest shopkeeper acted according to the democratic law and followed the instinct of a noble and wise ambition. He made of his son—a sensible and intelligent boy—a machine to copy documents, and spend his days guessing the conundrums in the illustrated newspapers, which he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the superior. Wherefore, as man, being made to the image of God, is above other animals, these are rightly subject to his government. Thirdly, this is proved from a property of man and of other animals. For we see in the latter a certain participated prudence of natural instinct, in regard to certain particular acts; whereas man possesses a universal prudence as regards all practical matters. Now whatever is participated is subject to what is essential and universal. Therefore the subjection of other animals to man is proved ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... concluded Ferguson Pogue, "that a woman is too busy occupied with her natural vocation and instinct of graft such as is given her for self-preservation and amusement to make any great success ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... whom the Rajas belong, and who is, in every particular, a striking contrast with the typical person whose portrait I sketch. The Secretary in the Foreign Department is a scholar and a man of letters by instinct. Whatever he writes is something more than correct and precise—it is impressed with the sweep and cadence of the sea; it is rhythmical, it ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... amateur press. Two or three technical points demand attention. The word "diversified" on page 2 might better be "diverse", while "environment" on page 4, could well be replaced by "condition" or "state". On page 5 occurs the sentence "All intelligence ... were ... instinct". Obviously the verb should be in the singular number to correspond with its subject. Mr. Hart is developing a prose style of commendable dignity, unusually free from the jarring ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... drew it, in writing to her, on reflexion, as mild as I could—having been visited in the watches of the night by the instinct of what might happen. Something told me to keep back my first letter—in which, under the first impression, I myself rashly 'raved'; and I concocted instead of it an insincere and guarded report. But guarded as I was I clearly didn't keep you 'down,' as we say, enough. ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... answered he. "These vampires have a particular instinct which leads them to bleed you in the places where the blood most easily comes, and principally behind the ear. During the operation the continue to move their wings, and cause an agreeable freshness which renders the sleep of the sleeper more profound. They tell ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... Reid's philosophical instinct, if such an expression be allowed, and at the same time his tragic limitations, due to an inability fully to understand the origin of this instinct, come out clearly in the battle he waged against the 'idea' as his immediate predecessors understood it. We know that Plato ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... over, and for that long winter she is chained again. But her heart is true to old England. And when she can go east, she is so happy! and when she must go west, she is so sad! Eastward she does go! Southward she does go! True to the instinct which sends us all home, she tracks undirected and without a sail fifteen hundred miles of that sea, without a beacon, which separates her from her own. And so goes a dismal year. "Perhaps another spring they will ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... afterwards she served with great bravery in Flanders in a regiment of infantry. Then she entered a cavalry regiment, where she fell deeply in love with a comrade, and her woman's nature awoke. Obeying the uncontrollable instinct, she modestly revealed her sex to him, and was married with great eclat, after he had sought in vain, repelled by her high conduct, to make her less than wife. He died soon after, and the Peace of Ryswick compelled her to assume ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... not inclined to believe this was due to the prevalence of any so-called paternal instinct. Paternal instinct is, we suspect, a minus, rather than a plus, quantity. It seems to us that fathers more often learn to love their children through following the conduct prescribed by good form and pretending to love them, or through love of display, pride or by association, than through ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... up a couple of bottles of brandy, and prepared himself to make a night of it. It had not been his habit for years to drink to excess, but in his earlier days at any time of trouble he had gone to that false solace, and now the instinct came back to him. James kept him company awhile in his potations, but by and by crept off to bed, and Jervase sat alone drinking fiercely, at first without ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... idea that in their bulky heads lay the brains that directed the community in its various duties. Many of their actions, such as that I have mentioned of two relays of workmen carrying out the ant-food, can scarcely be blind instinct. Some of the ants make mistakes, and carry in unsuitable leaves. Thus grass is nearly always rejected by them, yet I have seen some ants, perhaps young ones, carrying in leaves of grass. After a while these pieces were invariably brought out again and thrown away. I can imagine ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... to reassure her, but my heart was full of misgiving. In its wonderful way her woman's instinct had warned her, and I, knowing what I did know, feared the worst despite all my assurances to ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... Dillon, with the instinct of the roundsman in him still, tried the handle of the door gently. To our surprise it moved. I could not believe that anyone could have gone away and left it open, trusting that the place would not be looted by the neighbours before he returned. I felt instinctively that there must be somebody ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... be a truism to suggest that dramatic instinct and dramatic power of expression are naturally the first essentials for success in the art of story-telling, and that, without these, no story-teller would go very far; but I maintain that, even with these gifts, no high standard of performance will be reached ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... be thought to have their origin in that antipathy to the trammels of discipline, which is not unusually observable among the characteristics of genius, and which might be regarded, indeed, as a sort of instinct, implanted in it for its own preservation, if there be any truth in the opinion that a course of learned education is hurtful to the freshness and elasticity of the imaginative faculty. A right reverend writer,[88] but little to be suspected of any desire to depreciate academical studies, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... smaller of the two, was a man of good family, a lawyer by profession, and took an active part in state and local politics. Aristocratic by birth and instinct, and a former owner of slaves, his conception of the obligations and rights of his caste was nevertheless somewhat lower than that of the narrower but more sincere Carteret. In serious affairs Carteret desired the approval of his conscience, even if he had to trick that docile ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... usual, that her income was comparatively small, and that the chief part of this, a pension from Government in acknowledgment of her husband's services, would cease at her death. There was a momentary failure in her voice as she said this, and her eyes turned with the instinct of ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... whole, she was glad that he did not happen to be alive. The shock to him would have been too rude. The floor seemed to be giving way under Alice, melting into a sort of bog that would swallow up her and her husband. For years, without any precise information, but merely by instinct, she had felt that England, beneath the surface, was not quite the island it had been—and ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... bought a house and land exactly to my taste, and likely, as Rashid declared, to raise our honour in the country, I felt that I had earned the right to take a holiday. Whenever I have done anything decisive it is my instinct to withdraw myself a little from the scene of action and inure myself by contemplation to the new position of affairs. Accordingly, having surveyed the house and land as owner, I set off with Rashid upon a ten days' journey beyond the ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... instant Eric and Montagu stood breathless,—but 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 ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... of candidates for the numerous places of preferment which are being vacated and created daily. Before the smallest of these has lain open for an hour, there will be scores of shrill claimants wrangling over it, summoned from the four winds of heaven by the unerring instinct of the Rapacidae. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... privileges, and training all his faculties for a relentless war upon himself,—for repressing natural impulses, not guiding them, extirpating his passions, not subduing them, and aiming at an insensibility that can be attained only by the sacrifice of every human instinct, rather than that serene tranquillity of spirit in which every passion is recognized as a power for good as well as for evil, and all are subjected alike to the guidance of ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... order, however, to adduce the most striking instance of this dissolute vulgarity of sentiment, let it suffice, here, to observe that Strauss knows no other means of accounting for the terribly serious negative instinct and the movement of ascetic sanctification which characterised the first century of the Christian era, than by supposing the existence of a previous period of surfeit in the matter of all kinds of sexual indulgence, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the middle of the forward deck. Their driver was a truculent, brigandish, bearded old fellow in long boots, a blue flannel shirt, and a black sombrero. He sat upon the middle horse, and some wild instinct of colour had made him tie a big red handkerchief around his shoulders, so that the eye of the beholder took delight in him. He posed like a bold, bad robber-chief. But in point of fact I believe he was ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... prisoner. General 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 their strict attention; and that I might not ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Kor-ul-ja. Now he altered his plans—they would ride to the very village of Om-at upon the gryf, and the Kor-ul-ja would have food for conversation for many generations to come. Nor was it the theatric instinct of the ape-man alone that gave favor to this plan. The element of Jane's safety entered into the matter for he knew that she would be safe from man and beast alike so long as she rode upon the back of Pal-ul-don's most ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hurriedly for the latch of the van door, found it, and leaped out into the waste under the stars, just as the owner of the van rose with a clatter of coins. To pick up money is a deeply rooted human instinct. Barney Bill lit his lamp, and, uttering juicy though innocuous flowers of anathema, searched for the scattered treasure. When he had retrieved three shillings and sevenpence-halfpenny he peered out. Paul was far away. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... me kneele unto thy bloud: And yet I know not whether't be thy bloud, Save that my soule by a divine instinct Tells me it is the treasure of thy veynes. If thou beest dead, thou mirrour of all men, I vow to dye with thee: this field, this grove, Shall be my receptacle till my last; My pillow shall be made a banke of mosse, And what I drinke the silver brooke shall yeeld. No other campe ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... hurry seems destined to be vain, self-baffled, and where the dreadful knell of too late is already sounding in the ears by anticipation—even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one particular case, namely, where the agonising appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of another life besides your own, accidentally cast upon your protection. To fail, to collapse in a service merely your own, might seem comparatively venial; though, in fact, it is far from ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of Persian buildings of this style; and the use of coloured tiles of singular beauty for linings to the walls, in the heads of these great portals, and in other situations to which such decoration is appropriate, is very common: these decorations afford opportunity for the Persian instinct for colour, probably the truest in the whole world, to ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... nations. And while everywhere 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 classic idea lingered in its simplicity, its ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... trained to look on the safety of the monarchy as the sovereign law, and on the throne as an idol that justified sins committed in its worship. At all times there have been men, resolute and relentless in the pursuit of their aims, whose ardour was too strong to be restricted by moral barriers or the instinct of humanity. In the sixteenth century, beside the fanaticism of freedom, there was an abject idolatry of power; and laws both human and divine were made to yield to the intoxication of authority and ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... moving round and round the circle, but still getting nearer to the hare that appeared eagerly to watch it. I remembered how Norman had manoeuvred to get within shot of the Polar hare; and I now saw the very same ruse being practised by a dumb creature, that is supposed to have no other guide than instinct. But I had seen the 'bay lynx' of Louisiana do some 'dodges' as cunning as that,—such as claying his feet to make the hounds lose the scent, and, after running backwards and forwards upon a fallen log, leap into the tops of trees, and get ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... child. She had wondered, looking at the beauty of his contemptuous little face and at the extraordinary skill with which his small brown hands were whittling a block of wood into a figure, whether it was not a sound instinct on the part of the race to persecute illegitimate children. Either they were conceived more lethargically than other children, of women who yielded through feeble-wittedness or need of money to men who did ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... wary view of the bearings of the tree,—and then with a slow and watchful care recommences his work. The strokes fall doubtingly, and many a cautious glance is cast upward, for the whole immense mass now trembles, as if instinct with life, and conscious of approaching ruin. Another blow! it waves,—a groaning sound is heard—... yet another stroke is necessary. It is given with desperate force, and the tall peak leaves its place with an easy sailing motion accelerated every instant, till it crashes prone on the earth, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... under suppression and had attired themselves according to the directions of a religious Prophet, who had been ignorant concerning color effects. And yet, now that Kalora had escaped from the cage, the original instinct asserted itself. The love of finery can not be ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... With an actor's instinct, Osterman had spoken at the precise psychological moment. He carried the others off their feet, glib, dexterous, voluble. Just what was meant by the League the others did not know, but it was something, a vague engine, a machine with which to fight. Osterman had not done speaking before ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... teaching a polite pronunciation, and cultivating the memory"; and Racine commends the management of St. Cyr, where "the hours of recreation, so to speak, are put to profit by making the pupils recite the finest passages of the best poets." Here is the dramatic instinct, almost universal among young people, and which has almost no chance to exercise itself, except in the performance of the farces to which we are treated in "private theatricals." Can it not be put to a better use? It would be a cumbrous ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... was modest on principle and gentle [doux] by habit, but he was imperious by instinct, and full of a legitimate pride that did ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... was a lake at Barwyke; but the moment this caught my eye, like the cold polish of a snake in the shadow, my instinct seemed to recognize something dangerous, and I knew that the lake was connected, I could not remember how, with the story I had heard of this place ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... Quincy's murderous instinct was again aroused, but Mr. Cass was unmindful of his danger and made the required entry. The humourous side of the affair then struck Quincy, and taking a memorandum book from his pocket, ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... to the old scandal he saw or imagined that he saw her manner change from courteous interest to a somewhat frosty indifference. His pride was pricked by the sense of his blunder. He flattered himself that in his intercourse with men and women he was adroit in retrieving errors, and his instinct warned him that the curtain must not fall upon a scene that left him in discomfiture at the back of ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... of some of the ambiguities in her discussion may perhaps be traced to a rather careless use of terms. At one time "instinct" or "impulsion," the moral force driving man toward perfection, is a potentiality developed by cultivation, and at another a force that is created by cultivation. Although the sublime is the apex of her mathematically-definite program and ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... English people, and especially of the English middle classes, he knew no truer or more enlightening judgment than that of the Queen. She thought with them and she felt with them; she shared their ambitions; she knew by a kind of intuitive instinct the course of their judgments; she sympathised deeply with ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... at the feet of the beautiful lady, in terror; for a natural instinct made them feel that great power is always more or less to be dreaded, even when employed in acts of beneficence. The lady meanwhile kindly raised them, and having spoken of the courage and generosity of their sons, who exposed themselves to the fury of wolves rather ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... challenge to completely transform that quiet cavalcade. The wild man-hunting instinct, inseparable to most humanity, rose at their leader's look and word. With an incoherent and unintelligible cry, giving voice to the chase like the commonest hound of their fields, the order-loving Hale and the philosophical Rawlins wheeled with the ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... and he was very pleased at not seeing Bechet, a certain instinct reproaching him with making an experiment which ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... by the daily call made on them in consequence of the old woman's increasing infirmities. The child had even come, strangely enough, to think of and speak to the object of her dreams as "mother." Was it an accident? Was it an instinct? Was it the result of some overheard expressions which, passing through her consciousness unnoticed, had yet made a lasting impression on the brain of the imaginative child? Or was it a providential suggestion sent by an all-pitying Father ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... the prudence of an honest milkmaid who guards her honour as by instinct, I might have reigned this day at Valoro, instead of being the victim of a villain who, creeping into my heart like the serpent into Eden, destroyed it with the fire of burning love, ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... with wonderful art to reconcile us to the notion of a Greek myth embodied in an Italian of the nineteenth century; and when at length a soul is created in this primeval pagan, this child of earth, this creature of mere instinct, awakened through sin to a conception of the necessity of atonement, we feel, that, while we looked to be entertained with the airiest of fictions, we were dealing with the most august truths of psychology, with the most pregnant facts of modern history, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... was so unrelated to what had been happening in her soul that she hardly understood it. But the instinct of ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... female servants, he saw no 'women folk,' all the year round, but our mother. He was one of the right sort, always planning pic-nics, fishing and rowing excursions; and kept his purse continually in his hand, ready to tip us handsomely, for he appeared to have an instinct that money burnt a hole ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... his front paws. The ape-man could not rise, therefore, without pushing the lion away and whether Numa would tolerate being pushed was an open question. Too, the beast might consider him already dead and any movement that indicated the contrary was true would, in all likelihood, arouse the killing instinct of ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... opportunity, perhaps not application, to gain—derive not pride, but support from the thought. If no new books had ever been written, some of these minds would themselves have remained blank pages: they only take an impression; they were not born with a record of thought on the brain, or an instinct of sensation on the heart. If I had never seen a printed volume, Nature would have offered my perceptions a varying picture of a continuous narrative, which, without any other teacher than herself, would have schooled me to ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... grey-eyed, perfectly-shaped, and with that indescribable charm of feature which neither the pen nor the camera can do justice to—Norah Castellan was facing him, her eyes gleaming and almost black with anger, and her whole body instinct ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... morning. She was no heroine of romance, and therefore looked with some curiosity and interest on the mansion-house and domains, of which, it might at that moment occur to her, a little encouragement, such as women of all ranks know by instinct how to apply, might have made her mistress. Moreover, she was no person of taste beyond her time, rank, and country, and certainly thought the house of Dumbiedikes, though inferior to Holyrood House, or the palace at Dalkeith, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... demanded Gerald quickly. "Instinct could not have guided you to the spot, and by your own admission you were taken from the place of your home ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... was listening to Gideon's explanations I was at the same time meditating upon this dark and fearful glen, and I reflected that the instinct which attracts the brutes into such retreats as these, far from the light of heaven, away from everything bright and cheerful, must partake of the nature of remorse. Those animals which love the open sunshine—the goat aloft upon a high conspicuous peak, the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... a small keg of water with us, we did not on this occasion suffer absolute want: we hope that the instinct of the horses would lead them to water in the course of the night—but ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... either of his fellow "wits" was John Trumbull (1750-1831), who had the instinct of a poet but who was led aside by the strife of Whigs and Tories into the barren field of political satire. His best-known work is M'Fingal (1775), a burlesque poem in the doggerel style of Butler's Hudibras, which ridiculed a Tory squire and described ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... all about its little world, but knows everything necessary within its little world. It does not err, it does the right thing at the right time, and that because it is in tune with its universe, hence acts from pure instinct in the right way. If intellect were to enter into the case, its actions might become less reliable, and it would blunder far oftener. In the case of man, his thinking capacity often militates against successful ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... All great spiritual scriptures are full of the invitation not to test, but to taste; not to examine, but to eat. Their phrases are full of living water and heavenly bread, mysterious manna and dreadful wine. Worldliness, and the polite society of the world, has despised this instinct of eating; but religion has never despised it. When we look at a firm, fat, white cliff of chalk at Dover, I do not suggest that we should desire to eat it; that would be highly abnormal. But I ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... slavery there is at once abolished. Congress may well be at home in common law legislation, for the common law is the grand element of the United States Constitution. All its fundamental provisions are instinct with its spirit; and its existence, principles and paramount authority, are presupposed and assumed throughout the whole. The preamble of the Constitution plants the standard of the Common Law immovably ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... implanted in the Carnegies the instinct of the salmon for the sea. I should have been a sailor bold, and sailed the "sawt, sawt faeme," a pirate with a pirate's bride captured vi et armis, and all the rest ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... wild fancy, that a sort of glory is in a streaming wound, such as he bore while fighting Morold, that he will meet Isolde in the same manner, gloriously bleeding, not ignobly constrained by a bandage. And prompted by some obscure instinct perhaps to relieve a torture of which his flaming brain will not permit him duly to take account, he tears the wrappings from his wound, shouting with gladness, and bidding his blood now flow merrily forth. He jumps from the couch, he goes a few ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... kisses and flattery upon one's youthful head after eating papa's good dinner—keeping a sharp protective eye on their own silk dresses, and perchance pricking one with a brooch or pushing a curl into one eye with a kid-gloved finger—I held in unfeigned abhorrence. But over and above my natural instinct against the unloving fondling of drawing-room visitors, I had a special and peculiar ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Padden, whose fine instinct scented some insinuation in this remark, was about to take up the cudgels for water, but Crampas spoke on with increasing fluency and turned the attention of the ladies to a beautiful Miss von Stojentin, "without question the queen of the ball," he said, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... and we did not suspect that he had been sent down to see if there was danger in our visit or not; and so suspicious was the little community that every Montenegrin set himself, without orders and by the instinct of danger, to watch every stranger within ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... exploitation of government ventures, to the Bank, and to the Navy, which they termed "the great beast with the great belly." The Federalists included the commercial and creditor class and that fine element in American life composed of leading families with whom domination was an instinct, all led, fortunately, by a few idealists of rare intellectual attainments. And, with the political stupidity often characteristic of their class, they stumbled from blunder to blunder. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson, who adroitly coined the mistakes ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... swarmed with snowbirds and sparrows,—the latter mainly Canada or tree sparrows, with a sprinkling of the song, and, maybe, one or two other varieties. The birds are all social and gregarious in winter, and seem drawn together by common instinct. Where you find one, you will not only find others of the same kind, but also several different kinds. The regular winter residents go in little bands, like a well-organized pioneer corps,—the jays and woodpeckers in advance, doing the heavier work; ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the Dramatic Instinct and the Fire of Genius and that indefinable Something which enables Eva Tanguay to earn more than the ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... qualities of head and heart with which this child of nature was endowed? He was a rough diamond, and it was only by the attrition of constant intercourse that his best qualities displayed themselves. Physically he was perfect; his movements were instinct with that grace and ease that are the attributes of those alone whose lives have been spent in the cultivation of all exercises that look to the development of the muscles. How vividly his image presents itself ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... would cause father, mother, sister and brother to hang their heads among their neighbors in secluded village, on far-away moor or in lonely glen. The Scotch have strong traces of the Chinese and Japanese religious devotion to "the family," and the filial instinct is intensely strong. The fall of one member is the disgrace of all. Even although Watt's mother had passed, there remained the venerated father in Greenock, and the letters regularly written to him, some of which have fortunately ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... of the nest is doubled inwards, and I always conjectured that it had taken this shape on account of the body of the bird pressing against it while she was laying her eggs. But this was quite a wrong conjecture. Instinct has taught the bird to give it this shape in order that the eggs may be prevented from ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... 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 ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... either—I am unable to solve the great problem of sentiment. However, by personal instinct, I have followed the latter plan and have now, I fear, struck the grand chord—judging, at least, by ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... instinct which women often possess, opposed her husband's taking Bill Herndon into partnership. While the young man was honest and capable enough, he was neither brilliant nor steady. He contracted the habit of drinking, the bane of Lincoln's business career. As ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... his mixed virtues and failings. For failings he had undoubtedly,—many of us remember them; we are this day considering the effect of them. But he had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause,—to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame: a passion which is the instinct of all great souls. He worshipped that goddess, wheresoever she appeared; but he paid his particular devotions to her in her favorite habitation, in her chosen temple, the House of Commons. Besides the characters of the individuals that compose our body, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to state that a great religious conquest can be explained only on moral grounds. {27} Whatever part must be ascribed to the instinct of imitation and the contagion of example, in the last analysis we are always face to face with a series of individual conversions. The mysterious affinity of minds is as much due to reflection as to the continued and almost unconscious ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... chap, you really do make me believe that there actually is such a thing as instinct," said Narkom, as he came in. "Fancy your selecting that particular bill out of all the others in the room! What an abnormal ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... long ago, the appreciation of the prophetic life, the local color, the majesty of the descriptions of nature, the vivid and striking figures of speech, the elevated and vigorous style, everything is so instinct with the spirit of the Bible that, without the romantic story, one would believe himself to be perusing a long-lost and now recovered book of poetry ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... strangers, eccentric, unable to live without wide liberty. To go to school; it must have had a dreadful sound to that untamable, free creature, happiest alone with the dogs on the moors, with little sentiment or instinct for friendship; no desire to meet her fellows. Emily was perfectly happy at Haworth cooking the dinner, ironing the linen, writing poems at the Waterfall, taking her dog for miles over the moors, pacing round the parlour with her arm round gentle ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... the heart of Edith Claire. The unusual mood of her husband on the previous evening, and the dream which had haunted her through the night, left impressions that could not be shaken off. She had an instinct of danger—danger lurking in the path of one in whom her very ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... well nigh fled, Leaving but chasmed ugliness and ruin: And weak as faltering of these taper flames Half sunken in their sockets, by whose gleam I see, though faintly, where my books stand ranged Most mute; though sometime eloquent to me; And where my pictures hang with other forms Instinct from what I know: where friends portrayed Like ghosts loom on me from another world. Then what remains, but, like a child worn out With weeping, that I sink me down to rest, To sleep, not dream—and if ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... leave her, she drew from a most slender purse a few petty coins, and I saw that she muttered some words indicative of the shame of poverty, as she tremblingly tended them to the outstretched palm. Twice did that palm close and open on the paltry sum; and the third time the native instinct of the heart overcame the later impulse of the profession. The limb of Galen drew back, and shaking with a gentle oscillation his capitalian honours, he laid the money softly on the table, and buttoning ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... resumed her solitary pacing without another thought for the hardy rascal she had so swiftly and effectively softened. Her eyes were ever bent toward the great rock; her thoughts were centered on a vague, mysterious instinct which whispered to her that with her first admission into that frowning cavern the mantle of fierce old Red Jabez would fall upon her, and with it would come power that a Czar might envy! A Czar's power, indeed, but with all of a Czar's cares ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... one another in approval, like the arrant gossips they were. The chill curtain fell straight and heavy again before the door, so that the firelight shone dimly through its folds; but not before Dade, riding at random save for the trust he put in the sure homing instinct of his horse, caught the brief gleam ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower |
