"Instinctive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friend, both of whom had succeeded in getting up a little conversation with the hostess's younger daughter, the girl named Grace. Her sister, Elizabeth, put down her needlework, and watched Tom with sudden solicitude. An instinctive dislike of Lord Wrotham and his companion caused her to avoid looking their way, though she heard every word they were saying,—and her interest became centred on the handsome gypsy, whose pallid features and terrible expression filled her ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... mind that if it were in any way connected with the visitors of the previous afternoon, it must be with the dissipated-looking young man, for whom I had conceived an instinctive aversion. ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... with the passing of each instant was disappearing more and more among the labyrinth of tables and people. She saw him pause at last and seem to hesitate, and her heart throbbed wildly in her throat as she felt, with that strange instinctive intuition which continues to follow one train of thought while our very life seems paralyzed by another, that if he took a seat with his back to her, the action would be witness to a displeasure far beyond what he must be feeling if he so placed ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... or could not, recognise this as the instinctive cry of the primitive man for a closer fellowship with Mother Nature. He was keenly practical, and impatient with everything that appeared to him to be purely ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... be, as some philosophers assure us that there is, an innate love of order in the human mind; but of this instinctive principle my poor Ellinor was totally destitute. Her ornamented farm-house became, in a wonderfully short time, a scene of dirt, rubbish, and confusion. There was a partition between two rooms, which had been built with turf or peat, instead of bricks, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... in. He didn't reflect. He didn't even know he was actually doing it. But he did it, all the same, with the simple, straightforward, instinctive sense of duty which makes civilized man act aright, all unconsciously, in any moment of supreme danger and difficulty. Leaping on to the taffrail without one instant's delay, and steadying himself for an indivisible fraction of time with his hand on the rope ladder, he peered out into the darkness ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... a frugal support for herself and her children. Engaging humble apartments, she devoted herself entirely to their education. Both of the children were richly endowed; inheriting from their mother and their father talents, personal loveliness, and an instinctive power of attraction. Thus there came a brief lull in those dreadful storms of life by which Josephine had been ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... North American Indians, a race of men as completely engaged in mere instinctive life as almost any in the world, and where each chief, keeping many wives as useful servants, of course looks with no kind eye on celibacy in Woman, it was excused in the following instance mentioned by Mrs. Jameson. A woman dreamt in youth that she was betrothed ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... held weapons. They advanced upon Professor Pettibone, looked up into his face, reflected a certain wary hostility. That the hostility was tinged with instinctive respect, even awe, made it no ...
— Say "Hello" for Me • Frank W. Coggins
... hidden treasures of nature, and explaining how Providence, in all its measures, was equally wonderful and wise. The experiments which ensued, and which corroborated his ingenious and profound remarks, suspended a well-informed audience in rapturous attention; which was followed by instinctive bursts of applause. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... susceptible to the wiles of young adventuresses. The sisters averted their faces from the contaminating sight. Amzi was crossing the room and reached the open door as it framed his sister. He had a fine, instinctive sense of courtesy and even his pudgy figure could not diminish his dignity. He took Lois by the hand and led her to the broad hearth as though the fireplace symbolized the domestic altar, and he was ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... up her hand. "But it's only trying on—not putting on," she told him. He said nothing till it flashed upon her finger, and in her eyes he saw a spark from below of that instinctive cupidity toward jewels that man can never recognize as it deserves in woman, because of his ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... While absorbed in thought, his legs, obeying an instinctive impulse, had brought him to his lodgings. He rang the bell; the door opened, and he groped his way slowly up to the fourth floor. He had reached his room, and was about to enter, when some one, whom he could not distinguish in the dark, called out: "Is that you, ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... like all genuine ones, has been instinctive, its results unexpected and surprising to the greater part of those who achieved them. The waters, which had flowed so secretly beneath the crust of habit that many never heard their murmur, unless in dreams, have suddenly burst to light in full and beautiful jets; all rush to drink the pure ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... not know anything so disgusting as a snake. There is an instinctive feeling that the arch enemy is personified when these wretches glide by you, and the blood chills with horror. I took the dried skin of this fellow to England; it measures twelve feet in its dry state, minus the piece ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... with man's, if Eve were a mere tautology of Adam, it would only give rise to a monotonous superfluity. But that she was not so was proved by the banishment she secured from a ready-made Paradise. She had the instinctive wisdom to realise that it was her mission to help her mate in creating a Paradise of their own on earth, whose ideal she was to supply with her life, whose materials were to be produced ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... cheeks, resembled two great gilt nails in a piece of Cordova leather. Suddenly the electric bells began to ring. The station-agent rushed frantically out to the track: "The train is signalled, messieurs. It will be here in eight minutes." Everybody started. Then a general instinctive impulse caused every watch to be drawn from its fob. Only six minutes more. Thereupon, in the profound silence, some one exclaimed: "Look there!" On the right, in the direction from which the train was to come, two high vine-covered hills formed a tunnel into which the track plunged and disappeared, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... debauch of revolt seemed to have sobered him. He bought himself many new clothes, and as time went on, picked up social relations in different parts of the city. He still talked sentimental socialism, chiefly for the benefit of Alves, who regarded him as an authority on economic questions, and whose instinctive sympathies were touched by his theories. As the clothes became more numerous and better in quality, he talked less about socialism and more about society. The Investor's Monthly interested him: he spoke of becoming ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... difference between great and mean art has been disappointed; that he has involved himself in a crowd of theories, whose issue he had not foreseen, and committed himself to conclusions which, he never intended. There is an instinctive consciousness in his own mind of the difference between high and low art; but he is utterly incapable of explaining it, and every effort which he makes to do so involves him in unexpected fallacy and absurdity. It is not ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... convert into the Church except on terms which were impossible to persons of reason; and this is so far true that I do not believe that Hugh's conversion was a process of either intellect or reason. I believe that it was a deep instinctive and emotional need for a basis of thought so strong and vivid that he need not question it. I believe he had long been seeking for such a basis, and that he was right to accept it, because he did so in entire simplicity and genuineness. My brother was not sceptical nor analytic; ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wishes for a plentiful harvest, "Bog v pomozh" (God help), or with a bow. The peasant women whom we met rarely took other notice of us than to stare, and still more rarely did they salute first. They gazed with instinctive distrust, as women of higher rank are wont to do at a stranger of their ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... to herself, and which, as well as the particulars of her dream, she concealed even from Father Aldrovand in the hours of confession. It was not aversion to the Constable—it was far less preference to any other suitor—it was one of those instinctive movements and emotions by which Nature seems to warn us of approaching danger, though furnishing no information respecting its nature, and suggesting no means of escaping ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... status of civilization with the primary equipment of brutish organs. Perhaps the most striking difference between man and animals lies in the greater control which man has gained over his primitive instinctive reactions. As compared with the entire duration of organic evolution, man came down from his arboreal abode and assumed his new role of increased domination over the physical world but a moment ago. And now, though sitting at his desk in command of the complicated ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... parted. With a light instinctive push Barbara forced Letty to go back to the spot on which she had stood earlier. She herself went to the other side of the bed, only to find that the head, in which the eyes were closed again, was ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... army for centuries has been the patient strength and courage, capacity for enduring hardships, instinctive submission to military discipline of the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... conventional. This was against him in Nan's eyes, for she was a stickler for the formalities. But as he threw back his topcoat, and she saw his voluminous soft silk tie of magenta with vermilion dots, his low rolling collar, and his longish mane of hair, she felt an instinctive dislike to the man. Her sense of justice, however, made her reserve judgment until she knew more of him, and she invited him to tarry ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... dragged her husband up from the gulf and saved him, though as by fire; or a more buoyant and younger wife might have passed it by as a first offence, hopeful of its being also the only one. But an instinctive knowledge of the man bereft Hitty of any such hope; she knew it was not the first time; from his own revelations and penitent confessions while she was yet free, she knew he had sinned as well as suffered, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the lowest of its functions, it is a function of conscience, not only to say to me, 'It is wrong to do what is wrong,' but to say, too, 'If you do wrong, you will have to bear the consequences.' I believe that a part of the instinctive voice of conscience is the declaration, not only of a law, but of a Lawgiver, and that part of its message to me is not only that sin is a transgression of the law, but that 'the wages of sin ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... instinctive shrinking when she saw that the women, also, were to recline, after the manner of the dissolute Greeks, instead of sitting, as she had been taught to consider the only decent posture for a Roman maid or matron. Then the thought of her mission ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... soundest Sleep, Soft on the flowry Herb I found me laid In balmy Sweat, which with his Beams the Sun Soon dried, and on the reaking Moisture fed. Streight towards Heavn my wondring Eyes I turn'd, And gazed awhile the ample Sky, till rais'd By quick instinctive Motion, up I sprung, As thitherward endeavouring, and upright Stood on my Feet: About me round I saw Hill, Dale, and shady Woods, and sunny Plains, And liquid lapse of murmuring Streams; by these Creatures that liv'd, and mov'd, and walked, or flew, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... are the heroes of Germany, and if Fichte and Pestalozzi are not forgotten, at least their memories are not cherished as are the memories of the more tangible and obvious heroes. Instinct lies deeply embedded in human nature and it is instinctive to think in the concrete. And so I repeat that we cannot expect the general public to share in the respect and veneration which you and I feel for our calling, for you and I are technicians in education, and we can see the process as a comprehensive whole. But our fellow men and women have ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... petals from the wilted rose showering down into her lap. The coin dropped back into her purse as she made an instinctive grab to save them from going to the floor. Then blushing and embarrassed as the plate paused in front of her, she fumbled desperately in her purse to regain the dropped quarter. The instant the coin left her fingers she saw the mistake ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... felt the strain, the terrier resisted wildly. Planting his forefeet against the heather-roots, he refused with all the instinctive terror of the dumb animal, straining every muscle of his little thick-set frame to avoid a closer acquaintance with ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... small luxuries as he was able to obtain that had alone attached Markham to his daughter. His character belonged to a type found both among men and women; it was a nature entirely selfish and endowed with an instinctive art in working upon the unselfish sentiments of others—an art which even creates unselfishness ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... Arabum"[FN126] Nor is the shady side of the picture less notable. Our Arab at his worst is a mere barbarian who has not forgotten the savage. He is a model mixture of childishness and astuteness, of simplicity and cunning, concealing levity of mind under solemnity of aspect. His stolid instinctive conservatism grovels before the tyrant rule of routine, despite that turbulent and licentious independence which ever suggests revolt against the ruler: his mental torpidity, founded upon physical indolence, renders immediate ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... she loved, and although she rated these qualities at their true value, she was always searching beyond them for intellectual treasures; searching and never finding, for although Emma Jane had the advantage in years she was still immature. Huldah Meserve had an instinctive love of fun which appealed to Rebecca; she also had a fascinating knowledge of the world, from having visited her married sisters in Milltown and Portland; but on the other hand there was a certain sharpness and lack of sympathy in Huldah which repelled ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fair enough question, but I did not answer him, and simply turned the pad over with a movement of instinctive secrecy: I could not have told him he had put to flight the psychology of Nina Almayer, her opening speech of the tenth chapter, and the words of Mrs. Almayer's wisdom which were to follow in the ominous oncoming of a tropical night. I could not have told him ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... child who had no name or lineage, watching the other children as they played, not knowing how to talk with them, or sport with them, and more strange to the ways of childhood than a rough dog. It was sad, though in a different way, to see what an instinctive knowledge the youngest children there had of his being different from all the rest, and how they made timid approaches to him with soft words and touches, and with little presents, that he might not be unhappy. But he kept by Milly, and began to love her—that was another, ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... intellect, as towards the speculative, Roosevelt felt an instinctive antagonism. One of his most characteristic utterances is the address delivered at the Sorbonne, April 30, 1910, "Citizenship in a Republic." Here, amidst a good deal of moral commonplace—wise and sensible for the most part, but sufficiently platitudinous—occurs a burst ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... whose vicarious qualities were less uncertain than I still felt Chu Chu's to be, but I kissed the girl's hand submissively. It was only when I attempted to accompany her in the flesh, on another horse, that I felt the full truth of my instinctive fears. Chu Chu would not permit any one to approach her mistress's side. My mounted presence revived in her all her old blind astonishment and disbelief in my existence; she would start suddenly, face about, and back away from me in utter amazement as ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... by an urgent instinctive desire for certain extreme remedies, sometimes of a frightful character,—as stretching the limbs with a violence similar to that of the rack,—administering on the breast, stomach, or other parts of the body, hundreds of terrible blows with heavy weapons of wood, iron, or stone,—pressing with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... was the catastrophe of Susy and her friend. The strong, elastic stalks of the tall grain broke their fall and enabled them to scramble to their feet, dusty, disheveled, but unhurt, and even unstunned by the shock. Their first instinctive cries over a damaged hat or ripped skirt were followed by the quick reaction of childish laughter. They were alone; the very defection of Pedro consoled them, in its absence of any witness to their disaster; even their previous slight attitude to each other was forgotten. They ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... had changed. Instinctive misgivings which had assailed her in the coach with him now resolved themselves into assured fears. Something she could not explain had aroused her suspicions before they reached the manor, but his words had glossed these inward qualms, and a feeling ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... behind by Mr Bertrand and pulled forward by Hilary's outstretched hand, he must have had a serious fall. Hilary literally dare not look at his face for the first ten minutes of the drive, for with an instinctive understanding of another person's feeling which was a new experience to this self-engrossed little lady, she realised that he was smarting beneath the consciousness of having made himself an object of general commiseration. Whatever happened, he must not think that she was ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... (I almost dare to call it a relief) to come back to the males. It is the more abrupt because the first name that must be mentioned derives directly from the mere maleness of the Sterne and Smollett novel. I have already spoken of Dickens as the most homely and instinctive, and therefore probably the heaviest, of all the onslaughts made on the central Victorian satisfaction. There is therefore the less to say of him here, where we consider him only as a novelist; but there ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the road on foot. They have nothing to eat and no money. They are bound for their home in a city which, when they last heard from it, was in flames. What they will see when they arrive there they cannot imagine, but the instinctive love of home urges them. They walk on steadily and rapidly, and are not diverted by surroundings. It does not even occur to them that their situation, surrounded on all sides by armed enemies and walking a road crowded by them, is at all novel. They are ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... champions withdrew to a retired spot, where, unmolested, they might fight out their quarrel hand to hand. As they approached each other, Rustum, moved with compassion by the youth of his foe, tried to dissuade Sohrab from his purpose, and counselled him to retire. Sohrab, filled with sudden hope,—an instinctive feeling that the father whom he was seeking stood before him,—eagerly demanded whether this were Rustum. But Rustum, fearing treachery, said he was only an ordinary man, having neither ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... eyes that matched it, he was eminently handsome, and, as everybody agreed, a splendid conversationalist. Notwithstanding his acknowledged superiority to all others, and the fact that he was petted and caressed by every one, I felt an instinctive repugnance to him, that for a long time I tried in vain to overcome. Perhaps it was because I had heard him so highly spoken of, that I was ready to find fault. However that maybe, I felt a secret antipathy to this man. Would I had been allowed to follow the warning conveyed ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... took its rise less in the fascination of devotion given, than in that of devotion denied. She happened to be here on the spot at a critical juncture, and thus to catch the young girl's heart on the rebound. That was all—that, joined with Damaris' instinctive necessity to play fair and pay in honest ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... bolted on the inside. Susy, who had been awake, had heard the alarm and drawn the bolt so as to give time for hastily throwing on a few garments. The men thundered violently and tried to force the door, but the door was strong, and an instinctive feeling of delicacy restrained them for a few seconds from ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... sacrificial murders committed by Jews. And even if this never happens at all, the fact remains that in charging that the horrors of Bolshevism were deliberately instigated by Jews, British and American anti-Semites have appealed to the same unreasoning, instinctive, primal passion. For Bolshevism, primarily a political and economic program though it be, impinges upon religious faith and religious authority. Thus do the anti-Semites play with fire in close proximity to the high ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... Mr. Bronte provided his children with a teacher in drawing, who turned out to be a man of considerable talent but very little principle. Although they never attained to anything like proficiency, they took great interest in acquiring this art; evidently from an instinctive desire to express their powerful imaginations in visible forms. Charlotte told me that at this period of her life drawing and walking out with her sisters formed the two great pleasures and relaxations of her day. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... of hallucination, during which they seem rather to record than to invent the doings of their characters. But this somewhat morbid condition should scarcely be cultivated by the dramatist, whose intelligence should always keep a light rein on his more instinctive mental processes. See L'Annee Psychologique, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... advanced as not only the greatest, but the most decisive, of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals. Darwin brings forward in the book before us a quantity of reasons for holding it to be impossible that this belief is innate or instinctive in man. In some races of men, for instance, we encounter a total want of the idea of God. On the other hand, a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal, and apparently follows from a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... hostess, he could see, under some supreme idea, an inspiration which was half her nerves and half an inevitable harmony; but what he especially recognised was the character that had already several times broken out in her and that she so oddly appeared able, by choice or by instinctive affinity, to keep down or to display. She was the American girl as he had originally found her—found her at certain moments, it was true, in New York, more than at certain others; she was the American girl as, still more than then, he had seen ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... out of your class," replied Arthur, with an instinctive gallantry which even his distress could not overcome; "but I can't get used to the thought of it, darling—I simply can't. You're so sacred to me. There's something about the woman a man loves that's different from every other woman, and the bare idea of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... forth his hand and she, following an instinctive prompting, fell on her knees by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... understand why he got on so badly, especially with Hawkesbury, who certainly never made himself disagreeable, but, on the contrary, always appeared desirous to be friendly. I sometimes thought Smith was unreasonable to foster his instinctive dislike as he did. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... to put marked emphasis on this feature of their new life in the wilderness. The people would rise in the morning, and probably the first thing done was to look out toward the cloud to learn if there was to be any change that day. And so during the day there would come to be an instinctive habit of watching that cloud. They might remain in a new camping place for months, or only for a few weeks, or, possibly only for a few days. They never knew a day ahead. They lived literally a day at a time. It was certainly a hand-to-mouth ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... successful man, the merchant prince with argosies on every sea, the employer of thousands of hands, the munificent contributor to public charities, the churchwarden, the member of parliament, and the generous patron of his relatives his self-approbation struggling with the instinctive sense of baseness in the money-hunter, the ignorant and greedy filcher of the labor of others, the seller of his own mind and manhood for luxuries and delicacies that he was too lowlived to enjoy, and for the society of people who made him feel ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... with this advancement of her counsellor, Mary de Medici continued to press the king to admit Richelieu to his cabinet. Louis long resisted her solicitations, such was his instinctive dread of the man destined to rule him. Nor was it until 1624, after the lapse of sixteen months, and when embarrassed with difficult state questions, which no one then in office was capable of managing, that the royal ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... midday the light shimmered on the far horizon and on shadowy islands, they gazed with wistful eyes as if to catch a glimpse of Elysium beyond the fountains of the deep and the halls of the setting sun. In all this we see the Celtic version of a primitive and instinctive human belief. Man refuses to think that the misery and disappointment and strife and pain of life must always be his. He hopes and believes that there is reserved for him, somewhere and at some time, eternal happiness and ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... them, they may be glad of food," said Lord Reginald, and putting up such provisions as they had cooked, they hurried off, each armed with a long stick, followed by Neptune, who, although he seemed to have an instinctive dread of approaching the burning mountain, was yet willing to follow his master. Instead, however, of bounding on before, as was his usual custom, he kept close at Lord Reginald's heels. They took the most direct route along the broad valley, intending ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... of change, women of the more emotional and imaginative type are less potent than they have been and will be again. They appear equally inimical and heretical to the opposing camps of hausfrau and of suffragist. Their intellectual forces, liberated and intensified, prey upon the more instinctive part of their natures, vexing them with unanswerable questions. So Fiammetta mistakes herself to some degree, loses her keynote, becomes embittered and perplexed. The equilibrium of soul and body is disturbed; and she fortifies herself in an ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... till it reached the crowds around the scaffold; where it spread like wildfire from mouth to mouth, reaching the ear of Don Felix, even before his eye caught the rapidly advancing soldier, whom he recognized at once as one of his Sovereign's private guards; impelling him, with an almost instinctive movement, to catch the upraised arm of the executioner at the very instant he was about ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... voices—the treble of Miss Bingham, and the bass of a man who must be the Mr. Dickery he had seen at the saw mills—he turned and hurried back to his hotel, where he wrote a short letter saying that he had decided to take the express for New York that night. With an instinctive recognition of her authority in the affair, or with a cowardly shrinking from direct dealing with Barbara, he wrote to Juliet Bingham, and he addressed to her the packet of letters which he sent ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... handed about independently of the nature of the recipient. It is not everyone who can desire everything and feel pleasure in its attainment. That the objects of desire and will are many, and that the strivings of conscious creatures have in view many ends, and vary according to the impulsive and instinctive endowments of the creatures in question, has been well brought out in the admirable studies of instinct which we now have at our disposal. The most ardent devotee of pleasure must recognize, that only certain pleasures are open to him; that, such ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... since her arrival was an unexpected meeting with Bailey Girard. Dosia, with Zaidee and Redge held by either hand and pressing close to her as they walked merrily along, suddenly came upon a gray-clad figure emerging from the post-office. He seemed to make an instinctive movement as if to draw back, that sent the swift color to her cheeks and then turned them white. Were all the men in the place trying to avoid her? Dosia thought, with bitter humor; but, if it were so, he instantly recovered himself, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... a man could do in the way of outward attention Tazzuchi did, but somehow or other Captain Kettle got a suspicion of him from the very first moment of their meeting. Perhaps it was to some extent because the British mariner has always an instinctive and special distrust for the Latin nations; perhaps it was because the civility was a little unexpected and over-effusive. Putting himself in the Italian's place, Kettle certainly would not have gone out of his way to be pleasant ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... might be true. There may be something in the German composition that does demand association and the support of pride and training before dangers can be faced. The Germans are social and methodical, the French and English are by comparison chaotic and instinctive; perhaps the very readiness for a conscious orderliness that makes the German so formidable upon the ground, so thorough and fore-seeking, makes him slow and unsure in the air. At any rate the experiences of this war have seemed to carry out this hypothesis. The German aviators will ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... extent an idealising of the past, the golden age of great law-givers and philosophers and saints. But very much more—mere inertia and torpidity in mind and body, a reluctance to take stock of things, and an instinctive treading in the old paths. "Via trita, via tuta." In the path from one Indian village to another may often be observed an inexplicable deviation from the beeline, and then a return to the line again. It is where in some past year some dead animal or some offensive ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... examine in detail the process by which an associational and sympathetic relation is set up between the individual and certain parts of the outside world to the exclusion of others, we find this at first, on a purely instinctive and reflex basis, originating in connection with food-getting and reproduction, and growing more conscious in the higher forms of life. One of the most important origins of association and prepossession is seen ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... much encumbered with phosphate of lime, that they have no room to admit the fresh supply which keeps coming to them in the blood. What becomes of it then? It goes to seek its fortune elsewhere; and there are charitable souls, who forgetting their instinctive antipathies, consent to give it hospitality, though much to the prejudice of the poor old man himself, who is no longer served so well as formerly, by the incautious servants who have allowed themselves to be thus fatally beguiled; but no one consults ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... and with a man's instinctive sense of reserve he looked hastily round to make sure that ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... I beseech you... for pity!' she gasp'd, Snatching hurriedly from him the hand he had clasp'd, In her effort instinctive to fly from ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... bond-servant's right hand went to his hip, as if instinctively seeking something there. The traveller's eyes followed the impulsive gesture, even while he, too, made a motion more instinctive than conscious, by stepping backward, as if to avoid something. This motion ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... she stopped. She looked back. She had never approved of fisticuffs—and Marty was prone to such disgraceful activities. Nevertheless, when she saw Sim Howell's blood-besmeared countenance, his wide-open mouth, his clumsy fists pawing the air almost blindly, something primal—instinctive—made her ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... that with a great many of her mother's mysterious remarks—Linda had an instinctive feeling of drawing away. The other kissed her warmly and left a print of vivid red ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ancient Germany. Procreation instead of lust was there the aim of marriage. To-day, mere sentiment is so much in the ascendant that both these elements are often absent. There is warm affection without even instinctive knowledge of the design ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... her on the other side of the table, a grey-haired man with crafty eyes that seemed to look in all directions at the same time. She took an instinctive dislike to him. He ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... [123] This is an instinctive impulse under all strong emotion in primitive persons. "The Australian Dieri," says A.W. Howitt (Journal Anthropological Institute, August, 1890), "when in pain or grief cry out for their ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... thought I would refer to the broken tumbler, and tell her not to grieve herself about it, as its loss was of no consequence whatever. But this would have been to have made an acknowledgment to her that I had been in the wrong, and instinctive feeling of ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... story—keen instinct against death. Some other recollections are those of vanity—namely, thinking that people were admiring me, in one instance for perseverance and another for boldness in climbing a low tree, and what is odder, a consciousness, as if instinctive, that I was vain, and contempt of myself. My supposed admirer was old Peter Haile the bricklayer, and the tree the mountain ash on the lawn. All my recollections seem to be connected most closely with myself; now Catherine (Catherine Darwin) seems to recollect scenes ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... uproot impressions that are almost instinctive, to remember that our forefathers reached these shores by virtue of knowledge which they owed to the astronomical researches of Egyptians and Chaldeans, who inspired the astronomers of Greece, who inspired those of the Renaissance in Italy, Spain, and ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... difficulty, to quiet the infuriated young woman by asserting authoritatively that every sincere opinion was to be respected. Nevertheless the Countess and the manufacturer's wife, who nourished in their hearts the unreasoning hatred of all well-bred people for the Republic and at the same time that instinctive weakness of all women for uniformed and despotic governments, felt drawn, in spite of themselves, to this woman of the street who had so much sense of the fitness of things and whose opinions so closely resembled ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of the epidemic could no longer be concealed from the inmates, instinctive horror drove them from the neighborhood of the victims, and like frightened sheep they huddled in remote corners, removed as far as possible from the infected precincts, and loath to minister to the needs of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to inquire into the merits of the case in this scene of confusion, hastened to get his family out as quietly and as quickly as possible, but groans and hisses followed his niece as she hung half-fainting on his arm, quailing completely beneath the instinctive indignation of the rustic public. As she passed out, a yell resounded among the rude boys about the door, and she was lifted into a sleigh, insensible from terror. She disappeared from that evening, and no one knew the time of her ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... great? To please us she must be also good. Is a woman both great and good? We are not satisfied unless she be likewise loving and lovable. No one can come near to the life of Miss Anthony without realizing how responsive she is to personal needs; how lively in her sympathies; how instinctive her outreaching of the helping hand. The same fidelity and single-minded loyalty which have characterized her public career, distinguish her in all private relations. Others may forget us in our griefs, she never forgets. Others may ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the artistic temperaments found often in two classes, society women and actresses. Her education or, rather, her sophistication, had been absorbed from the boys who had dangled on her favor; her tact was instinctive, and her capacity for love-affairs was limited only by the number of the susceptible within telephone distance. Flirt smiled from her large black-brown eyes and shone through ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... eyes much of what he felt. In doing this, a certain over action was the consequence; and he was gayer than usual. Several times he endeavored to be lightly familiar with the bride; but, in every instance that he approached her, he perceived a kind of instinctive shrinking; and, if she was in a laughing mood, when he drew near she became serious and reserved. All this was too plain to be mistaken; and like the repeated strokes of a hammer upon glowing iron, gradually bent his feelings from the buoyant form they had been endeavoring to assume. The effect ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... passengers and people of the packet seized something near the truth, with that sort of instinctive readiness which seems to characterize bodies of men in moments of excitement. That the solitary boat which was pulling towards them in the dusk of the evening contained some one who might aid the attorney and his myrmidon, all believed, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... don't know how to explain it, but that's just how I feel about it. I had an instinctive feeling that there was something wrong about Winkler, the sort of a creepy, crawly feeling that a snake ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... understand the girl's feelings as she set about clothing herself in her first fine dress. Time and again she had studied pictures from the "outside" showing women arrayed in the newest styles, and had closed her eyes to fancy herself dressed in like manner. She had always had an instinctive feeling that some day she would leave the North and see the wonderful world of which men spoke so much, and mingle with the fine ladies of her picture-books, but she never dreamed to possess an evening-gown while she lived in Alaska. And now, even while she recognized the grotesqueness ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... given up, and for whom nothing remains but death. A sudden hope, however, breaks in upon them: 'supposing that after all there should be a Power greater than that of man, higher than that of science.' They will haste to try this last chance of safety. It is the instinctive hankering after the lie which creates ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... spirit pervades her work, and her sympathy is unbounded. She loves them with her whole heart, while she lays bare their little minds, and expresses their foibles, their faults, their virtues, their inward struggles, their conception of duty, and their instinctive knowledge of the right and wrong of things. She knows their characters, she understands their wants, and she desires to help them. The only sure talisman against domestic trouble she evidently believes to be the absolute trust of ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... once to make the toilet of the cat, who, in spite of his instinctive horror of water, submitted with touching resignation to being washed; he seemed to understand that it improved his personal appearance. After giving him a dish of broken meat, which he ate with great relish, they arranged the hours for his meals, the ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... definitely aware that it was so particularly the cat of the household. But now, influenced by her attitude and her shining reverence, he actually did begin to persuade himself that an uncontrollable instinctive desire to please her and win her for his own had moved him to undertake the perilous passage ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... once the same, and yet another, Katherine—one who carried her head more proudly and stepped as though she was mistress of the whole fair earth, but whose merry wit had lost its little edge of sarcasm, whose sympathy was quicker and more instinctive, whose voice had taken fuller and more caressing tones, and in whose sweet eyes sat a steady content good to see. And then, suddenly, Mrs. St. Quentin began to feel her age as she had never, consciously, felt it before; and to be ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... due north, a very passable gite for an old soldier.' Neither, as he observed, was he without sentries for the purpose of reconnoitring. Davie and his mother were constantly on the watch to discover and avert danger; and it was singular what instances of address seemed dictated by the instinctive attachment of the poor simpleton when his ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... discern a few theoretical principles true in their generality, doubtful in their application, ambitiously aspiring to be classed among absolute truths, often hollow or false in their formula. I had no objection to make, but my instinctive desire of demonstration was not thoroughly satisfied. I threw down the books and awaited the light. Political economy at that time did not exist; being an entirely experimental science, it had neither sufficient ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... behind him the noise of a horse following in his traces, and a man of middle age, dark, sturdy, and dressed after the city fashion, called to him to stop. Germain had never seen the farmer of Ormeaux, but his instinctive rage told him at once that this was the man. He turned, and eyeing him from head to foot, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... be unjust nor ungrateful. We have as true friends, as brave and generous advocates of our sacred cause, in Great Britain as our fathers found in their long struggle for liberty. We have the intelligent cooeperation of a few leading thinkers, and the instinctive sympathy of a large portion of the people,—may God be merciful to them and to their children in the day of reckoning, which, sooner or later, awaits a nation that is false to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... realisation of the scene, far truer and more profound in pathos. Nobler beyond compare in His unresisting acceptance of insult and suffering is the Munich Christ than the corresponding figure, so violent in its instinctive recoil from pain, ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... the instinctive action of Imogen's mind, thinks the true reading is, "smothers her with painting." Now Imogen's wrath first reduces the light woman to the most contemptible of birds and the most infamous of symbols, the jay, and then, not willing to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... upon the unconscious offender, and dealt him a heavy blow on the side of the face. At this sight—with nerves already overstrung—Marguerite became unable to control her usually placid steed; and Alain le Gallais—for he was the militia officer—was diverted from his instinctive but imprudent impulse of immediate retaliation, by seeing the young lady slip from her saddle into ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... perplexed at what they had done and what they were to do next. "Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him prisoner?" each was thinking. But the French officer was evidently more inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because Pierre's strong hand, impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever tighter and tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something, when just above their heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled, and it seemed to Pierre that the French officer's head had been torn off, so swiftly had ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... all tragedians." This would have been impossible if he had been considered an atheist. In spite of all, the general feeling must undoubtedly have been that Euripides ultimately took his stand on the ground of popular belief. It was a similar instinctive judgment in regard to religion which prevented antiquity from placing Xenophanes amongst the atheists. Later times no doubt judged differently; the quotation from Melanippe is in fact cited as a proof that Euripides was an atheist in ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... Dick's double gun on the instant; and apparently comforted by the noise, and perhaps an instinctive knowledge that the firing was for their protection, the horses ceased to embarrass their caretaker by tugging to get away, and crowded together, pressing one upon the other ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... she could be under that palm-tree for a moment beside Emile, she would be able to test the power she knew was within her, the glorious power that the sun lacked, to shed light and heat through a human soul. With an instinctive gesture she stretched out her hand as if to give Artois the touch he longed for. It encountered only the air and dropped to her side. She got up with ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... death. Not that he was tormented by any religious apprehensions of the Dread Unknown, but simply because the only life of which he had any experience seemed to him a peculiarly pleasant thing. He had a sort of instinctive persuasion that John Lord Lilburne would not be better off anywhere else. Always disliking solitude, he disliked it more than ever when he was ill, and he therefore welcomed the visit of his sister and the gentle hand of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... him with instinctive antipathy, and asked, "How is it, sir, you have left a young girl ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... instinctive feeling that something had happened, but I never tried to find out.... Now, as a matter of fact, twenty years ago, a relation of mine, a distant cousin, used to live at the Domaine de Halingre. I hoped, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... twelfth-century glass would be a trouvaille like an emerald; a tapestry earlier than 1600 is not for mere tourists to hope; an enamel, a missal, a crystal, a cup, an embroidery of the Middle Ages belongs only to our betters, and almost invariably, if not to the State, to the rich Jews, whose instinctive taste has seized the whole field of art which rested on their degradation. Royalty and feudality spent their money rather on arms and clothes. The Church alone was universal patron, and the Virgin was ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... remote ancestors, to all of which the bear responds by growls and rushes at the stick. At last his growls and rushes at the stick become fierce and menacing, and all of a sudden the experienced Hindoo, who by some instinctive knowledge is able to gauge the charging moment, drops the stick and scuttles out of the way, and the bear dashes headlong from the cave to be killed, or to make good his escape, as the case may be. Poking a bear out of a cave is rather a severe trial of one's nervous ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... exploit annoyed me intensely, as one is annoyed when an undeserving person is ignorantly lauded to the skies. I know that on the face of things I had no right to say that he was "undeserving," in this case; but that instinctive rebellion in me against Tony's story last night cried out against it now. "There's something queer under it all," I kept telling myself. "I must find out what it is, and I must know ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... without scandal or politics, as nowhere else in Britain; all vowed it subsequently; for to the remembrance it seemed magical. Not a breath of scandal, and yet the liveliest flow. Lady Pennon came attended by a Mr. Alexander Hepburn, a handsome Scot, at whom Dacier shot one of his instinctive keen glances, before seeing that the hostess had mounted a transient colour. Mr. Hepburn, in settling himself on his chair rather too briskly, contrived the next minute to break a precious bit of China standing by his elbow; and Lady Pennon cried out, with sympathetic anguish: 'Oh, my dear, what ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... carries to an extreme the French love of logical precision, so in these rhapsodies he expresses in an exaggerated form a very different but an equally characteristic quality of his compatriots—their instinctive responsiveness to fine poses. It is a quality that Englishmen in particular find it hard to sympathise with. They remain stolidily unmoved when their neighbours are in ecstasies. They are repelled by the 'noble' rhetoric of the French Classical Drama; they find the tirades ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... American philosophers, and some French ones, for the support of mass opinion, developed a system which set forth that reason always led you into traps and that the only mind to trust was the irrational, instinctive or intuitional mind. Thus the nonsenseorship, with excellent philosophic support put the ban upon thinking. Now, I do not contend that many suffer seriously from this restriction. For, after all, thinking is hard ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... enough to exist at all. Such men as Crozier have compensations for "whate'er they lack." It never occurred to Mrs. Tynan to go to Jesse Bulrush's room or the room of middle-aged, comely Nurse Egan. She did the instinctive thing, as did the woman who sent a man a rope as a gift, on the ground that the fortune in his hand said that he was born not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... while Nick alternated his attention between his idolatrous, silent worship of the lovely woman and clubbing his dogs into quiescence. Their angry protests seemed to express something more abiding than mere displeasure at the intrusion of a stranger. They seemed to feel a strong instinctive ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... to his assistance, whilst Tressan's removal of the troopers rendered it impossible for him to leave Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye unguarded—though what he should do with her if Garnache came not back at all, he did not at this stage pause to consider. On the other hand, an instinctive and growing suspicion of this Monsieur Gaubert—who was now entering the inn—inspired him with the opinion that the fat Seneschal had been duped by a wild tale to send the troopers from the spot where they might ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... "only straightening my pack." The blood deepened in his cheek at his instinctive lie. Had he carefully thought it out before, he would have welcomed Collinson, and told him all. But now a quick, uneasy suspicion flashed upon him. Perhaps his late host had lied, and knew of the existence ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... apparent simplicity of the young man; but just as he was making ready to depart they were interrupted by the entrance of Bernardo del Nero, one of the chief citizens of Florence, Bardo's oldest friend, and Romola's godfather; and Bernardo felt an instant, instinctive distrust of the handsome, ingratiating stranger, and did not hesitate to say so after Tito ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... good deal of instinctive knowledge of women. He did not in his heart believe that a woman could be so utterly vile as to use love letters directed to her for the purpose of extracting money from the man who wrote them. Or rather that, whilst she might use them, ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... wants, feeling keenly their individual sacrifices and dangers, failed to see that the nearest road to relief lay through the odious portal of taxation. Had the mysterious words that Dante read on the gates of Hell been written on it, they could not have shrunk from it with a more instinctive feeling:— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... princess appeared. The two infant princes having been thrown at the gate of one of the royal palaces, were taken up by the gardener and his wife, who brought them up as their own. Abou Neeut in visiting the garden with his daughter, who shewed an instinctive affection for them, from this, and their martial play with each other (having made horses of clay, bows and arrows, &c.), was induced to inquire of the gardener whether they were really his own children. The gardener upon this related the circumstance of his having found them exposed at the gate ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, but instead it broke into the 'Washington Post,' and the room, braced to a great occasion, was horrified. Mrs. Portway, abandoning Henry, ran to silence the disastrous consequence of her husband's clumsiness. Henry, perhaps impelled by an instinctive longing, gazed absently through the open door into the passage, and there, with two other girls on a settee, he perceived Geraldine! She smiled, rose, and came towards him. She looked disconcertingly pretty; she was always at her best in the evening; ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... of the presence of death itself, doing its daily work in the chambers of sickness and sin, and waiting for its hour in the fortalices of strength and the high places of pleasure;—these, partly degrading us by the instinctive and paralyzing terror with which they are attended, and partly ennobling us by leading our thoughts to dwell in the eternal world, fill the last and the most important circle in that great kingdom of dark and distorted power, of which we all must be in some sort the subjects until mortality ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Bierley, Ellen Bierley, and Jane Southworth, forms a curious episode in Potts's Discoverie. A Priest or Jesuit, of the name of Thomson, alias Southworth, had tutored the principal evidence, Grace Sowerbuts, a girl of the age of fourteen, but who had not the same instinctive genius for perjury as Jennet Device, to accuse the three persons above mentioned of having bewitched her; "so that," as the indictment runs, "by means thereof her body wasted and consumed." "The chief object," says Sir Walter Scott, "in this imposture, was doubtless the advantage ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... which it is almost impossible to conceive could reign in the breast of a being endued with reason. Now indeed his eyes were open to his fate—to his earthly fate; a strange foreboding came upon him; it was a species of instinctive horror; he could not look beyond it. Whether there was a being who ruled the world, or whether there was not, had never been the subject of his meditations; yet a secret whisper intimated to him that death would not be the bound of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various |
