"Second nature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... second nature, 90-l. Hades, Hercules under the guidance of Minerva descended to, 592-l. Haikal denotes the place in which all things are contained, 799-u. Haikal, Temple or Palace; the name of Malakoth, 799-u. Haikal, the Palace ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... look upon. To all whose keener common-sense looks upon Nature, the Creator, as logically therefore, the healing power also. To all endowed with wit to understand the obvious truth that, not by poisonous drugs is healing wrought, but by such reasonable help as man's intelligence can afford, to second nature's effort to that end; and further, that, in order to achieve success, it is useless to attack, suppress or remove the symptoms of disease by force of drugging or the knife, whilst the cause of the evil is left untouched, unthought of, and, too frequently, unknown. Truth and ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... new movement had no sinister origin—that it was honestly conceived and honestly intended for Ireland's national advantage. But the Irish, whether of North or South, are a people to whom suspiciousness in politics is a sort of second nature. It is the inheritance of centuries of betrayals, treacheries and duplicities—broken treaties, crude diplomacies and shattered faiths. And thus we had a Unionist Attorney-General (now Lord Atkinson) asking "whether the ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... become a second nature to scour the horizon with jealous eyes: never for a moment during their long martyrdom had their covetous sight fixed upon a stationary object. But it came at last. Out of a cloud a sail burst like a flickering ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... as in all things else, man must be under the law until he becomes a law unto himself. In other words, he must study his technique, his method, his art, until all becomes a part of himself, becomes, as it were, second nature. There is a wide difference between art and artificiality. True art is based upon Nature's laws. Artificiality, in almost every instance, is a violation of Nature's laws, and at best is but ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... may be so; use is second nature; but at present I feel as if the loss would be gain. There is the sun just showing himself above the hill. Shall we halt or ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... present. Wifehood and motherhood—that was her goal, but long years of other joys and other achievements stretched between. Yet she felt an incomparable joy as she sang the lullaby. She sang it easily and sweetly and uttered each word with the freedom of one to whom music is second nature. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... said Constance. "Do you remember the good old saying, 'Do what you ought, that you may do what you like'? Habit is second nature. Were I told that I might lie in bed every morning until nine or ten o'clock, as a great favour, I should consider it ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Anice caught the sound of their words, but she was used to being commented upon. She had learned that people whose lives have a great deal of hard, common discomfort and struggle, acquire a tendency to depreciation almost as a second nature. It is easier to bear one's own misfortunes, than to bear the good-fortune of better-used people. That is the insult added by ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... did them up. In London I didn't dare to let myself go with you—I couldn't say all that was in my heart—it wouldn't have been wise. Don't ever doubt that the tenderness was there. Even though one is only a civilian in khaki, some of the soldier's sternness becomes second nature. ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... for Glaucon to feel amazed at this confession. To a Hellene swimming was second nature. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... she was as usual at work in the garden, whilst her brothers were bringing in a load of manure which smelt very offensive. The habit of drawing spiritual meanings from all external objects had become so completely second nature to Dominica, that her thoughts seem to have shaped themselves into these analogies on all occasions. The bad smell therefore suggested to her mind an image of mortal sin, and she prayed that she might be taught in some way how it appeared in the ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... shape, Clo, God knows every man will," laughed Sir Jeoffry, "but I fear me not with thy manners. Thou hast the manners of a baggage, and they are second nature ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for as long as could be remembered; and Jack himself had been drafted out of his cradle into a coble; and there he had continued day and night, from one year's end to another, helping his father to fish—so, you see, it had become second nature to him; and, after he came on board, his liking for his former calling still remained with him, and he never was so happy as when his line was overboard, or when he was snooding a hook in some corner or another. He went by the name of Jack the Fisherman; ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... habit in regard to our health? Habit is sub-conscious attention. Can we not give sub-conscious attention to the little details of such bodily functions as are liable to get out of order? Can we not by a settled habit, that is, by the formation of a second nature, assure our vital success, on which the continuance of the enjoyment of life so much depends? If some part of a complicated machine gets out of order it must be repaired at once or damage may result to other parts of it. Again, if our business accounts will not balance, the error must ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... and other festivals, native canoe races are always included and are contested with the keenest possible excitement by the competitors. A Brunai Malay takes to the water and to his tiny canoe almost before he is able to walk. Use has with him become second nature and, really, I have known some Brunai men paddle all day long, chatting and singing and chewing betel-nut, as though they felt it ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... he said. "He is of Spanish blood, born in the Republic of La Plata. With the skill which is second nature to him he has tracked me to your house—to tell me that my car is already repaired, and that the Earl of Toronto—er—the Marquis of Ontario is sending out party after party to search the whole countryside for us. With your permission, Pepe el Lagarto ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... occurred to Follett; he fitted the thought to its place; the word to the thought; and allowed the action only to take care of itself, as it always will with an earnest speaker. His, therefore, was rather the artlessness than the art of advocacy— its second nature— justly appreciated by those to whose interests it was devoted; but not fully understood even by the spectator of its exertion; dying with the causes in which it was engaged, and leaving no vestiges except in their success. Hence the blank which is substituted ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... prescription upon the nearest drug store would be easier to fill. In the first place I should worry all the time if I were idle, for 'hustling' has become my second nature. In the ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... let other folks do the same," had been the family slogan in Lone's home. There had been nothing in Lone's later life to convince him that minding his own business was not a very good habit. It had grown to be second nature,—and it had made him a good man for the Sawtooth Cattle Company to have on its ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... there was trouble in plenty. The routine of a small and uncongenial station is part of a regular's second nature, though a very disagreeable part. But it maddens militiamen when the stir of active service is past and they think they are being kept on such duty overtime. The Massachusetts men had the worst pay and the ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... demand the legal prohibition of all "monopolizing and aristocratic Arts" and the consequent abolition of all endowments for the studies of Sight Recognition, Mathematics, and Feeling. Soon, they began to insist that inasmuch as Colour, which was a second Nature, had destroyed the need of aristocratic distinctions, the Law should follow in the same path, and that henceforth all individuals and all classes should be recognized as absolutely equal ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... amount because we shall probably never be bright enough to make the associations of ideas fully take the place of review by drill. In particular it must be remembered that those portions of our knowledge that we expect to use daily must become second nature to us, or be reduced to habit; that means that many facts must become familiar enough to be reproduced instantly without effort. That is the case, for example, with the multiplication table. Thoughtful ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... got into the habit of thinking so; and habit's a second nature. However, I dare say we shall yet meet in the arena, so I must not betray my weak points. How is it, Maltravers, that they see so little of you at the rectory? You are a great favourite there. Have you any living that Charley Merton could hold with his own? You shake your head. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of being, and, in both man and brute, it is susceptible to cultivation. Training the faculty of observation develops the habit of paying attention, and this habit, though less efficient than the inborn gift, may be so confirmed as to become second nature. ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... scowl, but the tone, sharply authoritative, roused his automatic convict second nature, and he answered, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... handsome face moved. She had schooled herself into that sort of thing. Having seen two successive wives of the delicate poet chivied and worried into their graves, she had adopted that cool, detached manner to meet her gifted father's outbreaks of selfish temper. It had now become a second nature. I suppose she was always like that; even in the very hour of elopement with Fyne. That transaction when one remembered it in her presence acquired a quaintly marvellous aspect to one's imagination. But somehow her self-possession ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... came and went in the family estate, the Gordon heart was always entailed unimpaired—increased indeed—upon the children. And after some generations of true religion, inwardly and deeply exercising the Gordon heart, it almost came as a second nature to our Gordon to take to heart all that happened to him, and to exercise his large and deep heart yet more thoroughly with it. The affairs of the family, the affairs of the estate, the affairs of the ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... thoughts so as more and more perfectly to express it in expressing ourselves. Thus, as we gradually grow into the habit of finding this inspiring Presence within ourselves, and of realising its forward movement as the ultimate determining factor in all true healthful mental action, it will become second nature to us to have all our plans, down to the apparently most trivial, so floating upon the undercurrent of this Universal Intelligence that a great harmony will come into our lives, every discordant manifestation will disappear, and we shall find ourselves ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... had grown to be second nature with him, combined with an almost uncanny swiftness in putting two and two together, which latter had come to him during the years when guarding his life was a part of his trade, kept the cow-man a step ahead of his enemies on every occasion. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... mind was that the sacred routine of the day had been broken. Often there are no greater devotees to routine than those who are virtually idlers. Endowed with the gift of persistence rather than with a resolute will, it had become second nature to maintain the daily order of action and thought which he believed to be his right to enforce upon his household. Every one chafed under his inexorable system except his wife. She had married when young, had ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... It was second nature for the other fellows to depend on their leader whenever a knotty problem arose that needed solving. And seldom did Rod disappoint their expectations. He came up smiling on the ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... him; it was almost as sensible as bodily warmth. Mildred was more lively than Philip had ever known her, and he was delighted to see that his little party was a success. She was amusing herself enormously. She laughed louder and louder. She quite forgot the genteel reserve which had become second nature to her. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... that in which the parent organism responded, of which it was once part, and in the events of whose history it was itself also an accomplice? {79} When an action through long habit or continual practice has become so much a second nature to any organisation that its effects will penetrate, though ever so faintly, into the germ that lies within it, and when this last comes to find itself in a new sphere, to extend itself, and develop into a new creature—(the ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... he uttered Pauline felt that the time had come, and in the drawing of a breath was ready for it, with every sense alert, every power under full control, every feature obedient to the art which had become a second nature. Gilbert had seized her hand, and she did not draw it back; the sudden advent of the instant which must end her work sent an unwonted color to her cheek, and she did avert it; the exultation which flashed into her eyes made it unsafe to meet his own, and they drooped before him as if in ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... worshipped her and not tried to understand. He would have deemed it almost sacrilege to pry into the mysteries of her inner self, of that second nature in her which at times mad her silent, and almost morose, and cast a lurid gloom over her ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and relentless in its penalties. Only after months of experience of its iron rigidity does the civilian, accustomed as he is to self-determination, with a somewhat easygoing regard for the conventions of his community, arrive at the state of mind in which unconsciously and as a matter of second nature he estimates the quality of the most trivial act by its relation to the standard set by the Military High Command. Like a spectre does that solemn, impalpable, often perfectly unreasonable omniscient and omnipotent entity lurk in the shadow ready to reach out a clutching hand, ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... I now rejoice to think, for the only time, a bitter, ungrateful accusation against the cruelty of fortune and the disparities of life. What was it that set our two hearts eternally apart and made hope impossible? Not nature, but the fortune that gives a second nature to the world. Ah, could I then think that it is in that second nature that the soul is ordained to seek its trials, and that the elements of human virtue find their harmonious place? What I answered I know not. Neither know I how long I stood there listening to sounds which seemed ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the cost. All this may be different when Panama's electric line, all the way from Balboa docks to Las Sabanas, is opened—but that's another year. Meanwhile the lolling in carriages comes to be quite second nature. ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... by those older and presumably wiser than yourself. How would you receive this or that correction? Acquire the habit of thus putting the matter before your mind's eye, and you will soon find that tactful patience becomes second nature. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... how we have been trained all our lives long, like the whole village, till it is absolutely second nature to us to stop not a single moment to think when there's an ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... medical career has found it so totally distasteful that he is wisely returning to an earlier love. As soon as he gets out of the army he and I are going to collaborate on a play. Of course I have technic at my finger-tips. Construction, dramatic suspense, climax are second nature to me. But I confess I have a fatal handicap, one that has doubtless cost me my place at the head of American dramatists to-day. I have never been able to achieve colloquial dialogue! My style is too finished, you understand, my diction too perfect. Manager after manager ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Self-control was second nature with John Bannister. For years he had cultivated it as a commercial asset. Often a fortune had depended on his mastery of his emotions. Now, in an instant, he had himself under control once more. His face resumed its normal expression of cold impassiveness. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... enlightenment and constant exercise, this faculty is susceptible of such development that it may in time permeate the mind, become an essential part of the character, a sort of second nature, just as real and solid, and infinitely more lovely than the instincts ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... of natures in themselves or by observing them in others. For instance, a sudden and violent change of occupation establishes personality as a distinct entity. The civilian turns soldier. Almost immediately all parts of his nature are affected. He feels the development, as it were, of a second nature within him. His faculties are transformed. He enters a new universe of thought. His range of knowledge narrows in one direction, widens in another. His volitional nature is altered. His will narrows ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... "Swiles" are second nature to most Labrador men. As for Uncle Johnnie, he would leave his Christmas dinner any time if any one came and called, "Swiles!" He would rather haul a two-dollar pelt over "t' ballicaters" than make two hundred in any ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... one proverb, "use is second nature" another, and there was nothing that appeared terrible to the boy, who walked quickly along close to the edge, glancing perhaps at its fellow, in some cases only a few yards away, and looking so exactly the counterpart of that on the near side that it seemed as ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... a man is a prophet. His mind elevated to the highest degree of intelligence, his heart bent constantly to love what is good, he has almost assumed a second nature, and he lives upon earth a purely spiritual life. Of all that surrounds him, nothing is of any value in his eyes but that which may contribute to the accomplishment of the Divine design; in all passing events he sees but as many dispositions ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... were the requisites of a pure mind. Perhaps, had the libertine presumption to imagine, that there was no difference in heart, nor any but what proceeded from difference of education and custom, between the pure and impure—and yet custom alone, as she observed, if I did so think, would make a second nature, as well in ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... caught the glimmer of the camp-fire among the trees, he slackened his pace and drew nigh with the caution that had become a second nature to him. He quickly saw that the Winnebagos had disposed of themselves for the night. The fire was burning as brightly as ever, because of the attention it received from the two warriors ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... concludes that the apparent enlargement in question is merely the natural consequence of the idea we have of the shape of the celestial vault—an idea gradually built up in childhood, to become later on what is called "second nature." And in support of this contention, he would point to the fact that the enlargement is not by any means confined to the sun and moon, but is every whit as marked in the case of the constellations. To one who has not noticed this before, it ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... touches of low comedy, but these are redeemed by the spirit of inexhaustible jollity which sets the whole thing rocking with life and gaiety. It is an original in Greek literature, being the first piece of definitely literary criticism. A long experience had made the sense of the stage a second nature to Aristophanes who here criticises two rival schools of poetry as a dramatist possessed of inside professional knowledge. So far his work is of the same class as Cicero's De Oratore and Reynolds' Discourses. His object, however, was not to preserve a balance ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... deep conviction, or, perhaps, I ought to say my deep feeling born from personal experience, that it is not the sea but the ships of the sea that guide and command that spirit of adventure which some say is the second nature of British men. I don't want to provoke a controversy (for intellectually I am rather a Quietist) but I venture to affirm that the main characteristic of the British men spread all over the world, is not the spirit of adventure so much as ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... were, therefore, eminently qualified to guide brigades through the length and breadth of the land; men whose power of threading their way among the perplexing intricacies of the forest had become a second nature, a kind of instinct, that was as sure of attaining its end as the instinct of the feathered tribes, which brings the swallow, after a long absence, with unerring certainty back to its former haunts again ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... his cap from his clustering brown curls with that serene and stately court manner which was to him second nature. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... fashion of their betters—on the other, of grave counsellors and schreibers in their black costumes, interlarding their pompous phrases with most canine Latin—here again, of the plumed and checkered soldiers of the civic guard—there, of ragged-robed beggars, whose whine had become a second nature—all in a constant ferment of movement and noise, until the square might be fancied to look like the living and crawling mass ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... these nightmares he came with a yell of pain to see what figured for the moment as another nightmare. Three hundred feet ahead the track seemed to vanish for three or four rail-lengths. It was second nature to jam on the brakes and to make the sudden stop. Then he sat still and rubbed his smarting eyes and stared again. The curious hallucination persisted strangely. Fifty feet ahead of the stopped engine the glistening lines of the steel ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... reasons and to spare why the name should make her sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, with a click, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, intensely poignant situation. But our excitable old friend was an Englishwoman: dissimulation would be her second nature; you could trust her to pull the wool over your eyes with a fleet and practised hand. Instinctively, furthermore, she would seek to extract from such a situation all the fun it promised. Taken off her guard, for the span of ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... likes. He hasn't broken any bones this time, and I dare say he won't the next." The young fellow came lounging across the room with his hands in his pockets as he spoke. "I suppose he has gone on preaching till it's his second nature. Talk of the girl in the fairy-tale dropping toads and things from her lips! Why, she was a trifle to old Clifton. I do think he can't open his mouth without ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... that separated White Windows from Heronsmere at the same reckless pace at which he had started. He seemed oblivious of the animal between the shafts of the high dog-cart, directing it with the instinctive skill of a man to whom good horsemanship is second nature. His thoughts were turned inward. His eyes, curiously concentrated in expression, gleamed with that peculiar brilliance which was generally indicative with him of some very definite intensity of purpose. The groom who took charge of the foam-flecked horse when he reached Heronsmere ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... observed how greatly the character may be strengthened and supported by the cultivation of good habits. Man, it has been said, is a bundle of habits; and habit is second nature. Metastasio entertained so strong an opinion as to the power of repetition in act and thought, that he said, "All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself." Butler, in his "Analogy," impresses the importance of careful self-discipline and firm resistance ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... hesitation and uncertainty, and with more intelligence; and this is well conveyed in M. Ribot's next sentence, for he says—"It is only when variations have been firmly rooted; when having become organic, they constitute a second nature, which supplants the first; when, like instinct, they have assumed a mechanical character, that ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... knew that Amundsen had no previous Antarctic sledging experience, but no one could deny that to Norwegians ice-work, and particularly ski-ing, was second nature, and here lay some good food for thought and discussion. Where would the "Fram" enter the pack? Where would Amundsen make his base? The answers never once ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... Gross-Lichterfelde to serve him as a starting-ground. Later on, he moved to the Rhinow hills. His best glides were made against a light breeze at a gradient of about 1 in 10; and he could easily travel a hundred yards through the air. 'Regulating the centre of gravity', he says, 'becomes a second nature, like balancing on a bicycle; it is entirely a matter of practice and experience.' His most alarming experiences were from gusts of wind which would suddenly raise him many metres in the air and ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... grace, ease, facility, the way to get poise and balance so that you will not feel disturbed in public gatherings, is to get the experience. Do the thing so many times that it will become second nature to you. If you have an invitation to speak, no matter how much you may shrink from it, or how timid or shy you may be, resolve that you will not let this opportunity ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the cinema, the atrocity placards, and propagandist leaflets, they all practised the same deliberate and colossal deceit and kindled hatred against the enemy. And so successful was this diabolical conspiracy that hatred became second nature to vast masses of people. To think evil of the enemy was an article of national faith, and to question this faith, or still more to repudiate it, that was heresy of the most heinous kind. Religion died long ago, but the cult of nationalism that replaced it was infinitely more pernicious ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... its final confirmation from the illustrations of its working which the records afford; but what is at least of equal importance is the parallel fact that the law affords the decisive test of the correctness of those assertions concerning the causes and the effects of past events which it is second nature to make and which historians almost invariably do make in ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Laws is helpfulness and so the Scouts have a Slogan: Do a Good Turn Daily. By following this in letter and spirit helpfulness becomes second nature. ...
— Girl Scouts - Their Works, Ways and Plays • Unknown
... put on its stooping gait, which appeared to be second nature, and went slouching away through the underwood along the narrow track. Cuthbert waited till there had been a long spell of perfect silence, and then he glided with cat-like caution ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... insufficient mastication is subtle, because it has become "second nature" with most of us. To free ourselves of it we must first of all allow plenty of time for our meals and rid our minds of the thought of hurry. A boy's school in which the principal is endeavoring to fight the habit of food-bolting has wisely ordained that no boy may leave the ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... passing comment. The scene it represents is enacted every Sunday in the Hospital at Chelsea. Twenty thousand men have ended their days peacefully in the semi-military life which in their long service has become second nature to them, and 500,000 have passed through ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... unchallenged to a third-class smoking compartment and deposited it on the rack. There were three other passengers in the compartment. 'Good Lord!' ejaculated one, as the millionaire stepped out to purchase an evening paper. 'Isn't that Markham? Well!—and travelling third!' 'Saving habit— second nature,' said another. 'That's the way to ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... this way we say that nature works with certainty, since it is moved by the Divine intellect which moves everything with certainty to its end. In this way too, the moral virtues are said to work with greater certainty than art, in as much as, like a second nature, they are moved to their acts by the reason: and thus too, hope tends to its end with certainty, as though sharing in the certainty of faith which is in the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... failure of crops and the unusually severe winter of 1856-1857. There were thousands who for over a year had never realized what a full meal meant; children by the hundreds “endured the gnawings of hunger until hunger had become to them a second nature”; yet despite this condition of affairs the orders issued to General Harney from Washington display a lamentable ignorance, or a determination to compel the Mormons to feed the troops on the basis of the miracle of “the loaves and fishes.” His instructions were as ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... free verse think to gain spontaneity and something of the amplitude of prose; yet it is doubtful whether they gain as much as they lose. For, in the hands of the skillful poet, the form, having become second nature, ceases to be a bond; and the expression, by taking on regularity of rhythm, acquires a concentration and mnemonic value which free verse cannot achieve. In comparison with free verbal expressions, verse forms are, indeed, artifices; yet they are not artificial, in the bad sense of ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... where the fight is hottest and always ready to display his individual initiative on all possible and impossible occasions, a born man of action to whom long experience of shot and shell has made the art of modern war a second nature—an officer after Best-Dunkley's own heart: the Military Cross was the least form of recognition which could reward such an achievement as his. The bright and chivalrous Newman too—who had already been recommended for the Military Cross for his bravery ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... the sharpness of Kant's moral theory by claiming a place in the moral life for beauty. Our actions are, indeed, good when we do our duty because we ought, but they are beautiful when we do it because we cannot do otherwise, because they have become our second nature. The purpose of all culture, says Schiller, is to harmonise reason and sense, and thus to fulfil the idea of ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... weekly bill, and all the little "extras" that even her frugal habits had to reckon with. And in the depths of her thought dwelt the dogging fear of illness and incapacity, goading her to work while she could. She hardly remembered the time when she had been without that fear; it was second nature now, and it kept her on her feet when other incentives might have failed. In the blankness of her misery shefelt no dread of death; but the horror of being ill and ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... take his hand, to lean on his arm, to ask his assistance, to go to him in her troubles, to listen to his words and to believe them, to think of him as one who might always be trusted, had become a second nature to her. Of course she loved him. And now the martyrdom through which she had passed in Bedford Square had changed,—unconsciously as regarded her own thoughts,—but still had changed her feelings in regard to her cousin. He was not to her now the bright and shining ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... the genius of Wilton Barnstable that he could at will impose himself upon people as the apotheosis of the commonplace. He did it often. It was almost second nature to him now. His urbane smile was the only visible sign of his own enjoyment of this habitual feat. He knew his own genius, and smiled to think how easy it was to pass for an ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... Alan Hawke all this Indian life was now a second nature. The scenes of Bombay recalled his once ambitious youth, the days when he first delightedly gazed upon the wonders of Elephanta, and the gloomy grottoes of Salcette. From his very landing he had set himself one cardinal ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... ambition, nor altogether from principle, but from an immense craving for mental labor, which had become second nature to him. His great omnivorous, hungry intellect must have constant food,—new languages, new statistics, new historical investigations, new scientific discoveries, new systems of Scriptural exegesis. He did not for a day in the year nor an hour in the day make rest a matter of principle, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... were continually coming between him and his creative impulses. His hope was that more philosophy would repair the damage by making the principles of art so clear and so familiar that they would become as second nature, and therefore cease to be felt as a clog or ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... She was a bloodless, thin-necked, lackadaisical young person, in little-eyed spectacles, who, in her youth, had been compared to a drooping lily. From that time onward, she had given all her thought to the cultivation of slow, graceful, lily-like motions, until it had become second nature for her to ogle and smirk and roll her head gently this way and that. It had not only rendered her intolerable to the unprejudiced observer, but it had made her physically incapable of turning about quickly enough to catch the culprits in the corner. Every ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... was really imposed on them in the first instance by dire necessity, was now a second nature. When the cashier got back from the office, he laid aside his coat, and went to work in the large garden, shut off from the courtyard by an iron railing, and which the family reserved to itself. For years Elisabeth, the daughter, went to market ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... antagonist of reason, which delights to show its ascendency by bringing her under its control and dominion, has created a second nature in man. It has its joys and its sorrows; its health, its sickness; its wealth, its poverty; it compels reason, in spite of herself, to believe, to doubt, to deny; it suspends the exercise of the senses, and imparts to them again an artificial acuteness; it has its ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... Although Harry had been in charge, Dick had not failed to notice everything about the place where they made their cache that would help to identify it. That was instinct with him by this time, after two years as a scout; it was second nature. And, though it had been light, he had pictured pretty accurately what the place would look like at night. He remembered, for instance, that certain stars would be sure to be in the sky in a particular relation to the cache. And now he looked up and worked out his own position. To do ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... have to remember that in a country in which the thoroughly English doctrine of laissez faire has been so long practised that it has become second nature, and in which the philosophic spirit is so undisputed that the pillars of society are just as much the beggars who beg as the rich men who support them, influences of a peculiar character play an immense role and can be only very slowly overcome. Passivity has ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... thought was: 'How can I, a poor man, reward the dear lad for risking his life to save my child's?' Then it came to me, 'I can teach him telegraphy.' When I offered to do this, he smiled and said, 'I'd like to learn,' and learn he did. I never saw any one pick it up so fast. It was a sort of second nature with him. After the conductor treated him so badly, throwing off his apparatus, boxing his ears and making him hard of hearing, Al seemed to lose his interest in his business as ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... had no desire to exchange the liberal menage of Beaujardin for the scarcely disguised poverty of Valricour, but it was second nature with him to cringe and flatter: "I could not desire to quit so noble a family, except, indeed, for the service of so exalted and gracious a personage ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... upon me. She was joyous, too, in the prospect of that new house which we would soon be able to build, now that I had so long quit the old ruinous mania for book-buying! And I—wretch that I was—I humored her in this conceit; I heaped perjury upon perjury; lying and deception had become my second nature. Yet I loathed myself and I hated those books; they reproached me every time I came into their presence. So I was miserable and helpless; how hard it is to turn about when one once gets into the downward path! The shifts I was put to, and the ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... interest around these men, tame as their work may appear to them at times. Take the watchers on the Scilly Isles, for instance. They are as good as any around Great Britain. It is second nature for them to watch the sea. It is a desire with them, something they would not miss. Their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers were watch-dogs on that area of the ocean. Go to St. Mary's, and you will see a coast-watcher, up soon after dawn, take a stroll along the beach, even when he ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... upper jaw. It had evidently not been a case of frantic hurry; and even if it had been, he would have been more likely to forget almost anything than this denture. Any one who wears such a removable plate will agree that the putting it in on rising is a matter of second nature. Speaking as well as eating, to say nothing ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... man with far better brains probably than Bernd. Bernd, from habit, stiffened and became unapproachable the instant the middle class public in the shape of the congratulatory boarders appeared. He doesn't even know he's like that, his training has made it second nature. You should have seen his lofty, complete indifference. It was dreadfully rude really, and oh how they loved him for it! They simply adored him, and were ready to lick his boots. It was so funny to see them sidling about him, all of them wagging ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... the entire credit of this moral achievement belongs to the Roman Catholic clergy. It may be said that the practice of a virtue, even if the motive be of an emotional kind, becomes a habit, and that habit proverbially develops into a second nature. With this view of moral evolution I am in entire accord; but I would ask whether the evolution has not reached a stage where a gradual relaxation of the disciplinary measures by which chastity is insured ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... dullness. Every hour had its duty, and these soon became second nature to the zealous young warriors. Such rivalry to best master the manual, to hold the most soldierly stature in the ranks, to detect the drill-sergeant when, to test their attention, he gave a false command! And then the coronal joy of a reward of merit ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... raised them above the physical evils of a state of barbarism, secured them protection of person, and a full participation in all the privileges enjoyed by their conquerors; and, as they became more familiar with the peculiar institutions of the country, habit, that second nature, attached them the more strongly to these institutions, from their very peculiarity. Thus, by degrees, and without violence, arose the great fabric of the Peruvian empire, composed of numerous independent and even hostile tribes, yet, under the influence of a common religion, common language, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... tacit resistance overcome; and from these observations drew great conclusions; finding, as he did, that such creations can only be obtained by following the laws of the more remote affinities of things, of "a second nature," as he called ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... ill and prostrate at first, and fastened herself on the tender side of the good woman's heart by the sweetness of an unselfish and buoyant nature in illness, Noemi could hardly have endured such an inmate, not even half a Huguenot, full of little Catholic observances like second nature to her; listening indeed to the Bible for the short time, but always, when it was expounded, either asleep, or finding some amusement indispensable for her baby; eager for the least variety, and above all spoilt by Maitre Gardon to a degree absolutely ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... old man; 'make his bed. Stir yourself.' His neck was so twisted that the knotted ends of his white cravat usually dangled under one ear; his natural acerbity and energy, always contending with a second nature of habitual repression, gave his features a swollen and suffused look; and altogether, he had a weird appearance of having hanged himself at one time or other, and of having gone about ever since, halter and all, exactly as some timely hand had ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... them, and it seemed to me that they had stepped on every stick along our way and had rubbed against every brush that we passed near. Having been trained to hunt since a boy of fifteen years old, it became second nature for me to slide along without making ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... he might be ill I took his arm; but he flung himself free. "Don't touch me," he said; "I can't bear it." Having reached a point in life when tact is second nature, I waited silently near him until the storm ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... Conference, in which he'll lecture on his own singing. I shall be on the platform to make a sort of introductory speech and Monti, of course, will accompany. He is the only accompanist that counts. But then I suppose he's been accompanying somebody or other ever since he was a little boy, so it's second nature to him. And you must come, and bring your husband. Does he go with you to places? Very nice of him. Nowadays if husbands and wives don't occasionally go to the same parties they have hardly any opportunity of meeting at all; that's what I always say. But then, of course, you're ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... to be left out, which has been especially praised by our countrymen. Moreover, even the advocates of pleasure seek for subterfuges, and are talking of virtue whole days together; and say that pleasure is at first only wished for; that afterwards it, through custom, becomes a second nature, by which men are excited to do many things without at all ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... was a quiet and self-controlled young man. Conformity to the discipline of a small society had become almost his second nature. It was deeply distasteful to him to do anything melodramatic and conspicuous, anything Mr. van der Luyden would have deprecated and the club box condemned as bad form. But he had become suddenly unconscious of the club box, of Mr. van der ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... the same hour and if possible at the same place, morning and evening. In fact hold the thought in your mind as often as possible till it becomes second Nature. ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... certainly the most picturesque, part of their lives. Bivouacked by some of the innumerable coves and inlets that indent these coasts, they passed their days in that alternation of indolence and action which is a second nature to the Indian. Here in wet weather, while the torpid water was dimpled with rain-drops, and the upturned canoes lay idle on the pebbles, the listless warrior smoked his pipe under his roof of bark, or launched his slender craft at the dawn of the ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... trying to speak vehemently, but failing to shake off the conventional address of which he had made a second nature, "I have heard something that has filled me with inexpressible dismay. Is ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... called second nature; in the strict (but not enlarged) education of Miss Woodley, it was more powerful than the first—and the violation of oaths, persons, or things consecrated to Heaven, was, in her opinion, if not the most enormous, yet among the most terrific ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... as, in individual instances, we soon see what a man is made of, we seldom feel any inclination to come into closer relations with him. Finally, isolation—our own society—has become a habit, as it were a second nature to us, more especially if we have been on friendly terms with it from our youth up. The love of solitude which was formerly indulged only at the expense of our desire for society, has now come to be ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Parthian war the same position to which Caesar had attained by the Celtic war in Gaul. It was difficult to say whether these new prospects proved more attractive to the ardent thirst for gold which had now become at the age of sixty a second nature and grew only the more intense with every newly-won million, or to the ambition which had been long repressed with difficulty in the old man's breast and now glowed in it with restless fire. He arrived in Syria as early as the beginning of 700; he had not even waited for the expiry ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... feeling soon died in the heart of Tayoga. His second nature, which was that of his white training and association, prevailed. He was sorry that he had been compelled to take life, and, dragging the heavy body much farther away, he hid it in the bushes. Then, making a circle through the forest to assure himself that no other enemies were ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... just like he was in the play, you know. I suppose they have rehearsed it so much that it is sort of second nature for them to talk in that old-time way, like kings and queens ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was much bad grammar and slang, but that did not trouble Betty. She had been brought up to speak correctly, and it was second nature to her, but no one had ever drummed it into her what a crime against culture an illiterate way of speaking could be. She never got into the way of speaking that way herself, but it seemed a part of these people she had ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... their warehouses became daily less furnished they were daily reminded that, unless some system were soon adopted, the Islanders must be deprived of a luxury to which they had been so long accustomed that its indulgence had, in fact, become a second nature. No one of the managers had the hardihood to propose a recurrence to horse-chestnuts. Pride and fear alike forbade a return to their old purveyor. Other fruits there were which, in spite of the contract ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli |
