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Instinctively   /ɪnstˈɪŋktɪvli/   Listen
Instinctively

adverb
1.
As a matter of instinct.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Instinctively" Quotes from Famous Books



... own fulfilment, calling us apart in silent and wordless prayer and opening every pore, organ, sense and sensibility of our spiritual being to take in His life. As the lungs absorb the oxygen of the atmosphere, as the senses breathe in the sweet odors of the garden, so the heart instinctively receives and rejoices in the affection and fellowship of the beloved One by our side. Thus we become like a tree planted ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... He knew instinctively that the thing must be one of the Alpha Centaurians, for in its alien grotesqueness the figure was utterly dissimilar to anything ever ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... give her a rival? To-day I am all love. Rose, no man ever loved a human creature as I love Josephine. Your mother is well, dear? All are well at Beaurepaire? Oh, where is she all this time? in the house?" He was moving quickly towards the house; but Rose instinctively put out her hand to stop him. He ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... the State of its standing timber. The reason for this is that timber is a growing crop—the only crop taxed more than once, and if taxed annually at its full value the cost to the owner of holding the property would be so excessive as to require its hasty disposal. Assessors everywhere feel instinctively the inherent injustice of taxing a growing crop at a high annual rate, and violate the law and their oaths of office with impunity. The result is there are as many systems of forest taxation in the State as there are assessors, and glaring inequalities exist, ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... that which surrounded him as the same old world. He found that he was lying on a soft bed of leaves in a wood. He was wrapped in a bed covering, a cotton coverlet in fact. He did not recognise it. He instinctively felt about for his hat and found it near. He stood erect, and found that his legs were able to perform their office. He started to walk blindly through the ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... until the stamping of feet rose to a fury of sound—did Myra realize that she was the other member. She had a sense of being drained of life, of losing her breath. Instinctively she glanced at Joe, and saw that he was looking at her a little dubiously, a little amusedly. What could she do? She had never addressed a meeting in her life; she had never stood on her feet before a group of men; she had ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... the thing. But as soon as I caught sight of Mlle. Armande's sweet face, I used to tremble; and there was a trace of jealousy in my admiration for the lovely child Victurnien, who belonged, as we all instinctively felt, to a different and higher order of being from our own. It struck me as something indescribably strange that the young fresh creature should be there in that cemetery awakened before the time. We could not have explained our thoughts to ourselves, yet ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... being put always for the precise thing; but it obtains a dignity, a historical remoteness, by the large seriousness of its manner, the absence of modern ways of thought, which, in Madame Bovary, bring with them an instinctively modern cadence. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... gathering up some of Polly's tossed-off belongings, smiled comfortably to herself, overhearing Leonora's words. She rarely had so much as to hint of reproof to Polly for any breach of courtesy; the child seemed instinctively to know what was due to others. She could be trusted anywhere without ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd

... external world. We find this belief ready in ourselves as soon as we begin to reflect: it is what may be called an instinctive belief. We should never have been led to question this belief but for the fact that, at any rate in the case of sight, it seems as if the sense-datum itself were instinctively believed to be the independent object, whereas argument shows that the object cannot be identical with the sense-datum. This discovery, however—which is not at all paradoxical in the case of taste and smell and ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... in the direction of the station I withdrew the handkerchief from my hat and wiped my streaming eyes. The operation over, I placed the handkerchief in my sleeve. I heard the whistle of a train in the distance and instinctively took out my watch. It was right-about-face in my pocket, and I lost a good half-second in getting it into the correct position for time-telling. It was nine-seventeen. I had just one minute in which to do the quarter-mile; but my forte is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various

... greeted her, instinctively modifying his voice to the soft gentleness proper to the ordered and ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... especially her deep, dark and restless eyes. It was by sense rather than by anything his eyes could base conclusions upon that Peter realized her spirited personality, knew instinctively that radiant and destructive fires burned behind the sombre, questioning eyes. The full, red lips might have ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... beauty and fruitfulness; and we look back on the long winter, and the boughs which stood bare so drearily for six months, as if in a dream; the blessed spring with its green leaves, and gay flowers, and bright suns has put the winter's frosts out of our thoughts, and we seem to take instinctively to the warmth, as if it were our natural element—as if we were intended, like the bees and butterflies, to live and work only in the summer days, and not to pass, as we do in this climate, one-third of the year, one-third of our whole lives, in mist, cold, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... fending the raft off the rocks that might be in their way, or keeping it from the wall-like sides which overhung them, were absurd; for as they were swept into the furious rapid, and whirled and tossed about, each man instinctively dropped his pole to crouch down and cling for dear life to the rough pieces of timber they had so laboriously notched, nailed, ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... turned his eye instinctively to the door, as if he apprehended some one was listening. Glossin rose, opened the door, so that from the chair in which his prisoner sate he might satisfy himself there was no eavesdropper within hearing, then shut it, resumed his seat, and repeated his question, 'You are Dirk Hatteraick, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... and weak boys represent the antipodes of boyhood. The masterful boy will see things quickly, will be the leader of his gang, will instinctively dominate and run the class unless the Teacher is on his job. The weak boy will follow anywhere, be the cause good or bad, and become either a devil or a saint. The masterful boy may be handled by appealing to his sense ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander

... and queen, as they looked from their windows upon the multitudinous gathering, swaying to and fro like the billows of the ocean in a storm, and with the clamor of human passions, more awful than the voice of many waters, rending the skies, instinctively clung to one another and to their children in their powerlessness. Madame Elizabeth, with her saint-like spirit, and her heaven-directed thoughts, was ever unmindful of her own personal danger in her devotion to her beloved brother. The ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... but, instinctively clutching the front breadth of her skirt in her hands to conceal the stains, she jumped out, ran in at the little gate, and into the house, up to her room by ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... could not deny that he possessed; and when at this meeting the man of the hour took her by the hand and breathed softly into her ear that she was in very truth the only woman he had ever loved, she instinctively felt that he had at last spoken from his heart ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... Rick raised his voice instinctively. After all, New York was a long distance away! Then he realized that electronic facilities reduce the need for shouting, and lowered it again. "Mr. Bartouki? This ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... lightning-quick and powerful fore-paw blow that in one stroke tears the skin and flesh in long gashes, and knocks down the victim with stunning force. Before recovery is possible the assailant rushes to the prostrate man and begins to bite or to tear him. Instinctively the fallen man covers his face with his arms, and with the lion, tiger and leopard the arms come in for fearful punishment. It is the way of carnivorous beasts to attack each other head to head and mouth to mouth, and this same instinct leads these ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... Perkupp sent for Lupin, who was with him nearly an hour. He returned, as I thought, crestfallen in appearance. I said: "Well, Lupin, how about Mr. Perkupp?" Lupin commenced his song: "What's the matter with Perkupp? He's all right!" I felt instinctively my boy was engaged. I went to Mr. Perkupp, but I could not speak. He said: "Well, Mr. Pooter, what is it?" I must have looked a fool, for all I could say was: "Mr. Perkupp, you are a good man." He looked at ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... breath. Instinctively she felt that some one had to draw one—after that speech. Then she stole a glance at Timothy. Timothy's eyes were ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter

... aristocratic circles generally are, had no idea of the width of the world they were living in, and the exigency of the crisis. When time passed on and no voice was raised, I spoke. I gave at first a simple story, for I knew instinctively that whoever put the first steel point of truth into this dark cloud of slander must wait for the storm to spend itself. I must say the storm exceeded my expectations, and has raged loud and long. But now that there is a comparative stillness I shall proceed, first, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... went on her way. She chose instinctively her path, through the kitchen garden at the back of the village, down the hill by the village street, over the little bridge that crossed the rocky stream of the Dreot, and up the steep hill that led on to the outskirts of Rothin Moor. The day, although ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... fragment of a shell, and the mother was loudly wailing; some were peering out of their doorways; they stared at Marie, who crept up like a ghost. In this rookery the young couple had kept themselves apart, and had no friends. But it was instinctively known that something had happened to Jean, and only one woman was bold enough to question the wife. She answered steadily in a strange ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various

... interval of half a minute between the time I reached the windlass, and that in which I saw a tremendous white foaming sea rolling down upon the vessel. At this ominous sight, I instinctively seized the bitts for protection. I can remember the rushing of the water down upon me, and have some faint impressions of passing through a mass of rigging, but this is all. When I came to my senses, it was in an Irish mud-cabin, with an old woman and her daughter taking care ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... instinctively that he was going to have to keep the number of his immediate associates small. They were going to have to know his secret, and no man is so naive as not to realize that while one person can keep a secret, it becomes twice as hard for two and from that point on the likelihood fades ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)

... beauty. The least negligence, in any of these points, is immediately felt, and detracts from the merit of the performance. Every step or motion that is not natural, or has any thing of stiffness, constraint, or affectation, is instinctively perceived by the spectator. The body must constantly preserve its proper position, without the least contortion, well adjusted to the steps; while the motion of the arms, must be agreeable to that of the legs, and the head to be in ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... sat down near him, a beautiful woman, flushed and tender. It arose perhaps from the delicate sensitiveness of both that they had always instinctively avoided those chance contacts which between lovers become so significant, confining themselves to rare hand-shakes at meeting and parting; and it may be that their very scrupulousness in this matter proves how near they had been to more emotional relations than those of simple friendship. Now ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... know /exactly/ what it is. You speak of it," she added, with a smile, "as women speak of men, or as men when they try to explain women. Its fundamental element is love. It is a covenant of love between human beings who instinctively detest one another. It is also a wealth of love in our hearts to which we respond naturally when we are little children. Later all our tenderness is added to it bit by bit, like treasure to treasure. It is a law of outpouring to which we give ourselves up, and it is the source of ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse

... through two or three of the forward cars looking for a friend who had agreed to join me. Not finding him, I retraced my steps, and as I was passing along through the car next my own I chanced to see a roll of new bills on the floor near the end of a seat. Instinctively feeling for my own roll of bills and finding it missing, I picked up the money and saw at a glance that it was mine. The passengers near by eyed me in surprise, and I suspect began to feel in their own ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... diabolical sins of the tongue. If you would just begin to-night to watch yourselves—on the way home from church, at home after the day is over, to-morrow morning when the letters and the papers are opened, and so on,—how instinctively, incessantly, irrepressibly you speak about the absent in a way you would be astounded and horrified to be told they were at that moment speaking about you, then you would soon be wiser than all your teachers in the sins and in the government of the tongue. ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... Maria Louisa: they would have wished that, for the honour of Francis II., he had unsuccessfully opposed the downfall of the dynasty, whose alliance he considered as a safeguard in 1809. This was the opinion which the mass of the people instinctively formed, for they judged of the Emperor of Austria in his character of a father and not in his character of a monarch; and as the rights of misfortune are always sacred in France, more interest was felt for Maria Louisa when she was known to be forsaken than when she was in the height of her splendour. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... against shams and stupidity and ignorance, because those three have brought me where I am and you where you are. I'm a disarmed and helpless revolte by myself. One doesn't want to go from bad to worse. One wants instinctively to progress from good to better. One makes mistakes and seeks to rectify them—if it is possible. One sees suffering arise as the result of one's involuntary acts, and one wishes wistfully to relieve it. That's the simple truth, Robin. Only a simple truth is often a ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... deadly fire of muskets and swivels, and enfilading artillery; but their comrades on the right of the first division, under Major-General Sir Harry Smith, headed by an old and fearless leader, Sir Robert Dick, forming themselves instinctively into masses and wedges, rushed forward, with loud shouts leaped the ditch, and swarming up, mounted the ramparts, where they stood victorious ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... residuum left on the tongue. We thus take into our mouths cherry stones as big as peas, a dozen at once, for Nature can persuade us to do almost anything when she would compass her ends. Some wild men and children instinctively swallow these, as the birds do when in a hurry, it being the shortest way to get rid of them. Thus, though these seeds are not provided with vegetable wings, Nature has impelled the thrush tribe to take them into their bills and fly away with them; and they are winged in another sense, and more ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... out across the table, suddenly waking from her somnolence; she had overheard the baroness in spite of the low tone in which the dialogue had been carried on; her voice was so mellifluously sweet, one instinctively scented a touch of hidden poison in it—"Mees Gay, there is a question being put at this side of the table you alone can answer. Pray pardon the impertinence of a personal question—but we hear that American young ladies read Zola; ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... calmer, but its roar, though fainter, was still menacing and malignant. There, at last, rose the solitary rock before us; there was the seaweed too. I looked intently, I tried to distinguish that curved object lying on the ground—but I saw nothing. We went closer; instinctively I slackened my pace. But where was the black still object? Only the tangles of seaweed rose black against the sand, which had dried up by now. We went right up to the rock.... There was no corpse to be seen; and only where it had been lying there was still a hollow place, and one could see where ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... shame. She was very young and the great lady very kind and gentle. Her own simple heart, still filled with the selfish desires of extreme youth, cried out for that same life of ease and luxury which the beautiful lady depicted in such tempting colours before her, whilst it shrank instinctively from the poverty, the hard floors, the stewing-pots which awaited her in that squalid hut on the Aventine where her ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... and repetition also make a bodily appeal, they appeal to the child's motor sense and instinctively get into his muscles. This is very evident in ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... if I had struck her. "Oh!" she murmured. If she had been the ordinary woman, who in every crisis with man instinctively resorts to weakness' strongest weakness, tears, I might have a different story to tell. But she fought back the tears in which her eyes were swimming and gathered herself together. "That is brutal," she said, with not a touch of haughtiness, but not humbly, either. "But ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... fitted it on, I heard footsteps in the yard outside. Instinctively we both shrank back into the brougham. It was quite dark now. Then a stable door grated and I ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... cross roads schoolhouse. In past years libraries have been very deficient in matter upon this question because there was no general call for it, but now the demand is so large that it scarcely can be supplied, and all instinctively turn to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... of the true and beautiful in character, which nothing she saw around her, after of course her grandfather, and one other exception, seemed at all to meet; and partly from her own innate fineness of nature, and partly from this pure ideal always present with her, she had shrunk almost instinctively from the few varieties of human nature the country-side presented to her, and was in fact a very isolated little being, living in a world of her own, and clinging with all her strong outgoings of affection to her grandfather only; granting to but one other person any considerable share ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... yet instinctively appreciated how terrified the girl must be. Actuated by a sudden kindly impulse he found her hand and took it in his own and thus they continued upon their way, groping through the blackness of the trail. Twice they were approached ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... a blind clutch. The tips of my fingers seemed to touch a surface as smooth as glass, that glided suddenly from under them. A sharp, angry hiss sounded through the gloom, followed by a whirring noise, as if some projectile passed rapidly by, and the next moment I felt instinctively that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... speedily join his peripatetic bibliographical reveries, he gave a turn towards the left, and was quickly lost in a grove of Acacia and Laurustinus. For my part, instead of keeping this promise, I instinctively sought my bed; and found the observation of Franklin,—of air-bathing being favourable to slumber,—abundantly verified—for I was hardly settled under the clothes 'ere I fell asleep: and, leaving my guests to make good their appointment with my visitor, I enjoyed a sweet ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... And when you feel instinctively that the heart of the Roman must rage with fury when he looks back into the mirror of his past,—that the Venetian cannot help to weep tears of fire and of blood from the Rialto;—when you feel all this, then look back how the Romans have fought in 1849, with a heroism scarcely paralleled in the ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... himself flat in the snow. John instinctively did the same, and the second volley fired with better aim riddled the machine. There was a heavy explosion, it turned on its side, its wheels revolving for a moment or two, and then it lay still, ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... from this section, General Toombs was afraid that some of his old soldiers might recognize him on the road. A Federal officer advanced to the middle of the street and saluted the travelers. Their hearts bounded to their throats, and, instinctively, two hands stole to their revolvers. Pistols and spurs were the only resources. Chances were desperate, but they were resolved to take them. The officer watched them intently as they rode leisurely through the town, but he was really more interested in their fine horses, "Gray Alice" and "Young ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... Instinctively I kept my eyes tightly closed, but the heat was so intense that it seemed as if my eyes, the left one especially, were being desiccated ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... exclaimed. "You mean if it fails!" Her voice dropped instinctively, and they looked over their shoulders to ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... heard?" she asked. And we knew instinctively that something had happened to the Gilded Youth. And when one is in aviation something happening always is serious. It was Henry's kind voice that conveyed our sympathy to her. And she told us of the accident. Two mornings ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... name of Rockville), when I saw the indistinct forms of several horses, and the taller figure of one mounted man, standing out against the clear night-sky on the very crest of the ascent. I drew rein instinctively; but in that particular frame of mind, I don't think I should have turned back, if the gates of the old Capitol had stood open across the road. So I jogged steadily on, trying to look as innocently unconscious as possible. Seven or eight horses were picketed to some posts outside ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... justice." This arises from their deficiency in the power of reasoning already referred to, and reflection, but is also partly due to the fact that Nature has not destined them, as the weaker sex, to be dependent on strength but on cunning; this is why they are instinctively crafty, and have an ineradicable tendency to lie. For as lions are furnished with claws and teeth, elephants with tusks, boars with fangs, bulls with horns, and the cuttlefish with its dark, inky fluid, so Nature has provided woman for her protection and defence with the ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... is a style of writing often called the freshman style. It is much indulged in by very young men, and by a class of older men who instinctively try to make up in clatter for what they lack in matter. Examples of this kind of writing are abundant in Professor L. T. Townsend's "Art of Speech," which, as examples, are all the better for not being of ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... may work beneficially for both groups of States, and not injuriously affect the rest of the world. The English can not be expected to appreciate the weakness, discredit, complications and dangers which we instinctively and justly ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... food or in other ways, by the action of the leader of his group that path or that food becomes taboo, and from that time on it is forbidden. The rules seem generally to be largely the product of instinct or of experience, without any law making, and they are enforced almost as instinctively by the common consent ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks

... bestowed her heart on a young squire in her father's train. It is true that Gerbert was a high-born youth, of stainless life, pleasing appearance, and gentle manners, and, moreover, one who was likely at no distant date to win his spurs. Nevertheless the lovers instinctively concealed their mutual affection from von Metternich, and plighted ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... half these had better intend seriously to do some duty in a house-party in July. For, however good his intentions, he will merely add to the pavement of a warmer place than even a July temperature makes Long Island Sound. Instinctively, Peter turned to Miss Pierce at every opportunity. He should have asked himself if the girl was really enjoying his company more than she did that of the other young people. Had he been to the manner born he ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need—the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... terror, is one of the most tragic sights on earth. The horse came pounding at breakneck speed, blinded in his fright, as runaway horses are, but instinctively taking the straight path across the plaza. It was as if the frantic hoof-beats awakened the whole post. Soldiers ran out and officers stepped from their comfortable quarters, while the officers' club ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell

... people are not numerous among real traveling automobilists; they are mostly found among that class who spend the week-end at Brighton, or dine at Versailles or St. Germain or "make the fete" at Trouville. They are known instinctively by all, and are only tolerated by the hotel landlord for ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... her now in the stillness of the night and by the fireside. So long as her poor friend was with her she had acted almost instinctively, with the quick grasp of an active intellect and under the good impulses of compassion and attachment. Now that she was alone the time had come to ponder, and Shotaye weighed in her mind the liabilities and assets of her situation. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... fault—since how could she control her father begetting her forty years ago in the suburbs of Manchester? and once begotten, how could she do other than grow up cheese-paring, ambitious, with an instinctively accurate notion of the rungs of the ladder and an ant-like assiduity in pushing George Plumer ahead of her to the top of the ladder? What was at the top of the ladder? A sense that all the rungs were beneath one apparently; since by the time that George Plumer became Professor ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... whom fate and their sin-mistakes have placed in a certain position, however false that position may be, form a view of life in general which makes their position seem good and admissible. In order to keep up their view of life, these people instinctively keep to the circle of those people who share their views of life and their own place in it. This surprises us, where the persons concerned are thieves, bragging about their dexterity, prostitutes ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... hap-hazard start the ignoramus may chance to make, any particular house or street is either nearer at hand or farther off than the ordinary human mind finds it agreeable to believe. The first duty of the new-comer is to teach his nether extremities to avoid instinctively the hypothenuse of the street-triangulation, and the last lesson the resident fails to learn is which of the shortcuts from point to point is the least lengthy. Beyond a doubt, the corners of the streets were constructed upon a cold and brutal ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... was not liked in the valley he suspected, curtly attributing her unpopularity to the women's senseless jealousy. Of gossip concerning her he heard no further hint; but instinctively, and partly from that rugged, natural reserve of his, shrank from mentioning her name, even incidentally, to ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various

... French is exquisite, and he speaks English as I have seldom heard it spoken,—as the cultivated Frenchman speaks French,—with purpose, with science, as an art. His enunciation is wonderful and he instinctively picks out words to aid rhythm and enunciation. Of his native language, Hungarian, and of his German, I am not ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... the only one which can be observed as practically influencing men's conduct. God helps those who help themselves, because in helping themselves they are helping Him. Again, Vox Populi vox Dei. The current feeling of our peers is what we instinctively turn to when we would know whether such and such a course of conduct is right or wrong; and so Paul clenches his list of things that the Philippians were to hold fast with the words, "whatsoever things are of good fame"-that ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler

... Prohack, with apprehension, and instinctively she stretched her arm out and extinguished one of ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... did so, a young girl stepped out of the elevator and walked directly to the door which he had just closed behind him. He turned and looked at her—she was as a saint. Almost instinctively it came to him what his partner had said, that she was "not afraid of ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon

... that it seemed always about to slip from his tongue. It was what the president of the board had called him when the fact of his fraudulent manipulation of the company's books was laid so distinctly before him that even the insane refusal, which the criminal instinctively makes of his crime in its presence, was impossible. The other directors sat blankly round, and said nothing; not because they hated a scene, but because the ordinary course of life among us had not supplied ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... was going on aboard of her was clear from the shouts and the occasional pistol shots, which became louder as he drew more near; and Captain Kettle, connoisseur as he was of differences of this sort on the high seas, became instinctively more and more interested. And at last when he came to a small canoe drawn up on the beach above high-water mark, he paused beside it with a mind loaded with temptation as deep as it ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... faint and queer, Forrest quietly stole away. Closing the glazed hall door behind him, he paused a moment in the vestibule, finding himself face to face with a slender form at sight of which even then his heart gave one great bound. Instinctively one arm was outstretched in longing, in greeting, and then at sight of him the form recoiled, and, cold as the biting wind that swept his cheek, he heard the brief sentence, "You ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... the wildest excitement and consternation. His troops were flying in all directions, some toward the camp, vainly hoping to find refuge there, and others in various other quarters, wherever they saw the readiest hope of escape from their merciless pursuers. Pompey himself fled instinctively toward the camp. As he passed the guards at the gate where he entered, he commanded them, in his agitation and terror, to defend the gate against the coming enemy, saying that he was going to the other gates to attend to the ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott

... most anxious to save; but Cato's enmity was so ungovernable that he grudged Caesar the honor of forgiving him. His animosity had been originally the natural antipathy which a man of narrow understanding instinctively feels for a man of genius. It had been converted by perpetual disappointment into a monomania, and Caesar had become to him the incarnation of every quality and every principle which he most abhorred. Cato was upright, unselfish, incorruptibly ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... certainly was not philosophy that directed my steps to the far side of the syringa hedge which shut me off from the view of those who might come down to the rustic seat at the foot of the cherry tree. At least I had no intention of playing the spy, and when I heard Frederick's voice, and knew instinctively that Phyllis was with him, I quickened my pace that I might not be a sharer of their secrets. But an irresistible impulse made me pause when I heard the ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field

... love will be delivered from the blinding influence of his own evil tastes, and a heart steadfast in love will not be swayed by lower temptations. Communion with God will, from its very familiarity with Him, instinctively discern the evil of evil, as a man coming out of pure air is conscious of vitiated atmosphere which those who dwell in it do not perceive. It used to be said that Venice glass would shiver into fragments if poison were poured into the cup. As evil spirits ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... among the branches around them she shuddered and instinctively drew her own shawl closer about her shoulder; she would have given a year's toil could she have wrapped the thick woolen garment about the tiny form of her loved one, who never seemed so ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... He felt instinctively that his mission had failed. Something cold and cruel about the Spaniard repelled him, and he believed, too, that Braxton Wyatt had not been ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Boswell, there will have to be a box of chessmen and a chessboard, and the men who were boys when I was a boy, and who come and sit with me, will be expected after supper to set out the chessmen as instinctively as they fill their pipes. And then for an hour, or it may be two, we shall enter into that rapturous realm where the knight prances and the bishop lurks with his shining sword and the rooks come crashing through in double file. The fire will sink and we shall not stir it, the clock will ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... were smouldering fires. Edward had never seen her look so handsome; but his attention was distracted from her at that instant by some rough, prickly shrubs, near which they were passing. He put out his hand instinctively to keep them from touching his companion, and a sharp thorn pierced his palm. He immediately affected to be ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... not look up; he did not consider himself nor the situation. There was but one impression upon his mind made by the electric flash of the order backed by the following crash of oaths. Instinctively he seized his lever, reversed the engine, and started the Summer Shelter backward. Slowly, very slowly, she ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... Instinctively Ree seized his rifle in both hands, ready for instant action. John did the same, and with an ugly leer the Indian paused. His action had attracted attention, however, and at this critical juncture Capt. Pipe discovered the presence of the visitors, ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... on our way homeward, we came upon another. It sprang out of the lily pads, and sped toward the tall grass of the shore. "Look! look! a purple!" the boy cried. "See his yellow legs!" Instinctively he raised his gun, but I said No. It would be inexcusable to shoot a second one; and besides, we were at that moment approaching a bird about which I felt a stronger curiosity,—a snake-bird, or water-turkey, sitting ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... wisdom—so far from towering above the support of prudence, or rejecting the rules of experience, for the better conduct of those multifarious actions which are alike necessary to the attainment of ends good or bad—do instinctively prompt the sole prudence which cannot fail. The higher mode of being does not exclude, but necessarily includes, the lower; the intellectual does not exclude, but necessarily includes, the sentient; the sentient, the animal; and the animal, the vital—to its lowest degrees. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... seemed to swim about her. She turned instinctively toward the door of the chamber, closed it softly, and came very close to the old doctor, lifting her pale lips ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... room. In a way, he and the man whom he felt instinctively was in some sense of the word his rival, even though an undeclared one, were of exactly opposite types. Granet was the centre of a little group of people who all seemed to be hanging upon his conversation. He was full of high spirits and humour, ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... replied, with forced calm, raising her eyes to his. Their glances met. That moment, I saw each had recognised something; and from that day forth I was instinctively aware that a duel was being waged between Sebastian and Hilda,—a duel between the two ablest and most singular personalities I had ever met; a duel of life and death—though I did not fully understand its ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... strength of many of them. The path Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite direction, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement. As soon as he reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God and immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: "I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise." In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... rest of the flowers were more or less fellows; this one in its apart elegance owned no social communion with them. Esther was a little like that among her school friends; and though invariably gracious and pleasant in her manners, she was instinctively felt to be different from the rest. Only Esther was a white lily; the one I tried to describe, or did not try to describe, was ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... Cunningham answered; but she seemed to guess instinctively what the letter contained, and one glance at it ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford

... was said to all of us, for we had instinctively drawn to the centre of our plateau with the idea of fighting back to back with the foes who surrounded us. Again we heard the white men charging up the front of our little hill, but, before they reached the top, a dozen savages had leaped ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... nothing of all this now; she had a trying task to go through. Sing! then and there! And what should she sing? All that class of hymns that bore directly on the subject of their sorrow must be left on one side; she hardly dared think of them. Instinctively she took up another class, that without baring the wound would lay the balm close to it. A few minutes of deep stillness were in the dark room; then very low, and in tones that trembled a ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... burning a possible half-hour when Kent, jogging aimlessly toward a log ridge with the lazy notion of riding to the top and taking a look at the country to the west before returning to the ranch, first smelled the stronger tang of burned grass and swung instinctively into the wind. He galloped to higher ground, and, trained by long watching of the prairie to detect the smoke of a nearer fire in the haze of those long distant, saw at once what must have happened, and knew also the danger. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... is her," said Oliver, when we approached. She seemed somewhat startled at seeing us, and instinctively lifted her little boy out of the bath, and held him, dripping as he was, in her arms. That did not signify, however, as she was clothed in very scanty garments. We stopped short, not further to ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... again and walked to a corner of the room where I had noticed a bright musket with a sword-bayonet attached. He took it up and criticised the sword as inferior to the knife. Our men would require long drilling to become expert with the former, like the French Zouaves; but they instinctively knew how to wield the bowie-knife. The conversation turning upon the probable deficiency of a supply of improved arms in the South, if a great war should ensue, the governor said, with one of his inevitable expressions of feeling, that ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... deceive Ahab through his prophets (1 Kings 22:21-23); that he sent Isaiah with the command: "Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes" (Isa. 6:10); that he made the covenant people to err from his ways, and hardened their heart from his fear (Isa. 63:17), we instinctively interpret these and other like passages in harmony with the fundamental principle announced by the apostle: "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted of evil, neither ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... from the heap in the bottom of the boat. It had instinctively turned from a reddish-brown to a livid green, the color of sea-water; indeed, had it been in the water, its enemy would have had hard ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... Mdlle. Cadiere was under a pious mother. She lived with her family, a married brother and the two churchmen, in a very confined house, whose only entrance lay through the shop of the elder brother. She went no whither except to church. With all her simplicity she knew instinctively what things were impure, what houses dangerous. The Jesuit penitents were fond of meeting together at the top of a house, to eat, and play the fool, and cry out, in their Provencial tongue, "Vivent les Jesuitons!" A neighbour, disturbed by their noise, went and found them lying on their faces, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... faces were visible in it, his own and that of his young victim pictured in the print hanging on the wall behind him. They seemed alive. Both of them seemed alive, and as he saw them thus in conjunction, the sweet, pure countenance of the child he had instinctively mourned, peering at him over his guilty shoulder—the sweat started on his forehead and he uttered a great cry. Then he stood still, swaying from side to side, the eyes starting from his head in a horror transcending all that ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... for man, so books were made for the reader, and, when a reader has assimilated from any given book his own proper nourishment and pleasure, the rest of the book is so much oyster shell. The end of true reading is the development of individuality. Like a certain water insect, the reader instinctively selects from the outspread world of books the building materials for the house of his soul. He chooses here and rejects there, and remembers or forgets according to the formative desire of his nature. Yet it often happens that he forgets ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others

... this, we instinctively ask ourselves: do we actually live at the beginning of the 20th century? Is it possible, that even at this late day the whole structure of scientific method is to be subverted in ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... Instinctively she crumpled up this strange little note in her hand. She struggled hard to maintain her composure. She had at once the idea that every one in the place was looking at her. Monsieur Albert, indeed, on his way down the room wondered what had driven the hopeless expression from ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the nonsense written by other hands. These trifles as they seemed at the time, and as in fact they were, become less insignificant in the retrospect, as we associate them with the whole character and being we instinctively love to place at the farthest remove from gloom or sadness, and as they rediscover to us in the distance the native vivacity and grace of which they were the chance expression. Since that summer of 1865, having lived away from New York, I saw little ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... Dot was instinctively a little gentleman. He felt he had made a mistake; so he hobbled up to Miss Ruth, and laid his hand on hers: "We couldn't do without you—could we, Essie?" he said in a coaxing voice. "Esther does not like ordering dinners; she often ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... is lengthy, extending over months during which the observer's attention would be inevitably diverted by a variety of objects, most of them of far more pressing import.... The sexual passion would be gratified instinctively without any thought of the consequences, and in an overwhelming proportion of cases without the consequence of pregnancy at all. When that consequence occurred it would not be visible for weeks or months after the act which produced it. A hundred other events might have taken place in the interval ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... quiet way a woman of much character, endowed with that natural piety, which accepts without questioning the established order in life and religion. The world to her being home and family, she had a real, if gently expressed, horror of all that she instinctively felt to be subversive of this ideal. People judged her a little quiet, dull, and narrow; they compared her to a hen for ever clucking round her chicks. The streak of heroism that lay in her nature was not perhaps of patent order. Her feeling about her brother's situation ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Paul's illustrations of that pastoral beginning, and no doubt they were sympathetically close to the truth. He lingered over them, dressing up his mother's choice instinctively to the little aristocrat ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... throughout the nation there stirred a name and memory, and to many thousands of lips sprang instinctively and simultaneously a single sentence: "Oh ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... my kind. 'Twas at the close of a sultry day, the last of August, that I entered a forest at the foot of the Cevennes, and worn with long fatigue and misery, stretched myself upon the moss for momentary rest. On the sudden, a faint and feeble moan pierced my ear; instinctively I moved the branches at my side, and at the foot of a rude stone-cross beheld a desolate infant, unnaturally left to perish in the wilderness! It was famishing—expiring. I raised it to my breast, and its little ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... I drew aside instinctively. In another moment, making a great clatter on the frozen gravel, the first of the pair passed me; and as he did so, there was a sharp crack, and something sang through the darkness ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... at bedtime and the nurse who is much with children will do well to treasure up all such material that comes in her way. Being used to children and having a sincere love for them makes one's work much easier, as even very little children seem to know instinctively who their real friends are and to be more easily ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... throat clicked; for a moment she did not breathe, while a vivid flash of jealous emotion departed, leaving in its place a great peace, an exaltation born of sudden knowing. Instinctively seeking further confirmation, her eyes, now wide and big and flaming, swept to Latham. His face, too, was turned toward her husband. It was the grimly triumphant visage of the fighter who knows his own kind, of the friend and believer whose ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Lady Montairy, Lothair was scarcely free from embarrassment when he rejoined the ladies; and was so afraid of standing alone, or talking only to men, that he was almost on the point of finding refuge in his dinner-companions, had not he instinctively felt that this would have been a social blunder. But the duchess relieved him: her gracious glance caught his at the right moment, and she rose and met him some way as he advanced. The friends had arrived so late, that Lothair had had only time to make a reverence ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... he meant it in the reverse sense as propounded by our old grannies' purity leagues. Continence is not the sole virtue or charm in womanhood; nor, by the same token, is unchastity a brevet of feminine originality. But women, as a rule, have not rallied to his doctrines, instinctively feeling that he is indifferent to them, notwithstanding the heated homage he pays to their physical attractions. Good old Walt sang of his camerados, capons, Americanos, deck-hands, stagecoach-drivers, machinists, brakemen, firemen, sailors, butchers, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... we listen this is the perplexing word that comes to us: "I long to share in His sufferings." How startlingly strange that longing is. We are half ready to wonder if we have heard aright. And when we realize that we have, we instinctively think of the words of the Roman governor, Festus: "Paul, thou art beside thyself. Much learning doth make thee mad." We wonder if Festus was not right after all. ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell



Words linked to "Instinctively" :   instinctive



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