"Instinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I sigh. "Was reason meant To straighten branches that are bent, Or soothe an ancient discontent, The instinct of a race dethroned? Ah! doubly should that instinct go Must the four rivers cease to flow, Nor yield those rumors sweet and low Wherewith man's ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... who blamed her, or the bluff excitement of Monsieur Cadotte. She could hear his voice from time to time, as he ran in for spirits or provisions for parties of searchers. And Archange had aversion, like the instinct of a maid, to betraying fondness for her husband. She was furious with him, also, for causing her pain. When she thought of the windigo, of the rapids, of any peril which might be working his limitless absence, she set clenched ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and of time, and a very uncertain stalk it would be in the end. After all his long tramping, and creeping, and crouching, the game would be like enough to scent him before they came within shot—for it is for this very reason that their instinct teaches them to browse against, and not ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... curiously heated mind, upon the encounter of that afternoon. Mr. Harding's manner in the latter part of their walk together had—he scarcely knew why—profoundly impressed him. He longed to see the clergyman again. He longed, almost more ardently, to pay a visit to Henry Chichester. Although the instinct of caution, which had perhaps been developed in him by his work among mediums, cranks of various kinds, and charlatans, had prevented him from letting the rector know that he had been struck by the change in the ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... seemed to know what to do or say. Strangely enough, it was Dolly, who had resented the previous attitude of the rich girls more than any of her companions, who found by instinct the true solution. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... difficulty in obtaining the information she wanted; while, even if they met as strangers, the dark-eyed girl's perspicacity might still be trusted to come to their aid. It remained only to be seen how Mrs. Westmore would take his suggestion; but some instinct was already telling him that the highhanded method was the one she ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Cyrene's first instinct was to lie still in tacit disdain. The recollection of Germain, however, crossed her mind. Rather submit to anything than exasperate his enemies; so she rose, with an effort. Her limbs ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... connection awful from its very remoteness and from the slender band that unites the ideas:—it passes into the region of fable likewise; for all modes of existence that forward his purpose are to be pressed into the service. The whole is instinct with spirit, and every word has its separate life; like the chariot of the Messiah, and the wheels of that chariot, as they appeared to the imagination of Milton aided by that of the prophet Ezekiel. It had power to move of itself, but was ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... was attacked in its march, and charged by a numerous body of Skipetars. Its destruction seemed imminent, but instinct suddenly revealed to the ignorant mountaineers the one manoeuvre which might save them. They formed a square, placing old men, women, children, and cattle in the midst, and, protected by this military formation, entered Parga in full view of the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... with swinging windows open to the air, tables with marble tops, palms, waiters in white coats—it was the standing marvel of Mariposa. Not a soul in the town except Mr. Smith, who knew it by instinct, ever guessed that waiters and palms and marble tables can be rented over the ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... tone of mind which, after all, is one of the best antidotes against this awful scourge. The cabin seemed to lighten, and the air to circulate more freely, after the departure of these professional ravens. The captain, as if by instinct, took an additional glass of grog, to shake off the sepulchral ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... It is the instinct of Man, in such a situation, to grab at the nearest support. Henry grabbed at the Hotel Superba, the pride of the Esplanade. It was a thin wooden edifice, and it supported him for perhaps a tenth of a second. Then he staggered with it into the limelight, tripped over a Bulgarian officer who ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... their abominable and long-standing customs, we must esteem it, not a personal, but a communal offense; nor must we presume amendment where ferocity springs from custom, now rendered almost natural instinct, and from the land being unconquerable. Therefore it must be presumed that, if they are not punished by force superior to their own, they will grow worse each day; for they consider cruelty honorable, and esteem him most ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... were all seated round, and the Doctor was standing in the middle, talking in whispers to the master. Tom couldn't hear a word which passed, and never lifted his eyes from his book; but he knew by a sort of magnetic instinct that the Doctor's under-lip was coming out, and his eye beginning to burn, and his gown getting gathered up more and more tightly in his left hand. The suspense was agonizing, and Tom knew that he was sure on such occasions ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... beseeching as his waved him back a step. Then with the same mute entreaty she faced Julian and Hugh. But there was a ludicrous contrast, visible to all, between Hugh's phlegm and her brother's pomp, and by a flash of feminine instinct she divined the best mood with which to match it. Grimly elated, Hugh saw what was coming. Julian saw, and groaned a wearied wrath. The captain, the commodore—for the commodore had returned—the Gilmores, the Yazoo couple, the pilots overhead, all waited with lively ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... saw lights and shadows moving in the windows, and with an instinct of coming trouble in his heart, put Mumu under his arm, ran into his garret, and locked himself in. A few minutes later five men were banging at his door, but feeling the resistance of the bolt, they stopped. Gavrila ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... after all, just one human activity left in which whole populations accomplish the union sacre. It occurs in those middle phases of a war when fear, pugnacity, and hatred have secured complete dominion of the spirit, either to crush every other instinct or to enlist it, and ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... firmament of Parisian society I took a keen interest in all their doings. In those days, you understand, it was in the essence of my business to know as much as possible of the private affairs of people in their position, and instinct had at once told me that in the case of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour such ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... King Leopold's instinct was not at fault, as the result proved; but it was not without the most careful consideration and many anxious consultations, especially with his trusty old friend, Baron Stockmar, that the King allowed himself ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... former self. The rainbow tints had faded from her sky, and the stars in her futurity had ceased to shine. What to her were all her mental gifts, when they had failed to win the love she valued? And now the nature so impulsive and ingenuous was impelled by the instinct of woman's pride to assume the mantle of concealment, to learn its task of suffering and silence. She could not, without betraying her true feelings, seem depressed, when all about her was happier than ever, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... supremacy of one. It implies taste and versatility, with fine discrimination, and the tact to sink one's personality as well as to call out the best in others. It was this flexibility of mind, this active intelligence tempered with sensibility and the native instinct of pleasing, that distinguished the French women who have left such enduring traces upon their time. "It is not sufficient to be wise, it is necessary also to please," said the witty and penetrating Ninon, who thus very aptly condensed the feminine philosophy of her race. Perhaps she has revealed ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... heels in the air, instead of pursuing a direct course. And, lastly, the dispositions and voices of the birds may vary. Thus the case of the pigeons shows you that there is hardly a single particular,—whether of instinct, or habit, or bony structure, or of plumage,—of either the internal economy or the external shape, in which some variation or change may not take place, which, by selective breeding, may become perpetuated, and form the foundation of, and give rise ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... Pistol sided, Against the statute in that case provided. But, why was such a host of swearers pressed? Their succour was ill husbandry at best. Bayes's crowned muse, by sovereign right of satire, Without desert, can dub a man a traitor; And tories, without troubling law or reason, By loyal instinct ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the sea now near at hand struck my back, I confess that a longing to reach Philadelphia, where I could complete my outfit and increase the safety of my little craft, gave renewed vigor to my stroke as I exchanged the quiet atmosphere of the country for the smoke and noise of the city. Every instinct was now challenged, and every muscle brought into action, as I dodged tug-boats, steamers, yachts, and vessels, while running the thoroughfare along the crowded wharves between New York on one side and Jersey City on the other. I found the slips between the piers most excellent ports ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... instinct of a true-hearted Yankee, immediately saw into the snare laid for the faith of the young orphans; and he thanked his God mentally that he had come to the knowledge of these facts, for he was the man to expose and reprobate such foul play. "I now well ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... mourning, the suggestion began to creep into her mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy that was lacking in Tom Canty, mad or sane. She could not describe it, she could not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct seemed to detect it and perceive it. What if the boy were really not her son, after all? Oh, absurd! She almost smiled at the idea, spite of her griefs and troubles. No matter, she found that it was an idea that would not 'down,' but persisted in haunting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it was not to rest! Every muscle in his body seemed to beg and pray for rest, yet the spirit in him drove them to work anew. He was making a certain mad headway, travelling, always travelling. He doubted not he was doomed, but instinct made him fight on as long as an ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the instinct of investigation,—favored with golden opportunity, and gifted with creative ability, the Boy Inventors meet emergencies and contrive mechanical wonders that interest and convince the reader because they always "work" when put to ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... The instinct, like the elementary reflex, is determined by heredity. Because a certain configuration of the cells and fibers making up a nervous system is inherited as well as the characters of the constituent elements themselves, a worm or an insect is enabled to act as it does. A butterfly does not ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... The instinct which led Henry Esmond to admire and love the gracious person, the fair apparition of whose beauty and kindness had so moved him when he first beheld her, became soon a devoted affection and passion of gratitude, which entirely filled his young heart, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... does, "an act of the most brutal tyranny", it is easy to understand how Mr. Forsyth, bringing a calm and dispassionate legal judgment to bear upon the case, finds it impossible to reconcile it with our ideas of dignified and even-handed justice.[2] It was the hasty instinct of self-preservation, the act of a weak government uncertain of its very friends, under the influence of terror—a terror for which, no doubt, there were abundant grounds. When Cicero stood on the prison steps, where he had waited to receive the report of those ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... the little station of Villalba, in the midst of the wide brown table-land that stretches from Madrid to the Escorial. At Villalba we found the inevitable swarm of beggars, who always know by the sure instinct of wretchedness where a harvest of cuartos is to be achieved. I have often passed Villalba and have seen nothing but the station-master and the water-vender. But to-day, because there were a half dozen excellencies on the train, the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... dissent. Longfellow said: "It is one of the greatest triumphs recorded in literary history, to say nothing of the higher triumph of its moral effect." George Sand said: "Mrs. Stowe is all instinct; it is the very reason that she appears to some to have no talent.... I cannot say that she has talent as one understands it in the world of letters, but she has genius as humanity feels the need of it,—the genius of goodness, not that of the man of letters, ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... welcomed: he was so sure of her. Nothing on earth or under Heaven is so fatal to a man's love as that. There was no longer any uncertainty; there was none of the keenness of pursuit dear to the old hunting instinct inherent in man; there was not even the charm of variety in her moods. She was always the same to him; always she pouted a little at first, and looked ill-tempered, and reproached him; and always she ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... interest in religion synchronises with adolescence, "the retort again is easy.... The interest in mechanics, physics, chemistry, logic, philosophy, and sociology, which springs up during adolescent years along with that in poetry and religion, is also a perversion of the sexual instinct."[1] ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... supposed that the secret instinct, which leads the lower orders to remove their superiors as much as possible from the direction of public affairs, is peculiar to France. This, however, is an error; the propensity to which I allude is not inherent in any particular nation, but in democratic institutions in general; and ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... legitimate curiosity, would concentrate their thoughts on the subject. They would have so many problems to puzzle over: How often ought I to eat? What ought I to eat? Is it wrong to eat fruit, which I like? Ought I to eat grass, which I don't like? Instinct notwithstanding, we may be quite sure that only a small minority would succeed in eating reasonably and wholesomely. The sexual secrecy of life is even more disastrous than such a nutritive secrecy would be; partly because we expend such a wealth of moral energy in directing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Confederacy comprising all the slave States, (or, which means the same, face to face with two distinct Confederacies, comprising, the one the cotton States, the other the border States, yet united against the North through an old instinct of complicity,) the attitude of the United States, as every one foresees, will inevitably be more hostile. Total secession itself can be born only from a sentiment of declared hostility; it amounts to a declaration of war. Suppose that Mr. Lincoln rejects the advice of those of his cabinet who would ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... unselfconsciousness, forgetting several trifles that might properly have weighed with him, (forgetting the tarnished gorgeousness of his Turkish slippers for example, and his towzled head, and the bathing-towel that flowed like a piece of classic drapery from his shoulder), obeying impulse and instinct, he flung himself into ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... her ken before. She was conscious of a little recoil from it, such as is natural to a young girl who has not learnt by experience the meaning of sorrow; but the recoil was followed by a rush of that sympathy for which she had always shown a great capacity. Her instinct led her instantly to comfort and console. She knelt down beside the weeping woman and put one arm round her, drawing the little boy forward with her left hand ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... scenes. The little boy going down to the sea in ships, seeking an island he had seen in a mirage ... a mood of wonder.... There were feet, there was the world. Every tree was an emerald miracle, every house a mystery, all people were riddles.... Come, little boy, come and look! The instinct of the salmon for the sea. The river where he was spawned hurries to the sea, and his instinct is to go with it, not against it.... It deepens and broadens, and ahead is always a clearer pool, a more shadowy rock, a softer water-fern. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... and airmen first, since to these leave and transportation came easily, now that the guns were silent. MacRae met fellows he knew. A good many of them were well off, had homes in Vancouver. They were mostly young and glad the big show was over. And they had the social instinct. During intervals of fighting they had rubbed elbows with French and British people of consequence. They had ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... With almost unerring instinct he had found out this clump of trees, evidently one where guinea-fowl came to roost; and full of hope that they would now obtain a good addition to the larder, or, in plain English, a few birds to roast for supper, guns were supplied with cartridges, and the ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... Herr Winckler, from whose mouth Zeno used to hear many bitter tirades against the elixir, and Melchior's son found himself entirely alone, and making always more enemies by his irrepressible instinct to speak out what he thought to be the truth, he would sometimes ask himself if it were not better to destroy the elixir, which had brought him nothing but misery, and thus to spare his son ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... every little corner of Italy is a storehouse of local art, and there is no province which in bygone times did not contain graceful and convenient objects, due to a combination of practical sense and artistic instinct. Nearly all these treasures are now being dispersed, and the very memory of them is dying out, under the tyranny of the stupid and uniform "hygienic" fashions of our day. It was therefore a delightful undertaking on the part ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... "This is the position every one must take who waltzes in the most approved style—church members and all—so of course it is no harm for me." She thus takes the first step in casting aside that delicate God-given instinct which should be the guide of every pure ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... up quickly. With the sure instinct of a dweller in a gun man's land she knew the meaning of the splintered wood of the pommel, the torn and ragged leather that ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... time, were wandering about enjoying their new freedom, and growing more adventurous at every step. Though they had finished their oranges, they were still hungry, and there was a wonderful smell of roasting chicken in the air, which Beppo followed with the unerring instinct of a hungry boy, and soon the two children were standing before an open cook-shop in a side street, gnawing chicken bones and smacking their lips with as much gusto as if they had been bred in the ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... has not entered on the first day of his life with an idea of that Great Head? In whom has it not been implanted by nature, on whom has it not been impressed, aye, stamped almost in his mother's womb even, in whom is there not a native instinct, that He is King and Lord, the ruler of all things that be? In fine, if the dumb animals even could stammer forth their thoughts, if they were able to use our languages; nay, if trees, if the clods of the earth, if stones dominated by vital perceptions ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... the personal equation of Cora Shelby, whose vagaries the old lady owned herself quite unable to forecast. Nor in this respect was Cora herself a much wiser prophet. Her first instinct, mixed with wonder, was to decline, and she held to this opinion the better part of an hour. Yet before the impulse could stiffen into resolution, it met the neutralizing influence of the old town, which, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... beyond the possibility of a reflection upon its patriotism. He would hardly be human in his qualities if the most intense patriotic pride in the unity and power of his realms was not the first and strongest instinct of his nature. But this in passing. Lord Salisbury illustrated the attitude of both the Sovereign and his Ministers when speaking at the Albert Hall, London, on May 7th, during the pending negotiations: ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... poet, born in GLASGOW; bred a lawyer; took to the Church; author of a poem on the "Sabbath," instinct with devout feeling, and containing good descriptive ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and chaps; knotted my silk handkerchief necktie fashion; slicked down my wet hair, and tried to imagine myself decently turned out for company. I took off my gun belt also; but after some hesitation thrust the revolver inside the waistband of my drawers. Had no reason; simply the border instinct to stick ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... sitting before an embroidery frame, is startled by the shadow of Queen Eleanor bearing the poisoned cup, displays these qualities to great advantage. The leafy bower, the hanging mantle, show great skill in arrangement and a true instinct for color. "The Magic Mantle," "Rapunzel," and the "Miracle of the Roses" have all—especially, the first named—made an impression; another and strikingly original picture, called the "Quick and the Dead," represents a poorhouse, in the ward of which is a group ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... herd of cattle on the prairie, a herd of thousands, shift and face and, as by instinct, lower their horned heads ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... secure— When, led by instinct sharp and sure, Subsistence to provide, A beast forth sallied on the scout, Long-backed, long-tailed, with whiskered snout, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... solicitors, if they were solicitors, were two inferior, common-looking men, but sharp enough to be a match for either of us. We both felt it, as if we had detected a snake in the grass by its rattle. I grew wary by instinct, though I had not come with any intention to tell them what I knew of Olivia. My sole idea had been to learn something myself, not to impart any information. But, when I was face to face with these men, my business, and the management of it, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... mathematician, who arrived at his conclusion by laborious and careful fluxionary calculation. To his surprise, and to the surprise of the world, such lines and such a building were found in the common bee cell. Now I hold that the same Creator who gave to the bee the mathematical instinct could endow man with the instinct of speech. Even to animal instinct we find a certain variation and permitted latitude in what is called adaptive instinct. So in man we find this same instinct of adaptation in a higher sense. The instinct comes into play when we suppose a number of ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... accredited of the Buddha's disciples, Sariputto: "What, brethren, is the source of suffering?" he is reported to have said. "It is that desire (tanha) which leads from new birth to new birth, which is accompanied by joy and passion, which delights now here, now there; it is the sexual instinct, the impulse towards existence, the craving for development. That, brethren, is what is termed the source ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... not merely the wilful and insubordinate girl she would have been before the war; she saw herself, at any rate, as something much more interesting. All over the world there was the same breaking of bonds; and the same instinct towards violence. "The violent taketh by force." Was it the instinct that war leaves, and must leave, behind it—its most sinister, or its most pregnant, legacy? She was passionately conscious of it, and of a strange thirst ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... days he avoided Maraquita. On the third, with something of the instinct which draws the murderer to the spot where he has buried the body, he called at ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... truth dawned upon him that he was being killed the instinct of self-preservation was born in him. The ferocity with which he had fought before paled into insignificance beside the mad fury with which he now attacked the three terrible creatures upon him. Shaking himself like a great ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... does protect, the sap-vessels and the process of circulation to which they are adapted, from the injury which necessarily must otherwise ensue. Now, if an animal is in danger of suffocation from want of vital air, instead of starving by being exposed to its unqualified rigour, instinct or reason directs the sufferer to approach those apertures through which any supply of that necessary of human life can be attained, and induces man, at the same time, to free himself from any coverings which may be rendered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... all was amicable, except that there was a slight contest between the sisters whether they should dress alike, as Eleanor wished, while Jean had eyes and instinct enough to see that the colours and forms that set her fair complexion and flaxen tresses off to perfection were damaging to Elleen's freckles and general auburn colouring. Hitherto the sisters had worn ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of peace, they say, Two awful portents gloom the public mind: All Mexico is arming for the fray And Colonel Mark McDonald has resigned! We know not by what instinct he divined The coming trouble—may be, like the steed Described by Job, he smelled the fight afar. Howe'er it be, he left, and for that deed Is an aspirant to the G.A.R. When cannon flame along the Rio Grande A citizen's commission ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... to their household goods and began hastily to pack them into their bosoms. Immediately half the camels lurched to their feet with horrid sounds, began to turn round like teetotums and went a-visiting among their friends. The Mark VII. Camels, as if by instinct, sought the Mark VI. (We should perhaps remark that this refers not to a difference in the brand of camel, but to the fact that the Battalion used Mark VI. ammunition for the long rifles, with which they were still armed and Mark VII. for the Lewis ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... He had seen her only, not her dress. It was only by a careful scrutiny that he was able to satisfy himself which bonnet and which outline of a cloak was Eleanor's. But once his attention had alighted on the right figure, and he was sure, by a kind of instinct. The turns of the head, the fine proportions of the shoulders, could be none but her's; and Mr. Carlisle moved somewhat nearer and took up a position a little in the rear of that form, so that he could watch ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... remark, which he thought might be a trap, the young officer ran lightly up the stairway, and rang loudly at the door of the second floor. His lover's instinct told ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... which can be given to a public man who has chances of enriching himself is, that he remains poor. When a member of Congress, known not to be worth ten thousand dollars, returns to his home worth one hundred thousand dollars, the public have an instinct that he has, somehow or other, been untrue to himself and his country. When a great man returns home from Washington poorer than when he went, his influence is apt to survive his power; and this perpetuated influence is the highest glory of a public man,—the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... By instinct, rather than sight, Anita stopped in front of the right door and met the chaplain ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... play. A boy or girl who is not allowed to play or who is restrained by too anxious parents is unhappy indeed. Nearly all animals play. We know, for instance, that puppies, kittens, and lambs are playful. It is a perfectly natural instinct. By proper play we build up our bodies and train our minds. The healthy man never gets too old to play. He may not care to play marbles or roll hoops, but he will find his pleasure in some game or sport like tennis, golf, horseback riding, camping, ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... love and desire are for her home and her loved ones, and planted right in by the side of these two loves of hern is a deathless instinct and desire to protect and save ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... him and had watched him silently. He had wished he had been his own flesh and blood. Perhaps he had always felt a longing for a son who might have been his companion as well as his successor. Who knew whether a thwarted paternal instinct might not now be giving him such thinking to do as he might have done if Donal Muir had been the son of his body—dead on the battlefield but leaving behind him something to be gravely considered? What would a man think—what would a man ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nations. And while everywhere else parts were uniting and union was becoming organization—and neither geographical remoteness nor unwieldiness of number nor local interests and differences were untractable obstacles to that spirit of fusion which was at once the ambition of the few and the instinct of the many; and cities, even where most powerful, had become the centres of the attracting and joining forces, knots in the political network—while this was going on more or less happily throughout the rest of Europe, in Italy the ancient classic idea ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... an early call, major. I suppose I am indebted for the pleasure to the fact that Ensign Hester took an early departure, according to instructions, and your paternal instinct led you to speed his journey. I must confess my surprise that you did not accompany him. I suppose you are waiting for the opportunity of a more comfortable passage by schooner. For my part, I prefer the excitement of a canoe voyage; ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... natural manner, dealing with out-door life. Perhaps, on the whole, the writer who most resembles him—superficial differences apart—is Fielding. In both there is constant shrewdness and common-sense, a constant feeling of the comic side of things, a moral instinct which escapes in irony, never in denunciation or fanaticism; no remarkable spirituality of feeling, an acceptance of the world as a pleasant enough place, provided good dinners and a sufficiency of cash are to be had, and that ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... but to have published a new set of elegiac poems in the form of frank letters about his present life to his wife and friends. A third volume of these poems, which he called Tristia, had just appeared and more were likely to follow. He had an extraordinary instinct ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... a great law of the universe. The power of life, wherever guided by will, whether in beast or man, or even where we can only venture to speak of instinct, thus asserts its superiority. Within its appointed range, the laws of the material world are evidently subject to its control. Iron may be firmly held together by the attraction of cohesion: but man wills its ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... there's the question whether War doesn't mean the suspension of all ordinary moral laws. The law that you shan't kill is in abeyance. The instinct of self-preservation has to be suppressed. There's some justification for being an Epicurean for the duration of ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... have been singularly wanting in what may be called the historic instinct, and we need not wonder at finding the people generally destitute of it. The evidence for Christianity drawn from its history makes no impression on them. Historical facts and the wildest legends are received by them with equal readiness. When ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... of art which admit of no living equal, I saw at once that I had pained her: she had grown almost livid; her lips were quivering, and it was only with a great effort that she muttered out some faint words intended for applause. I comprehended by an instinct how gradually there can grow upon the mind of an artist the most generous that jealousy which makes the fear of a rival annihilate the delight in art. If ever I should achieve S——-'s fame as a singer, should I feel the same jealousy?—I think not now, but ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his instinct (true, though dumb) Tells him by subtle signs No bullet loosed by me shall come Shattering earth below his tum Or whistling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 - 1917 Almanack • Various
... greeted, was that equal idol of a former generation, Victor de Mauleon. No pious friend prayed beside his couch, no loving kiss waked him from his slumbers. At the grey of the November dawn he rose from a sleep which had no smiling dreams, with that mysterious instinct of punctual will which cannot even go to sleep without fixing beforehand the exact moment in which sleep shall end. He, too, like Enguerrand, dressed himself with care—unlike Enguerrand, with care strictly soldier-like. Then, seeing he had some little time yet before ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Georgina as breathing. She could not repeat the simplest message without unconsciously imitating the tone and gesture of the one who sent it. This dramatic instinct made a good reader of her when she took her turn with Barbara in reading aloud. They used to take page about, sitting with their arms around each other on the old claw- foot sofa, backed ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... nerve centers, muscles and ligaments. A later development of manipulative science is Chiropractic, originated by Dr. Palmer of Davenport, Iowa. Thus the simple pioneers of German Nature Cure, every one of them gifted by Nature with the instinct and genius of the true healer, who is born, not made, laid the foundation for the worldwide ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... both, but especially so for the lovely young woman whose sincerity and singleness of purpose led her to believe that a very natural and womanly instinct was the prompting of a spiritual concern for an immortal soul wandering from the right path. Roland as a hypocrite, affecting a piety he despised, would not have been either so captivating or so dangerous as Roland honestly ignorant and doubtful, yet ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Half the population here have names as unchristian quite—Norma, Odoacer, Archimedes—my housemaid is called Themis—but Dionea seemed to scandalize every one, perhaps because these good folk had a mysterious instinct that the name is derived from Dione, one of the loves of Father Zeus, and mother of no less a lady than the goddess Venus. The child was very near being called Maria, although there are already twenty-three other Marias, Mariettas, Mariuccias, and so forth at the convent. But ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... that the branches were full of oysters there, we say that those oysters that he saw and that are on the branches above the water and a little under the water are not those that produce pearls, but another species; because those that bear pearls are more careful from their natural instinct to hide themselves as much further under water as they can than those ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... strangely enough, forgetting Homer's simile, I happened to take the fly for an expression of the audacity of freedom in speaking of quite another subject.* Whether it should be called courage, or mere mechanical instinct, may be questioned, but assuredly no other animal, exposed to continual danger, is so absolutely without ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... sucking-dove"), I cannot see good reason for disbelieving the story. Pope was not twelve years old when he turned the siege of Troy into a play, and got his school-fellows to perform it, the part of Ajax being given to the gardener. Man is a theatrical animal ([Greek: zoon mimaetikon]), and the instinct is developed at a very early period, as almost every family can witness that has taken its ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... cold indifference, and it would have been difficult to believe that, even in his heart, he had taken the trouble to be resentful. Ailsa, watching, felt a little impatient with him. She wanted to break through the shell in which he chose to hide that self which her instinct told her was so different to his outward seeming. What had become of the gay Londoner, who drove the smartest four-in-hand in the park, and rode the fastest horse to hounds? She longed to write home and ask her people ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... my distance to the house was only eighteen miles and the road quite safe, I contrived to lose myself three or four times, till, en desespoir, I threw the bridle on my horse's neck, trusting to his instinct to extricate me from ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the cross in the moonlight. The facets caught the silvery rays and focussed them. The amulet seemed to shudder with some prophecy of woe. It was now that, for the first time, I began to feel the signs of that great struggle between reason and the inherited instinct of superstition which afterwards played so important a part in my life. I then took up the parchment scroll, and opened it and re-read the curse. The great letters in which the English version was printed seemed ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... face of the convict abruptly changed; fury, hatred, a blind instinct to kill were unmistakably revealed in his countenance as he heard the bland voice of the police agent. From the child's hand the gold disk fell and rolled under the wooden slab that served as a couch in ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... my native land," where people are not arrested without knowing what is the crime with which they are charged. Removing the jar of water and the can of food from my pony's back, without stopping to think why I did it, but following a sort of instinct which afterwards saved me from perishing, I fastened these articles on my shoulders and around my waist; then, sobbing, threw my arms around poor pony's neck, and with a pang bade him good-by. He flew snorting away to his stable, where I have no doubt he soon found comfort ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... surprised and puzzled for a moment. He had never seen the young lady, but he thought that she perhaps knew his mother; at any rate, his instinct of politeness made ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... man, the paragon of animals. "In form and moving how express and admirable!" His frame is perfect mechanism, instinct with glowing life, and guarded by the great conservative and healing powers of nature from disease and death. His vitality is surpassed by that of man, because man has the endowment of soul, and ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... and polish about her strain, however, like that in the vivacious conversation of a well-bred lady of the world, that commands respect. Her maternal instinct, also, is very strong, and that simple structure of dead twigs and dry grass is the center of much anxious solicitude. Not long since, while strolling through the woods, my attention was attracted to a small ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... did not get on; his noisy talk and brusque manners scared the German, who was unused to such behaviour. One poor devil detects another by instinct at once, but in old age he rarely gets on with him, and that is hardly astonishing, he has nothing to share ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... consciousness to trees. Weismann insisted that the chick breaks out of its eggshell automatically; that the butterfly, springing into the air to avoid the pounce of the lizard, 'does not wish to avoid death; knows nothing about death,' what has happened being simply that a flight instinct evolved by Circumstantial Selection reacts promptly to a visual impression produced by the lizard's movement. His proof is that the butterfly immediately settles again on the flower, and repeats the performance every time ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... resigned, modest, but proud and great love, might conquer his coldness; and yet, in spite of this hope, in spite of this future trust, Elizabeth trembled and feared more than formerly. She knew that the hour of decision was drawing nigh; she felt with the instinct of true love that a new storm was rising on the ever-clouded horizon of her marriage, and that the lightning might soon ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... marvellous a thing this instinct is; that one bird, by an absolute and unvarying instinct, should forego the dear business of nesting and feeding, and should take shrewd advantage of the labours of other birds! It cannot be a deliberately reasoned or calculated thing; ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... passed between them, but Rowles had held such a prejudice against Mitchell's employment that really no intercourse had taken place between the two families. Mrs. Rowles had been drawn, she knew not how, but by some sort of instinct, to visit her brother-in-law this day; and she had further been impelled to offer Juliet a trip to the country. But ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... impress was as when she reverently looked upon that cross of Christ, at the foot of which was traced that which she could not but associate therewith. The depth of her dreamy eyes spoke not only of him who had left them, but they told of the soul's instinct in regard to that which was as ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... soapsuds, and the young Turk yelled bloody murder, just like an American kid, and then sat down on its knees, so the spanking wouldn't hurt, and called its mother names in a language I couldn't understand, but I knew what the child said, by instinct. Dad started to interfere, because he is a member of the humane society, but the unique that was showing us around saved dad's life by pushing him along, before the woman got a chance to brain him ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... education; finally, in most of the primitive human institutions and monuments, products of unconscious genius independent of theories. And the regular and complex movements of the heavenly bodies; the marvellous combinations of matter,—could it not be said that these too are the effects of a special instinct, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... or some kind of a ratchet at the base of it had got out of order. For a moment—a moment can be the little sister of eternity—I could say nothing. Then I found myself in the clutches of the instinct for self-preservation. I felt it in me to stop the giggles of the girls on the front seat; to take the patronising smiles out of the tolerant eyes of the grown people. Maybe my voice lost something of its piping insistence and was touched with genuine feeling; ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... own fortune was safe and in her control. But with the usual instinct of women who know they have an income not likely to be ever increased, she began to be economical. She thought not of herself; but of the boy. It was the boy's fortune now. She began to look sharply after expenses; she reduced her household; she took upon herself the care of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... spoke hotly as to their notion of the method of ruling Venezia. One had bidden his Herr General to 'look here,' while he stretched forth his hand and declared that Italians were like women, and wanted—yes, wanted—(their instinct called for it) a beating, a real beating; as the emphatic would say in our vernacular, a thundering thrashing, once a month:-'Or so,' the General added acquiescingly. A thundering thrashing, once a month ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Stick to it," they said on the bridge, and wondered whether it was the skipper or the radio man who was framing the messages. He had the dramatic instinct, whoever he was. ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... where there was decidedly good hunting in the way of prize ships. Off Martinique were many French and Spanish boats simply waiting, it would almost seem, to be eaten alive by the enemy's cruisers; and Captain Peter who had the sound treasure-hunting instinct of your born adventurer, proceeded to gobble them up! In the four months that rolled jovially by between the middle of February and the middle of June, the Captain captured twenty-four of these prizes, one alone with a plate cargo valued at two hundred and fifty thousand ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... her chair, which was close to his bed, and as she did so just touched his hand with hers. It was involuntary on her part, having come of instinct rather than will, and she withdrew herself instantly. The hand she had touched belonged to the arm that was not hurt, and he put it out after her, and caught her by the sleeve as she was retreating. "Oh, Mr. Medlicot, ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... he takes so many play-days. It would be a very sharp spur of necessity indeed that would drive me into a coal-pit at all; and nothing would keep me there one hour after necessity was satisfied. I shall take into consideration the instinct of our common humanity that craves for some sweetness in life, and as far as I am able it shall be gratified. Now, the other three days: what shall be their occupation? Idleness ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... her hands in his, pulsing warm with the flowing red of his strength. She let them remain lifelessly, as if she had not the will to take them away, the instinct of her part again dominant. To him this was another victory, and it was discovery—the discovery of melting weakness in her for the first time, which magnified his sense of masculine power. He tightened his ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... a denial of religion, then, which the famous utterance of Marx involves, but a recognition of the fact that, even as all religions may be traced to the same fundamental instinct in mankind, so the different forms which the religious conception assumes are, or may be, reflexes of the material life of those making them. Thus man makes religion for himself under the urge of his deepest instincts. The application of the theory to religion is analogous ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... with which he pursued it was surprising. A cunning fox-like instinct led him to read Anna Gessner's character as few others who had known her. Believing greatly in the gospel of heredity, he perceived that Anna owed much to her father and more to her nationality. "She is selfish and passionate, a little devil in single harness ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... Situation and its Issue. A Brace of Heroines and their Expedition. Women Doubling Cape Horn. A Parting Hymn and Long Farewell. A Missionary Wife's Experience in Oregon. All Alone with the Wolves. A Woman's Instinct in the Hour of Danger. Dr. White's Dilemma and its Solution. A Clean Pair of Heels and a Convenient Tree. A Perilous Voyage and its Consequences. A Heartrending Catastrophe. A Mother's Lost Treasure. A Savage Coterie and the White Stranger. Mrs. Whitman ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... to the height of two or three hundred feet, afforded in their crevices shelter for unnumbered sea-fowl, in situations seemingly secured by their dizzy height from the rapacity of man. Many of these wild tribes, with the instinct which sends them to seek the land before a storm arises, were now winging towards their nests with the shrill and dissonant clang which announces disquietude and fear. The disk of the sun became almost totally obscured ere he had altogether sunk below ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... not so easy to do good as those who have never attempted it may imagine; and they who without consideration follow the mere instinct of pity, often by their imprudent generosity create evils more pernicious to society than any which they partially remedy. "Warm Charity, the general friend," may become the general enemy, unless she consults her head as well as her heart. Whilst she pleases herself with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... which never can be realised. Between us there is a great gulf, not of inexplicable moral antipathies and distances, I hope, as there seemed to be between me and that gentleman concerned in the Stamp Office, that I so strangely recoiled from at Haydon's. I think I had an instinct that he was the head of an office. I hate all such people—accountants' deputy-accountants. The dear abstract notion of the East India Company, as long as she is unseen, is pretty, rather poetical; but as she makes herself manifest by the persons ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... once, without knowing why, moved by an impulse, a blind, resistless instinct, Vandover started up in bed, raising his clasped hands above him, crying out, "Oh, help me! Why don't you help me? You can if you only will!" Who was it to whom he had cried with such unerring intuition? He gave ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... therefore, we steered our course, as the Spaniards were also probably doing. Our horses, we fancied, must have seen them likewise, or their instinct told them that water was to be found in the neighbourhood. We looked round in vain for Ithulpo and the Indians. Not a sign of them could we perceive, and it would have been madness to have attempted to search for them. Indeed, had we found them, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... made an advance along all lines that make for the higher development of a people cannot be denied. He has improved morally in a corresponding way. The limit of this paper will not permit a statistical comparison, but a few points may be noticed in passing. His moral instinct is quickened and his moral nature asserts itself in higher forms of life under the new conditions. He has started at the fountainhead and the purity of his home and hearthstone is a magnificent memorial to the purity of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... mother, where love loses its awe, and veneration is mixed with tenderness. What can I say on such a subject? What can I do but repeat the ready truths which, with the quick impulse of the mind, must spring to the lips of every man on such a theme? Filial love! the moral of instinct, the sacrament of nature and duty, or rather let me say, it is miscalled a duty, for it flows from the heart without effort, and is its delight, its indulgence, its enjoyment. It is guided, not by the slow dictates of reason; it awaits not encouragement ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... supposed that western Europe was overpopulated and that the crusades operated a beneficial reduction of numbers.[441] These facts may account for the gigantic mass phenomena in the early Middle Ages. Every sentiment was extravagant. Men were under some mighty gregarious instinct which drove them to act in masses, and they passed from one great passion or enthusiastic impulse to another at very short intervals. The passions of hatred and revenge were manifested, upon occasion, to the extremity ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... oratorical vocabulary—he could not very well do without them. He is a democrat, and he declares that in the presence of hereditary majesties, he would most resolutely refuse to bend the knee. No doubt he would, and his instinct is correct aesthetically as well as morally. It's a stiff knee he wears, and you can't help smiling at the thought of the two long members of his leg, tightly cased in striped trousers, arranging themselves in an obsequious ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... twilight, Berenger came down the steps, conducting a graceful gentleman in black, to whom Lady Thistlewood's instinct impelled her to make a low courtesy, before Berenger had said, 'Madam, allow me to present to you my friend, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... closed. This causes a moment's uncertainty among the hounds, but not a check, for they drive straight onwards, and it is evident that he is making for some earths five miles away in a neighbouring hunt's territory, which instinct tells him will ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... misty, and faint, and confused, you know; but perhaps it was something like instinct made me crawl to Lizzy's favourite place, for it was not intended. She did not see me, for her back was my way; and I did not mean her to know I was there; for in spite of my giddiness, I seemed to feel that she had learned all the ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... even while perfectly restrained and steady. Shot, on the contrary, though a few minutes since he too was drawing, knows nothing of himself, perceives no indication of the game's near presence, although improved by discipline, his instinct tells him that his mate has found them. Hence the same rigid form, stiff tail, and constrained attitude, but in his face—for dogs have faces—there is none of that tense energy, that evident anxiety; there is no frown upon his brow, no glare in his ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... as in the use of language after it has been gained. The pupil is for this purpose prompted by Nature to think and to speak at the same moment;—mentally to prepare one sentence, while he is giving utterance to its predecessor. That this is not the result of instinct, but is altogether an acquisition made under the tuition of Nature by the mental exertions of the infant himself, is obvious from the fact, that he is at first incapable of it, and never pronounces three, and very seldom two words consecutively without a pause between each. ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... of it up here. The horses, too, have had all the grass they want and we'll tether 'em for the night, though there's not one chance in a thousand that they'll wander from the valley. Animals have instinct, and if there's no powerful enemy near they always stay where food and water are to be had. I tell you what, Will, if a man could only have all his own senses coupled with those of a deer or a wolf, what a mighty scout ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... of the Indian boy, growing gentler and softer as he gazed, looked into one another. Then the struggling and panting of the young eagle ceased; the wild, frightened look passed out of its eyes, and it suffered Waukewa to pass his hand gently over its ruffled and draggled feathers. The fierce instinct to fight, to defend its threatened life, yielded to the charm of the tenderness and pity expressed in the boy's eyes; and from that moment Waukewa and the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... he, in a few segregated sentences, 'has been written, with truth and eloquence, by great minds, upon the dignity of labor; but it is the dignity of the laborer which is the vital point that demands attention. Labor or industry needs no apology, no advocates; it is the very instinct of our being, and one of the first to develop itself; it is only when performed in a peculiar way, or associated with a particular class, that it is considered disreputable. How is this evil to be remedied? Not by assuming a superiority, but by attaining to it. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... she resumed her seat, his eyes upon the tree-tops beyond the casement, "the Seraphines have not the instinct of motherhood. And the future greatness of our race depends upon those noble women who are able to pass on to their sons and daughters a life which is true, and brave, and worthy; a life whose foundation is ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... himself to suffer when his neighbours suffer, and to feel happy when everyone around him is happy. Directly he hears the heart-rending cry of the mother, he leaps into the water, not through reflection but by instinct, and when she thanks him for saving her child, he says, "What have I done to deserve thanks, my good woman? I am happy to see you happy; I have acted from natural impulse and could not ...
— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin
... Union are assailed, invaded, and threatened with destruction; our ancient rights and liberties are in danger; the peace and tranquillity of our homes have been invaded by lawless violence, and their further invasion is imminent; the instinct of self-preservation arms society ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... business, to establish trade connections in various parts of the world—one being pushed even into Central Asia. When sixty he became mayor of Derby and magistrate. He had in a high degree that which another friend of mine describes as the business instinct—an instinct which experience tells him is quite special, and may or may not accompany ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Every instinct in him revolted against spanking Nicky. But when Williams, the groom, showed him a graze on each knee of the pony he had bought for Frances and the children, Anthony determined that, this time, Nicky ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... way through the clamoring hack-drivers and hotel- runners who blocked the entrance to the city, I was roused by a sudden thrill of the instinct of danger that warns one when he meets the eye of a snake. It was gone in an instant, but I had time to trace effect to cause. The warning came this time from the eyes of a man, a lithe, keen-faced man who flashed a look ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... not recovered from that sudden glimpse of guilty fear which she had read in the man's face. All her woman's instinct told her that it was not the mere fright of a man who is startled. Guilt—that ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the vindication of the Holy Spirit. In many cases the French originals could not be reproduced in England, owing to their Gallic flavor. A Parisian artist, disporting himself among those highly moral histories in the Bible which our youths and maidens discover with unerring instinct, was not a spectacle which one could dare to exhibit before the pious and chaste British public; any more than an English poet could follow the lead of Evariste Parny in his "Guerre des Dieux" and "Les Amours de la Bible." But many others were free from ...
— Comic Bible Sketches - Reprinted from "The Freethinker" • George W. Foote
... the location of the ford, but found no one. The enemy was advancing rapidly upon them and they had about given up in despair, when they saw a deer with her young step into the water and cross safely. In full confidence that the instinct of the animal had guided her correctly, they followed and reached the south side of the Main safely. The Saxons followed, but could not find the shallow place to cross, for there was no deer to guide them, and the city, dating from ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... original collection of Asbjoernsen and Moe. Comrades from boyhood to manhood, scholar and naturalist, these two together had taken long walks into the secluded peasant districts and had secured the tales from the people of the dales and fells, careful to retain the folk-expressions. Dasent, with the instinct, taste, and skill of a true scholar, has preserved these tales of an honest manly race, a race of simple men and women, free and unsubdued. He has preserved them in their folk-language and in their true Norse setting. Harris (1848-1908) has given his tales ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... the scientific, methodical, and tenacious genius of Barclay, whose mind, German like his birth, was for calculating every thing, even the chances of the hazard, bent on owing all to his tactics, and nothing to fortune; on the other the martial, bold, and vehement instinct of Bagration, an old Russian of the school of Suwarrow, dissatisfied at being under a general who was his junior in the service—terrible in battle, but acquainted with no other book than nature, no other instructor than memory, no other counsels than ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... How should that virgin, locked up in that inaccessible fortress, where she has never seen any man that was not eighty, or humpbacked, or her father, know that there were such beings in the world as young men? I suppose there's an instinct. I suppose there's a season. I never spoke for my part to a fairy princess, or heard as much from any unenchanted or enchanting maiden. Ne'er a one of them has ever whispered her pretty little secrets to me, or perhaps confessed them to herself, her mamma, or her nearest and dearest confidante. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... teased me to love her and kept me in her paws till the bell rang for tea. Why can't I like her? I should be so ashamed if I should find out after all that she is as good as she seems, but I never did get cheated yet when I trusted my own mother wits, my instinct, or whatever it is by which I know folks—and she is ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... in whom friendliness was a primary instinct, Jim Breen never entered a trolley-car nor turned a street corner without speaking or nodding to every one he knew. Never did he visit a neighboring town without calling on, or calling up, every one ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... never gifted any political party with all of political wisdom or blinded it with all of political folly. Upon the foregoing point of controversy the Whigs were sadly thrown on the defensive, and labored heavily under their already discounted declamation. But instinct rather than sagacity led them to turn their eyes to the future, and successfully upon other points to retrieve their mistake. Within six weeks after Lincoln's speech President Polk sent to the Senate a treaty of peace, under which Mexico ceded to the United States an ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... thrilling and critical moment, and had the young hunter leaped up he might have been dangerously if not fatally struck. But by instinct he backed away silently and moved off in another direction through the brush. The rattlesnake did not follow, although it kept its piercing eyes on the hunter as long as possible. After the antelope stalk was over, Roosevelt came back to the ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... dark traits which she had believed to be Spanish, but which she could now trace to such a different origin. In a moment, and for ever, her girlish vanity fell from her. She felt as if her beauty were but the badge of degradation and misery. And then there came the keen instinct of resentment—it was to her mother, whom she loved, that she owed this intolerable suffering. Crouching down and shivering, as if with cold, she yielded to the storm of thought which swept over her, yielded to it in a kind of blind despair, from ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... declared, "a feeling, that he's a revolutionist. When I served on a special commission at the governor-general's of Moscow avec Ladisias, I learned to scent these gentlemen as well as nonconformists. I believe in instinct above everything." Here Kollomietzev related how he had once caught an old sectarian by the heel somewhere near Moscow, on whom he had looked in, accompanied by the police, and who nearly jumped out of his cottage window. "He was sitting quite quietly on his bench ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... ordinance of confession, without which her pardon is not granted, tends also to give license to evil. He who kneels before fallen man, and opens in confession the secret thoughts and imaginations of his heart, is debasing his manhood, and degrading every noble instinct of his soul. In unfolding the sins of his life to a priest,—an erring, sinful mortal, and too often corrupted with wine and licentiousness,—his standard of character is lowered, and he is defiled in consequence. His thought of God is degraded to the likeness of fallen humanity; for the priest ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... "captors" in the streets of the Pale, who were turned by the thousands into soldiers, deported into outlying provinces, and belabored in such a manner that scarcely half of them remained alive and barely a tenth remained within the Jewish fold. Guided by an infallible instinct, the plain Jewish people formulated their own simplified theory to account for the step taken by the Government: up to the present their children had been baptized through the barracks, in the future they would be baptized through the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... fruit. Thou hast come to the great village of my race, to the spot where we have dwelt ever since ourselves, and this lake, and that hill, were formed at the nod of the Great Spirit. Hitherto we have dwelt in peace, unvisited by one of thy race, but reason, and instinct alike inform me that thou wilt become the enemy of my tribe. Hitherto we have dwelt in peace, with none to vex us, or make us afraid—that period is past, and now thou wilt destroy us, unless something is done ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... of the town. "I must go and see what it is all about!" exclaimed the jailer, rushing out. We thought he had left the door open behind him, but, greatly to our disappointment, we found that, even though frightened, by instinct rather than intention he had ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... has brought me up very freely, so that I can count myself among the young girls who are free from prejudice. In spite of this, a sort of internal anxiety or false shame has hindered me from speaking of all the things of which you treat. All that I knew I had read in books or derived by instinct. Although I knew very well that my mother would always answer my questions I ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... and returns in twenty years a big, bearded, broad-shouldered man, with practically no outward resemblance to the boy that went away. But even though he strive to conceal his identity he cannot hide it long from his mother. She looks into his eyes and her soul leaps out to him. Call it instinct, insight, intuition, sympathy, what you please, it is the spiritual vision, soul recognizing soul. If that spiritual vision apart from bodily shape plays so great a part in recognition here, may it not be all-sufficient there? In that life where there is ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... greater. Here is one who penetrates far deeper into things. His treatment of the psychology of sin itself shows how much more than an example was needed. Here, as in the other chapters, but here above all we have to remember the clearness of his insight, his swiftness of penetration, his instinct for fact and reality. He means to do, to achieve, something. It is no martyr's death that he incurs. His death is a step to a purpose. "I have a baptism to be baptised with," he says (Luke 12:50). "The Son of Man," he said, ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... a whist drive or a singing competition in the Church Army hut was interrupted by one of these Egyptian plagues of darkness. But even then we did not allow ourselves to be seriously embarrassed. The men, responsive to the instinct of discipline, sat quiet at the whist tables with their cards in their hands. The glow of burning cigarettes could be seen, faint spots of light; ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... right; you understand," cried Dyke, and the woman hurried out with the birds, the dog following her, his instinct teaching him that there would be the heads and possibly other odds and ends to fall to his share. But before going, he went and poked at the two cubs and ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... appeared, a man austere, The instinct of whose nature was to kill; The wrath of God he preached from year to year, And read, with fervor, Edwards on the Will; His favorite pastime was to slay the deer In Summer on some Adirondac hill; E'en now, while walking down ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... back to an extremely remote epoch, before man had arrived at the dignity of manhood, he would have been guided more by instinct and less by reason than are the lowest savages at the present time. Our early semi- human progenitors would not have practised infanticide or polyandry; for the instincts of the lower animals are never so perverted (62. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin |
