"Instinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knew, with his tiger instinct, that they would soon find him out, and they appeared sooner than he expected. Then the howls, screams and banging made the worst and most terrifying noise he had ever heard in a tiger hunt. He was pretty sure of himself. He had had some narrow ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... that lies behind and beyond what we call humour is revealed only to the few who, by instinct or by effort, have given thought to it. The world's humour, in its best and greatest sense, is perhaps the highest product of our civilisation. One thinks here not of the mere spasmodic effects of the comic ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... rather of a copper-red; and she was neither so hairy on the body nor of so ape-like proportions. She was sufficiently hideous, however, and of some race plainly inferior to the People of the Caves. The natural instinct of a Cave Man would have been to knock her and her offspring on the head without ceremony—an effective method of guarding his more highly developed breed from the mixture of an inferior blood. But Grom, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... decision, then, he whirled upon the crowd, pushed it back, cleared a space. The other policeman and the man in the soiled overalls—he was foreman of The Whale—picked up Billy Gray, who was turning and mumbling feebly, and started to carry him upstairs. A sudden impulse of her limbs, an instinct independent of her will, drew her toward them. The policeman, clearing away the ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... is felt that this was to be a wondering dinner, and that the wondering must not be neglected. Accordingly, Brewer, as the man who has the greatest reputation to sustain, becomes the interpreter of the general instinct. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... and the position of Sagittarius Lodge in its own grounds beside the River Mouse at Crampton St. Peter, N.—N., I said, sir—totally and entirely unnecessary. I will go further, sir, and I will say more. You have not only done that. You have also proved the sacred instinct of a woman, a respectable married woman—such as we must all reverence—false and deceived. Remember this, sir, remember all this, then search yourself thoroughly and say whether what you have ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... jocular ironies would endeavor to drag the talk away from clinics, adenoids, children's teeth, epidemics and the new education. But no joke was so good that Deborah could not promptly match it with some amusing little thing which one of her children had said or done. For she had a mother's instinct for bragging fondly of her brood. It was deep, it was uncanny, this queer ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... was very near, and Adam rose from the stone wall. It happened that just as he walked forward, Dinah had paused and turned round to look back at the village—who does not pause and look back in mounting a hill? Adam was glad, for, with the fine instinct of a lover, he felt that it would be best for her to hear his voice before she saw him. He came within three paces of her and then said, "Dinah!" She started without looking round, as if she connected the sound with no place. "Dinah!" Adam said again. He knew quite well what was in her mind. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... 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 had ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... stillness of expectancy that is destruction to the nerves of a host. In this special pause, however, lay something beyond the ordinary: a discomfort, a palpable uneasiness, that sheathed a subtle threat. Sophia, with her woman's instinct, was no quicker to perceive it than her husband. They, with Countess Caroline and every other woman in the rooms, put the same interpretation upon that significant lull. It spoke thus: "It is late, and he whom we were commanded to meet ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... She doubted whether he could have told her who composed the existing cabinet, or have given the name of a single bishop beyond the see in which his own parish was situated. But Captain Aylmer knew everybody, and had read everything, and understood, as though by instinct, all the movements of the ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... which follow, in a more or less uniform way, definite types of stimuli presented to the organism. Such an inherited tendency on the part of an organism to react in an effective manner, but without any definite purpose in view, whenever a particular stimulus presents itself, is known as instinct, and the resulting action is described as an instinctive act. As an example of purely instinctive action may be taken the maternal instinct of insects whose larvae require live prey when they are born. To provide this the mother administers sufficient poison ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... peasant, reared in the atmosphere of communal land ownership, was far from being a fanatical defender of private property. No Thiers could have rallied a Russian peasant army for the suppression of a communistic industrial wage-earning class by an appeal to their property instinct. To make matters worse for the capitalists, the peasant's strongest craving was for more land, all the land, without compensation! This the capitalists, being capitalists, were unable to grant. Yet it was the only sort of currency which the peasant would accept ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... "I cannot bear to desert one whose life I have preserved, whom I have saved from danger. True, he asks me to plead his cause against men of great influence. I do not wish to do so, yet what am I to do? I have already helped him once, nay twice." Do you not perceive how very powerful this instinct must be, if it leads us to bestow benefits first because it is right to do so, and afterwards because we have already bestowed somewhat? Though at the outset a man may have had no claim upon us, we yet continue to give to him because we have already given to him. So untrue is it ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... new interest. Danger lurked in Princeman's black eyes, fascination dwelt in his black hair, attractiveness was in every line of his athletic figure. It was upon the tip of Sam's tongue to say that he would join Princeman in his walk, but he repressed that instinct immediately. ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... ruddy cheeks; and, at the age of nine, he had learned to walk on his hands in a manner that caused acute envy to rankle in the bosom of every boy in the neighborhood. Also, as is most unusual among boys of whatever station, color or instinct, he was self-sacrificing, and more than generous, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... hung upon his arm when they went out for their walks, and instead of endeavouring to monopolise his mother, turned the tables upon her by monopolising this the only man who belonged to him, and to whom he turned with the instinct of budding manhood. John too was very willing to be thus appropriated, and it came to pass that now and then Elinor was left out, or left herself out of the calculation, urging that the walk they were planning was too far for ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... premeditated reference to this world or the next. You might almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a pure manipulator; his brain, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... household. Meantime we beg to suggest another way of effecting her purpose quite as easy, and much more effectual. Why not go in for an Act of Parliament, having for its object the total suppression of the instinct of vanity in the female bosom? Let it be enacted that, on and after the 1st of next April (the date would be appropriate), feathers, flowers, and the other abominations which she seeks to proscribe, shall be for ever abjured and disused by the fair sex. As the prelude to that full entry ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... had drawn her hand within his arm, laid his own upon it for a moment. He was in the happy position of a son in whom filial affection represented no enforced piety, but the spontaneous instinct of his nature. His mother had been so far his best friend; and though he rarely spoke of his father his childish recollections of him, and the impression left by his mother's constant and deliberate talk of him, during the boyish years of her son, had entered ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... little wings. He had flushed a covey of quail; but as his mind was at the time set on nobler game, and the chance for a shot not particularly good, he did not attempt to fire; though naturally his gun flew up to his shoulder through the hunter instinct. ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... midst of them he recognized a figure that explained the cause of their mysterious conduct, and at the same time aroused his fighting instinct. ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... puzzles me; a little helpless wax image that does not know you, that can't respond to you, and won't perhaps when it can; that has nothing interesting in it, that is not amusing like a kitten, or even pretty. Well! let us suppose the people it belongs to like it by instinct—but ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the motherly instinct that is in all true love surging up even above the lover's instinct. It made her clasp and unclasp her hands in distress, to think of him going away alone over the waste moors, from the place where they had been ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... Tourneur, than to be the accurate critic that he was of Coleridge, at the very time when he was under the 'whiff and wind' of Coleridge's influence. And in writing of pictures, though his knowledge is not so great nor his instinct so wholly 'according to knowledge,' he can write as no one has ever written in praise of Titian (so that his very finest sentence describes a picture of Titian) and can instantly detect and minutely expose ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... this man. In that prayer of hers she had, as it were, placed the matter in the hand of a higher Power, and there she meant to leave it, feeling quite convinced that although vengeance might tarry it would fall at last. As for her money, he could have it. From the beginning her instinct told her that her husband's object was not amorous, but purely monetary, a fact of which she soon had plentiful proof, and her great, indeed her only hope was that when the wealth was gone he would go too. An otter, says the Dutch proverb, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the men were employed in fortifying the position. Deep holes were dug along the edge of the wood, and behind these were trenches and pitfalls. Mahmud's own temper grew daily more sullen and fierce. His own fighting instinct was in favour of the attack his followers longed to deliver, but in his heart he was afraid that the result might be fatal. It was not the rifles of the infantry that he feared—of these he had no experience—but the artillery, which he ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... no active power, but what carries the expression of his momentary pleasure. [Footnote: Insurgere paulatim munia senatus, magistratuum, legum in se trahere.] Guided by a perception as unerring as that of instinct, he never fails to select the proper objects of his antipathy or of his favour. The aspect of independence repels him; that of servility attracts. The tendency of his administration is to quiet every restless spirit, and to assume every function of government to himself. ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... "if it's any use to you my name's Carstairs, Jimmy Carstairs at that, and I'm an explorer by inclination, gentleman by instinct, and the rolling-stone-that-gathers-no-moss by sheer force of unlovely circumstance. Now you know all that I intend to tell ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... generosity and her delightful fun, which never has a trace of coarseness or silliness. It was very pleasant having her for one's companion, for she has an unusual power of winning people's confidence, and of knowing with surest instinct how to meet them on their own ground. It is the girl's being so genuinely sympathetic and interested which makes every one ready to talk to her and be friends with her; just as the sunshine makes it easy for flowers to grow which ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... for mathematical studies, and enjoying the classics rather in a literary than grammatical way. And yet it is doubtful whether any man in his class used his time to better purpose with reference to his after life, for young Emerson's instinct led him to wide reading of works, outside the curriculum, that spoke directly to him. He had already formed the habit of writing in a journal, not the facts but the thoughts and inspirations of the day; ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the Stigmata? 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 ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... that roams O'er mountain wilds, so does the King display A stalwart frame, instinct with vigorous life. His brawny arms and manly chest are scored By frequent passage of the sounding string; Unharmed he bears the midday sun; no toil His mighty spirit daunts; his sturdy limbs, Stripped of redundant flesh, relinquish nought ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... it human merits destroys all its efficacy. In it, and in it only, spiritual life, exciting to works of mercy, and giving sure hopes of immortal bliss, is to be found. God's children can no more live separated from this river than fish can live out of water. As a fish, by natural instinct, avoids foul and unwholesome water, so a Christian has spiritual powers to judge of the purity of doctrine. Like the manna from heaven, and our daily bread, it must be supplied day by day. No church cistern of works of supererogation can supply this pure water. All ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... born kickers. Breed them as you will, the moment they are able to stand up, and you put your hand on them, they will kick. It is, indeed, their natural means of defence, and they resort to it through the force of instinct. In commencing to break them, then, kicking is the first thing to guard against and overcome. The young mule kicks because he is afraid of a man. He has seen those intrusted with their care beat ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... But the existence of spirit and deity was never one of those things. Of this I am certain, from consciousness, from reason, from demonstration. But I have often doubted the real existence of matter; for this I have not even the testimony of my senses, only prejudice and instinct. It is only such a philosopher as our inspector, who believes animals are mere machines, who can be an atheist and ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... battles were sore to fight, the solid earth seemed gone from beneath his feet, and the heavens were become an illusion. There was a time when he cried out that "all men are liars," as we have all cried, but the instinct of the soul happily arrested him then. Happily, for it is strangely true that he who loses faith in man will soon lose faith in God. It is as if the great heart of the Race, recoiling from suicidal impulse, warned ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... Luzon have made greater progress in civilization and good manners than the Visayos of Panay and Negros. The Tagalog differs vastly from his southern brother in his true nature, which is more pliant, whilst he is by instinct cheerfully and disinterestedly hospitable. Invariably a European wayfarer in a Tagalog village is invited by one or another of the principal residents to lodge at his house as a free guest, for to offer payment would give offence. A present of some European article might be made, but it is not ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... joy of it, the surrender to inherent instinct, to the child that is dormant in all, Claudia and Laine yielded, went in and out among the sea of toys, and critically doll after doll was examined, compared, laid down and taken up, and finally decided upon; and as Laine gave ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... lived. On the whole, she was glad that he did not happen to be alive. The shock to him would have been too rude. The floor seemed to be giving way under Alice, melting into a sort of bog that would swallow up her and her husband. For years, without any precise information, but merely by instinct, she had felt that England, beneath the surface, was not quite the island it had been—and here was the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... the pleasant conversation of an evening party— without feeling hungry. With many, if such an appetite is not appeased it will cause sleeplessness. To eat lightly and to drink lightly at supper is a natural instinct with people if they expect to go to bed at once; but excitement is a great aid to digestion, and a heavy supper sometimes gives ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... commonest toy is the doll, which children have ever regarded as the ideal plaything. The maternal instinct is strong in the youngest girl, and dolls are often looked upon as something more than mere toys. They are talked to, played with, and treated as if they were human beings. Their realism, at first imagined, seems to have grown up with their long use until a personality surrounds ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... probably on the stroke of ten, and Dick had been half asleep for some time against the bank, when Esther came up the road carrying a bundle. Some kind of instinct, or perhaps the distant light footfalls, recalled him, while she was still a good way off, to the possession of his faculties, and he half raised himself and blinked upon the world. It took him some time to recollect his thoughts. He had awakened with ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into the shadows, the Fijian picking his way with wonderful instinct through the clumps. At about half a mile from the camp he stopped and pointed ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... better than their creeds, and, it should seem, sometimes better than their principles. In which case would his conscience prick him most, when the heat was over—as accessory to the murder or as the utterer of untruth? I cannot but think it a case of instinct, which, acting before conscience, pro hac vice supersedes it. The matter is altogether and at once, by an irresistible decree, taken out of the secondary "Court of Conscience" and put into the primary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... thus looking, he saw distinctly a point of light appear and vanish three times! It performed no such gyration as those which he had first seen, but simply came forward and receded until it was gone altogether, leaving the same misty darkness as before. More by instinct than from any other cause, Tom turned his eyes to the point opposite where he had seen this exhibition. He had scarcely done so when precisely ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... storms followed their departure, and tossed them about here and there for so many days, that their reckoning became exceedingly confused. Botello, however, was an accomplished navigator, and his sailor instinct stood him in good stead. Upon returning fair weather he conjectured that he was abreast of Cape Corientes, and the bow of the boat was directed, due ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... I could disconcert her, and probably obtain some interesting admissions from her—and have a thrilling fencing match, but some instinct warned me not to do so—I might win out for the time being, but if she has a secret which she does not wish me to discover, she will take care not again to put herself in a situation where this ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... to possess, by inheritance, by instinct, by magic, or otherwise, powers of persuasion, which no one can resist. There's compliment for compliment, my dear. Is there any thing half so well turned in Helena's letter? Really, 'tis vastly well," continued her ladyship, as she read the letter: "where did the little gipsy learn to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... would pursue her, track her like hounds. She understood why Kells had introduced her as his wife. She hated the idea with a shameful and burning hate, but a moment's reflection taught her that Kells had answered once more to a good instinct. At the moment he had meant that to protect her. And further reflection persuaded Joan that she would be wise to act naturally and to carry out the deception as far as it was possible for her. It was her only hope. Her position had again grown perilous. She thought of the gun she had secreted, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... didn't," said Phil. "How I found the place I don't know—must have been a sort of instinct, I guess. Here you ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... which glowed upon the bank a few days since, I could see only a few of their scarlet hats, peeping above the tide. Mr. Thoreau managed the boat so perfectly, either with two paddles or with one, that it seemed instinct with his own will, and to require no physical effort to guide it. He said that, when some Indians visited Concord a few years ago, he found that he had acquired, without a teacher, their precise method of propelling and steering a canoe. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the war continued it was absolutely inevitable that the United States would be either drawn into it by the impulse of democratic sympathies or forced into it by the instinct of self-preservation. ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... the stage with tempestuous verbiage; which, to be sure, is not the style of greatness at all, but only of one trying to be great, and trying to be so, because he is not so. For to talk big is the instinct of ambitious littleness. But Tamburlaine is also represented in act as a most magnanimous prodigy: amidst his haughtiest strides of conquest, we have strains of gentleness mingling with his iron sternness; and he everywhere appears lifted high with ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Harry was known to be the Countess's slave, his presence produced the same effect in the different circles about the grounds, as did that of John Raikes. Harry began to yawn and wish very ardently for his sweet lady. She, however, had too fine an instinct ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Don Miguel, who possessed a large measure of the Celtic instinct for domination, had informed Don Mike that the latter was too infernally particular. By the blood of the devil, his son's statement indicated a certain priggishness, which he, Don Miguel, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... all the acorns that lie upon the ground, and put them beyond the reach of woodpeckers. The birds never encroach on their store until the snow has covered the ground, then they begin to draw upon their bank; and it is a curious fact that the bills of these birds are always honoured, for their instinct enables them to detect the bad nuts with unerring certainty, so that their bank is always filled with good ones. This matter of selecting the good nuts is a mere chance with men, for often those shells which seem the soundest, are ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... back to her. The passionate eyes were closed. Joan kissed the marble lids, and drawing a chair to the bedside, sat down. It grieved her that she had never loved her mother—not as one ought to love one's mother, unquestioningly, unreasoningly, as a natural instinct. For a moment a strange thought came to her, and swiftly, almost guiltily, she stole across, and drawing back a corner of the blind, examined closely her own features in the glass, comparing them ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... this chapter will be to give the reader some little insight into the habits of the woodcock, and the mode of snaring them in the forests of Le Morvan, during the month of November. At the close of this month, Dame Nature's barometer, their instinct, far better than the quicksilver, tells them the December rains are close at hand; and that if they remain in their hiding-places in the low grounds, they will be driven out by the approaching deluge. They at length make up ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... at once with picturesque imaginations, by a reminiscence of Callot, or Sadeler, or Paul Brill. Dick Turpin has been my lay figure for many an English lane. And I suppose the Trossachs would hardly be the Trossachs for most tourists if a man of admirable romantic instinct had not peopled it for them with harmonious figures, and brought them thither with minds rightly prepared for the impression. There is half the battle in this preparation. For instance: I have rarely been able to visit, in the proper spirit, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she was safely tucked up in the dog-cart, with no way of escape, Elisabeth saw a look in Alan's eyes which told her that he meant to make love to her; so with that old, old feminine instinct, which made the prehistoric woman take to her heels when the prehistoric man began to run after her, this daughter of the nineteenth century took refuge in an armour of flippancy, which is the best shield yet invented ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... only that she was free, followed an instinct of fear and struck her own pony on the flank, causing the little beast to turn sharply to right angles with the trail he had been following and dart like a streak across the level plateau. Thereafter the girl had all she could do to ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... parts were uniting and union was becoming organization—and neither geographical remoteness nor unwieldiness of number nor local interests and differences were untractable obstacles to that spirit of fusion which was at once the ambition of the few and the instinct of the many; and cities, even where most powerful, had become the centres of the attracting and joining forces, knots in the political network—while this was going on more or less happily throughout the rest of Europe, in Italy the ancient classic idea lingered ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... for him. But the subject was begun and ended with these three words. Such terseness in the sex was remarkable and would have deserved a psychological investigation had it been based on any apparent data. But women's opinions are so largely a matter of instinct and feeling, and so little of judgment and induction, that an analysis of the mental processes of the hundred girls who had reached this one conclusion, would probably have revealed in each a different method of obtaining this product. The important ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... windows open, measures only ten feet in width, and has consequently one of the most sharply pointed vaults we shall ever meet. The whole design is as beautiful a bit of early Gothic as exists, but what would take most time to study, if time were to spare, would be the instinct of the Archangel's presence which has animated his architecture. The masculine, military energy of Saint Michael lives still in every stone. The genius that realized this warlike emotion has stamped his power everywhere, on every centimetre of his work; in every ray of light; on the mass ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... stayed with them I do not know. But, true to my mechanical instinct, I rigged up a forge and improved many of the crude instruments of the natives, principally ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... for I discovered by instinct, or intuition, or conjecture—they mean pretty much the same thing, I believe—that there was a mystery about him; something that even his Templeton friends did not quite understand, and a lucky thought occurred of making ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... with the fragrance of kindliness and true humanity. His career was, in a large sense, typical of genuine Americanism, of its enterprise and pluck, of its indomitable will and unfailing courage, of its shrewdness, audacity and unerring instinct ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... of the murder of Louis XVI." He said to Metternich: "When I was young I favored the Revolution out of ignorance and ambition. When I came to the age of reason I followed its counsels and my own instinct, and crushed the Revolution." At another time he said: "The French throne was empty. Louis XVI. had not been able to hold it. If I had been in his place, in spite of the immense progress it had made in men's minds during the previous reigns, the Revolution would not have triumphed. When ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... issued, made their quiet adieux, and went over to the fence where she could hear the stamping of the tethered animals. Cut off from the house, she retreated swiftly down the path toward the stable and would have entered, but some instinct warned her back. As she paused uncertain, hearing footsteps approaching from behind, indefinably sure that there was danger in front, there sounded a cautious low whistle. Those who came from the cabin answered it. She drew back ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... before the Fourth of July. Just as we had got our animals packed and every thing in readiness to start, a herd of Buffalo commenced crossing the river about a half a mile above our camp. The reader will understand that the Buffalo always cross the river where it is shallow, their instinct teaching them that where the water is shallow, there is a rock bottom, and in crossing these places they avoid quicksand. This was the only crossing in fifteen miles up or down the river. We did not get to move for twenty-four hours. It seems unreasonable to tell the number of Buffalo ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... in Canada. And there is my dear girl-boy trapped too, I fear. But, really, he is such a child of a fellow it hardly matters. How many does she want in her net? The fish may squabble, I fear. A sweet thing she is; cruel only by instinct; and so gay, so tender, so truthful and right-minded with all her nonsense. No one can help loving her; but to-day she has one mood, and to-morrow another. There will be a mad massacre before she is done with you all. Run away, Hugh! run! Make love to Kitty ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... that the North American continent should be the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race. And, somehow, the popular instinct, when the news reached England, realised the historic significance of the event. "When we first heard of Wolfe's glorious deed," writes Thackeray in "The Virginians"—"of that army marshalled in darkness and carried silently up the midnight ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... the University he was one of a group of kindred spirits with eager literary leanings, and it did not take him long to gain a certain footing in the world of journalism. His work for the first year or two was mainly in the domain of dramatic criticism, but the creative instinct was growing in him. A youthful effort of his—a drama entitled Valborg—was actually accepted for production at the Christiania theatre, and the author, according to custom, was put on the "free list" at once. The ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... aptitude for any other calling, which I did not, I doubt if I would have pursued it. I am confident that had my education been directed in an entirely different channel, I should have followed my destiny, and come out a soldier in the end. For by inheritance as well as by instinct I was foreordained to follow the fortunes of war, to delight in the clash of arms and the smoke of battle; and I expect that when I do hear the clash of arms and smell the smoke of battle, the last of the Macklins will prove himself worthy ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... your kindness," he said courteously. Then, by a common instinct, without any spoken word between us, we all went from the room, leaving ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... wake; they wondered why the little tent was so still; why no plume of smoke rose from the slim stovepipe. All was oddly quiet and lifeless. No curses greeted them; no whiplash cut into them; no strong arm jerked them over the harness. Perhaps it was a primordial instinct that drew them on, that made them strangely bold. Perhaps it was only the despair of their hunger, the ache of empty bellies. Closer and closer they crept ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... faints into deeper unconsciousness, and that is all. Even in terrible wounds and cases of extreme pain, medicine can now alleviate the worst, nor, in any case, do I believe that the expectation of physical agony, however severe, has much share in the instinct that stands aghast at death. If fear of pain thus preoccupied the soul, martyrs would not have sown the Church, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... to go down on their knees frequently as they ran. But though the cattle sometimes fell, they were as quickly up and pushed blindly ahead, neither knowing nor caring where they were going, their only instinct being to get away. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... shared the primitive instinct at that moment. "And now you trot along home, my girl, and don't open ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... any other than that sacred name he would have turned to insurance or a mail order business with the same unerring instinct with which the sunflower turns to the sun, but this avenue was closed to him by the necessity of preserving the dignity of his name. It was necessary for him as a Symes to promote some enterprise which would give him the power and prestige ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... It was neither obstinacy nor caprice, but a profound fear that governed me. I was then afraid—yes, afraid. Afraid of what? Well, of going with Madame de la Rougierre to Church Scarsdale that day. That was all. And I believe that instinct ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... his success in the part of Romeo. Indeed, women rather take to terrible people; prize-fighters, pirates, highwaymen, rebel generals, Grand Turks, and Bluebeards generally have a fascination for the sex; your virgin has a natural instinct to saddle your lion. The fact, therefore, that the young girl had sat under his tremendous pulpitings, through the sweating sermon, the fainting sermon, and the convulsion-fit sermon, did not secure her against the ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... remember him and to dislike him. He was the man whom Galloway and the stage-driver had called "Doc," the sole representative of the medical fraternity in San Juan until her coming. She disliked him first vaguely and with purely feminine instinct; secondly because of an air which he never laid aside of a serene consciousness of self-superiority. He had established himself in what he was pleased to consider a community of nobodies, his inferiors intellectually and culturally. He was of that type of man-animal ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... not belong to this scale. There are five measures, where this note appears, but in each instance the tonality of the phrase momentarily rests in D-sharp minor, the relative of the pentatonic major of F-sharp. A-sharp belongs to this scale, but B-natural does not. The singer, with his instinct for the five-note scale, avoids the B-natural until the tonality shifts back to the original key. The song is therefore classed ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... fiery chaotic dust,—by the fortunate contact of cooling cinders of the right chemical properties and temperature, he secretes and hatches into life an egg, or cell of throbbing protoplasm; to this pulsating mass of jelly there comes from the unconscious abyss at length a vague instinct, a drowsy awakening of desire; next a feeble gleam of definite thought; reason then faintly dawns, and lo! at last this fair universe burst into glorious light, clothed in surpassing loveliness, throbbing with love, tender sympathy and sublime aspiration, ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... them all. With the instinct given by love, he went to all and felt them to discover in which there had been a fire. Having made up his mind on that point, the daring young fellow stuck his dagger securely in a joint between two stones, fastened a silken ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... very nearly penniless. Whether he built the motor with the idea of utilizing it for the purpose he ultimately put it to, of course I cannot say, but I have a shrewd suspicion that he really did design it for the purpose, since from what I have learned of him the predatory instinct must have been pretty strongly developed ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... one instinct that lurks in a woman's breast, ready to spring up when touched, and bloom into all sorts of beautiful and happy feelings, it is the sense of home—of pleasant domestic sway and domestic comfort—the looking forward to "a house of one's own." Many ordinary girls marry ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... First Principles, the Principles of Biology, the Principles of Psychology; Haeckel's History of Evolution; Maudsley's Body and Mind, Physiology and Pathology of Mind, Responsibility in Mental Disease; and Ribot's Heredity. Your instinct told you to read them in ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... that Sunnysides was not a real horse at all; that he was a demon—a spirit. Well, it was a real horse, right enough, that had crushed him, and thrown him again, and broken Bill Craven's leg, and fled; and that was a real horse yonder, outlined against the sky. If some devilish instinct in the brute, or some agent of Destiny, or mere fling of chance had held him on the plateau to tantalize ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... happened even there that defied her caution, her instinct, her love. She had not spoken of these things save to the Chief of Police, Koupriane, who had reported them to the Emperor. And here now was the man whom the Emperor had sent, as the supreme resource, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... he was fully half a mile in the rear. Ahead, bunched together, Smoke could see Big Olaf and Von Schroeder. Again Smoke arose to his knees, and he lifted his jaded dogs into a burst of speed such as a man only can who has the proper instinct for dog-driving. He drew up close to the tail of Von Schroeder's sled, and in this order the three sleds dashed out on the smooth going below a jam, where many men and many dogs waited. Dawson ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... selfishness a solitary spark of womanly feeling. The handsome face and figure of Le Gardeur de Repentigny was her beau-ideal of manly perfection. His admiration flattered her pride. His love, for she knew infallibly, with a woman's instinct, that he loved her, touched her into a tenderness such as she felt for no man besides. It was the nearest approach to love her nature was capable of, and she used to listen to him with more than ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and synthetic skill, Mr. Darwin investigates the cell-making instinct of the hive-bee. His method of dealing with it is representative. He falls back from the more perfectly to the less perfectly developed instinct—from the hive-bee to the humble bee, which uses its own ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... fulfil a long-standing engagement with an old crony and fellow-bachelor, residing about two miles from the school. By some mysterious means the worthy dominie's intentions had oozed out, and Bilk was by no means the only boy who had heard of it. Mice seem to find out by instinct when the cat is away, and fix their ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... burnt tobacco from the bowl of his pipe. A serious line appeared between his eyes. He was a fair-minded fellow, without guile, without a single treacherous instinct. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the house. Hooven's body had been removed to an adjoining room, the bedroom of the house, and to this room Mrs. Hooven—Minna still at her heels—proceeded, guided by an instinct born of the occasion. Those in the outside room, saying no word, made way for them. They entered, closing the door behind them, and through all the rest of that terrible day, no sound nor sight of them was had by those ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... again at pleasure, as other beasts do. Their pace is not swift, being only about three miles an hour; but they are the surest footed beasts in the world, as they never endanger their riders by stumbling. They are the most docile of all creatures, and of those we account merely possessed of instinct, they come nearest to reason. Lipsius, Cent. 1, Epist. 50, in his observations, taken from others, writes more concerning them than I can confirm, or than any can credit, as I conceive; yet I can vouch for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... now, I know perfectly well why I, a mere child of thirteen, was able to give such a realistic display of horror. I had the emotional instinct to start with, no doubt, but if I did it well, it was because I was able to imagine what would be real in such a situation. I had never observed such horror, but I had previously realized it, when, as Arthur, I ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... is worthy Doctor Guillotin, Bailly likewise, time-honored historian of astronomy, and the Abbe Sieyes, cold, but elastic, wiry, instinct with the pride of logic, passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. This is the Sieyes who shall be system-builder, constitutional-builder-general, and build constitutions which shall unfortunately fall before we get the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... a state they are forced to accept because they must live and cannot defend themselves. Yet their brains are keener, as an assegai is keener than a hoe; they are more in touch with the hidden things that shape out fate for people and for nations; they are more faithful and more patient, and by instinct if not by reason, more far-seeing, or at least the best of them are so, and by their best, like men, they should be judged. Yet this is the hole in their shield. When they love they become the slaves of love, and for love's ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... at top speed, and Morley remained at the inn to make inquiries about the Hungarian Princesses. Although he was not now a detective, yet Morley still preserved the instinct which made him ask questions. He heard that the foreign ladies had driven to Westbury, and afterwards strolled round to the stables to see the new coachman. He learned from him about the strange lady who entered the ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... between me and everything else. Child! hearts do not break; life is very tough as well as very terrible. But I will not decide for thee. I will tell thee all; and thou shalt bear the burden of choice. I may be wrong; I have little wit left, and never had much, I think; but an instinct serves me in place of judgment, and that instinct tells me that thou and thy Henri must never be married. Yet I may be in error. I would fain make my child happy. Lay this paper before the good priest Schriesheim; if, after reading it, thou hast doubts which make ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... have analyzed. The same prosodic objection does not apply to such parallel locutions as what did and when did. The vowels of what and when are shorter and their final consonants melt easily into the following d, which is pronounced in the same tongue position as t and n. Our instinct for appropriate rhythms makes it as difficult for us to feel content with whom did as for a poet to use words like dreamed and hummed in a rapid line. Neither common feeling nor the poet's choice need be at all conscious. It may be that not all are equally sensitive to the rhythmic ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... the saving instinct of the moment, and it had its intended effect, the boldness of the conception carrying all before it. For, as the officer in his sister's room asked that question, Scarlett covered his face with his hand, and uttered a deep yawn, like that ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... of carried across the stream from one side to the other, and apparently not quite finished. Though several beavers were running about it, they were not at work; indeed, all their operations are carried on during darkness. Nature, of course, has given them the instinct to work at this time, which saves them the destruction that would otherwise probably overtake them, both ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... spear-handles were nothing more than narwhal horns, just like 'Old Crumply'; and so you see how the Lord provides for all his creatures, endowing them all, whether white or black or copper-colored, with the same instinct of self-preservation, which leads them to seek and obtain for the security of their lives the materials that He places within their reach. How beautiful are all His works! and how constantly He watches over the rich ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... as a sort of wild-goose chase at first. He had only a ghost of a clue—a mere resemblance to a portrait. But he believed in it, and he had an instinct." He laughed again. "The dullest and most unmelodramatic neighborhood in England has been taking part in a melodrama—but there has been no villain in it—only a matter-of-fact young man, working out a queer thing in his own queer, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... clear light reveals the shams and shortcomings of what is hastily styled success. The pushing, elbowing fellow gets ahead in the struggle of life, but his success is a questionable one. The bargaining man, who, partly by instinct and partly by practice, judges everything from the point of view, "How is that going to affect me?" will no doubt make money. Even his most disinterested advice pivots on the thought, "What will pay me best?" as ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... By instinct Emma recognized her aunt. And she felt very much relieved, and very much rejoiced to see her, even while wondering that she should have come unannounced ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... home somehow," Aurora repeated, "and I wasn't going to waste time waiting for anything. And how was I going to do it? I don't suppose I really thought; I followed instinct like an animal. I hid in a freight-car ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... true that no general organization for law and order was effected on the western side of the river. But the American instinct for fair play and a hearing for everybody prevailed, so that while there was no mob law, the law of self-preservation asserted itself, and the counsels of the level-headed older men prevailed. When an occasion called for action, a "high ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... brain greatly admired her power of argument, and her woman's directness of method, confirming the view that while a an usually indulges in a good deal of preamble, with many doubts and side-lights, a woman trusts to her instinct and arrives at the same conclusion in half the time. Of late, too, he had talked to her of interesting modern problems; and what had been frivolous in their earlier friendshipm had solidified ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... ambitious ruler who covets supremacy on the European Continent. England is always opposed to him—inevitably and instinctively. It took the Germans twenty years to prepare their people for this War. It took us two days to prepare ours. Our instinct is quick and sound; for the resources and wealth of the Continent, if once they were controlled by a single autocratic power, would make it impossible for England to follow her fortunes upon the sea. But we never ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... task than to have to submit without active retaliation day after day to harassing shell-fire. It is during this early initiating into a general expectation of possible death that the young warrior has to conquer the psychological instinct impressed with fear upon his imagination from childhood that LIFE is his most valued asset, and must be safeguarded before all things. And now his conception is revolutionised. He must accept ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... understanding that which he would have understood in a moment without it; and this makes it look as though the writer had more depth and intelligence than the reader. This is, indeed, one of those artifices referred to above, by means of which mediocre authors unconsciously, and as it were by instinct, strive to conceal their poverty of thought and give an appearance of the opposite. Their ingenuity in this respect is ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... without effecting structural disintegrations,—disintegrations, at least, of a local character. How far these disintegrations extended and penetrated we do not know; and we have yet no adequate explanation of the long inertia of the native religious instinct in ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... impels all my actions—an unsurmountable instinct—a fatality, that will for ever render me the most miserable of human beings; and yet you, even you, my dear Miss Woodley, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... of the flight of birds may be placed the explanation of the modern evolutionist, who says that the birds migrate in quest of abundance of food and a genial climate, guided by an instinct of migration, which is an ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... all things he was born a poet: a poet by instinct and by vocation. From his earliest childhood, "the brain hardly released from the swaddling-bands of unconsciousness," the things of the outer world left a profound and living impression. As far back as he can remember, while ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... is to illuminate our whole spiritual being, as the sun illuminates our physical being, and bring us into such union and sympathy, such oneness of thought, desire, affection, and purpose with God, that we shall, by a kind of spiritual instinct, know at all times the mind of God concerning us, and never be in doubt ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... hue is on my feverish cheek, And slowly throbs my pulse—but it will cease; And cease, too, will the visions instinct, Impalpable, and deep, that haunt my soul! Death, who can dash the chalice from the lips Of Pleasure's votary, and hush the lyre While poetry is breathing on its strings; Death, who can quench the spirit which portrays Beauty's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... who were about to sever most of the ties of the world in order to obtain relief from the physical pains and privations that had borne hard on them for more than threescore years. A few had made sacrifices of themselves in obedience to that mysterious instinct which man feels in his offspring; while others, again, went rejoicing, flushed with the hope of their vigour and youth. Some, the victims of their vices, had embarked in the idle expectation that a change of scene, with increased means ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the club head upon a ball that flew a surprising distance. His obedient young muscles soon conformed to the few master laws of the game. He kept down, followed through and forebore, against all human instinct, to press the ball. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... lack somewise to think serious that we slay something to eat, in that the tablets did actually suffice to our strength, I to believe that there did be some other reason that I do forget, and mayhap never to have thought plain upon; but which to be set within me as an instinct, as we do say; and this to mean, if that I try to set it in other words, that the tablets did keep the body and the spirit in such condition that the Forces of Evil did have the less ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... case, also vouched for by direct testimony—what are the educational prospects of the boy who, on being taken home with a dislocated thigh, is saluted with a castigation? It is true that these are extreme instances—instances exhibiting in human beings that blind instinct which impels brutes to destroy the weakly and injured of their own race. But extreme though they are, they typify feelings and conduct daily observable in many families. Who has not repeatedly seen a child slapped by nurse or parent for a fretfulness probably resulting from bodily ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... said Julia; and her eyes were wild with grief, and she rocked herself to and fro. 'It was that letter that drove her to it. It was most ill-advised. I told you so. You should have written. She would have borne the news better had it come from you. My instinct told me so, but I let myself be persuaded. I told you how it would happen. I told you. You can't say I didn't. Oh! why did ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... points of view this race between nations for naval and aerial supremacy may be unfortunate, but so long as the fighting instinct of man continues in the human race, so long as rivalry exists between nations, so long must we continue ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... is possible appears to be an article of faith with the old stagers, and, indeed, every now and then odd coincidences occur which tend to confirm them in their creed. I witnessed an occurrence which was either attributable (as I believe) to sheer chance, or (as its hero earnestly assured me) to instinct. A fair and frail Magyar was punting on numbers with immense pluck and uniform ill fortune. Behind her stood a Viennese gentleman of my acquaintance, who enjoys a certain renown amongst his friends for the faculty of prophecy, which, however, he seldom exercises for his own benefit. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz |
