"Instinctive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little laugh, putting the horse into a canter as she spoke. John followed her on the other horse, and noticed with amazement that she sat as straight and steady on her slippery seat as though she were on a hunting saddle, keeping herself from falling by an instinctive balancing of the body which was very curious to notice. When they were well on to the plain they halted to consider their route, and, turning, Jess pointed to the long lines of vultures descending to feast on their would-be murderers. If they went down the river it would lead them to Standerton, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... is related to me, as: you wish to hide his name even from me," said Madame Desvarennes with instinctive anguish. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... to be any other rule, that of hereditary succession is perhaps as good as any. By no other rule is it possible to preserve the liberties of the State. By no other to intrust the power of making the laws to those only who have that keen instinctive sense of injustice and wrong which enables them to detect baseness and corruption in their most secret hiding-places, and that moral courage and generous manliness and gallant independence that make them fearless in dragging out the perpetrators to the light of day, and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... appeared in the distance, beckoning him forward; a signal for which he was looking out with that kind of drunken eagerness which is incapable of forethought, or any calculation whatsoever that might aid in checking the gross and onward impulses of blind and savage appetite. Phil's instinctive cowardice, however, did not abandon him. In the course of the day he primed and loaded his pistols, in order to be prepared against any of those contingencies which the fears of pusillanimous men never fail to create. On meeting with Raymond, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... gray, lowering, chilly day, and toward evening the clouds broke in the west, and a setting sun shone through the rift, burnishing the desert to red and gold. Shefford's instinctive but deadened love of the beautiful in nature stirred into life, and the moment of its rebirth was a melancholy and sweet one. Too late for the artist's work, but not too late ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... He was still young, as every man of forty-three will agree, but he was getting older. A few years ago a windfall of three hundred and forty-one pounds would not have been followed by morbid self-analysis; it would have been followed by unreasoning, instinctive elation, which elation would have ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... know anything so disgusting as a snake. There is an instinctive feeling that the arch enemy is personified when these wretches glide by you, and the blood chills with horror. I took the dried skin of this fellow to England; it measures twelve feet in its dry state, ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... imagined the violation of every principle of justice and truth an indubitable proof of instinctive and consummate prudence, unwittingly played a high and hazardous game. Their diplomatic absurdity, which weighed the fate of nations against a dinner, found a confusion of all the solid principles on which states rest as stimulating as the piquant ragouts ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... the commencement of the war, great exertions had been made to bring the Empress of Russia into the coalition. That sovereign had an instinctive dread of the French revolution and its principles; but imagining that she had but little to gain by becoming a party to the war in the west of Europe, she constantly declined joining the allies. At length, however, on the 18th of February, she was induced to consent to a treaty of defensive alliance ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... co-operation, firesides warm with generous feeling, zeal, and devotion, a practical school of high political education, an admirable theater for available talent, noble careers open to legitimate ambition, in short, the small patrimony whose instinctive cult forms the first step out of egoism and a march onward toward thoughtful devotion to the large patrimony. Cut apart by geometrical shears, and designated by an entirely new geographical term, small ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... alike the offspring of unhappy love. They delighted to place their infants together in the same bath, to nurse them in the same cradle, and sometimes changed the maternal bosom at which they received nourishment, as if to blend with the ties of friendship that instinctive affection which this ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... of a common origin. Language is not the result of an arbitrary convention. The mechanism of inflections, the grammatical constructions, the possibility of inversions, all are the offspring of our own minds, of our individual organization. There is in man an instinctive and regulating principle, differently modified among nations not of the same race. A climate more or less severe, a residence in the defiles of mountains, or on the sea-coasts, or different habits of life, may alter the pronunciation, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... flat, youthless, ageless, crowned with an ugly black hat, poorly ribboned; her hands were clasped clumsily on the skirt of her poor cotton dress, ill-fitting. There was no expression in her singing, no effort to express, no instinctive conception of the idea. The people only listened because she was blind and they were poor, and so they pitied her. The beautiful river of her hymn meant nothing, to her or to them. It might be; it might not be; it was not ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... love as this. She, too, had some inner perception of that dread destiny by which it behoved Frank Gresham to be forewarned. She, too—though she had never heard so much said in words—had an almost instinctive knowledge that his fate required him to marry money. Thinking over this in her own way, she was not slow to convince herself that it was out of the question that she should allow herself to love Frank Gresham. However well her heart might be inclined to such a feeling, it was her duty to repress ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... more perhaps from a gentler and a novel feeling, that, with the capricious waywardness of taste, had been rapidly rendering her more sensitive to the good opinion of the youth who questioned her, than to that of any other person. Suppressing the angry sensation, with instinctive quickness, she answered with a readiness and truth, that caused her sister to draw near to listen, though the obtuse intellect of the latter was far from comprehending the workings of a heart as treacherous, as ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... clasped and protruded over the edge of the Book; and his heavy dark face looked menacingly round on the crowded church; he had the air of a melancholy giant about to engage in some tragic pleasure. But Isabel's instinctive dislike began to pass into positive terror so soon as ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... nests may be made after the nests have been abandoned for the season, and it will be found useful for interesting the pupils in the ingenuity, neatness, and instinctive ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... another terror, unshared by Shenton. Manoel, the Portuguese gardener, who lived in a little two-room house in the hollow, had nothing but scowls for them. They feared him with the instinctive fear of children, but Shenton was his friend. Did any little tiff arise, Shenton was off to see Manoel. He knew the others were afraid to follow. Sometimes Manoel took him to his ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... Althea accepted the inevitable. The placid, fatalistic side of her nature asserted itself. Pride, too, helped her instinctive feminine secretiveness. She lived for months in her father's house without giving those that were dear to her any occasion for suspicion. In order to preserve the secrecy Boyce was bound to continue his visits to ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... learning its lesson, in a fine crescendo of self-surrender. In the first stanza she says: "My Beloved is mine, and I am his"; in the second, "I am my Beloved's and he is mine." But in the third, all else is merged in the instinctive joy of giving: "I am my Beloved's, and his desire ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... impassive that they may tell either of the deepest grief or the purest indifference; or it may be, merely of reticence on entering a stranger's room. He only bows towards HORSHAM'S half-proffered hand. With instinctive respect for the situation of this tragically made widower the men have risen and stand in various ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... forward from under the noses of two enormous sleepy-headed cart-horses. He skipped wildly out of the way and up on the curbstone with a purely instinctive precision; his mind had nothing to do with his movements. In the middle of his leap, and while in the act of sailing gravely through the air, he continued to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... too, a subtle if now fainter sense of degradation that he was susceptible to this dangerous fascination, with a painful consciousness of how wide a moral gulf had opened between them by the anger and vulgar jealousy which Ninitta displayed. It is not impossible, too, that his instinctive clinging to Helen was a stronger power than he knew; while still through all his mingled emotions ran the resolve he had made to give himself up ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... marry. It was a relief to him to escape from the dangerous talk of the last hour, and he spoke fervently. The poet in him had always been sensitive to the glamour of that wandering Prince; he had his countrymen's instinctive devotion for a failing cause. This was no suitable moment for dwelling upon the defects and weaknesses. Wogan told her the story of the campaign in Scotland, of the year's residence in Avignon. He spoke most burningly. A girl would no doubt like ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... nearest road to relief lay through the odious portal of taxation. Had the mysterious words that Dante read on the gates of Hell been written on it, they could not have shrunk from it with a more instinctive feeling:— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... quite thirty—and for every one that contained enough "action" (kissing, shooting, and sacrificing) for the movies, he obtained an additional thousand. His stories varied; there was a measure of vitality and a sort of instinctive in all of them, but none attained the personality of "The Demon Lover," and there were several that Anthony considered downright cheap. These, Dick explained severely, were to widen his audience. Wasn't it true that men who had ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... possesses the same negative merit or demerit, whether it be a thing without a will or an unwilling human being. If we are not free, have no choice in the matter, must consent, we differ in nothing from all brutish and inanimate nature that follows necessarily, fatally, the bent of its instinctive inclinations and obeys the laws of its being. Under these conditions, there can be no morality or responsibility before God; our deeds are alike blameless and valueless in ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... one delay after another occurred to keep him still in the harness. He chafed under the postponement, but it was not possible to him to remain idle even when he awaited in almost daily expectation the hour of dismissal. He saw with the instinctive glance of statesmanship that the dangerous point in the treaty of peace was in the provisions as to the western posts on the one side, and those relating to British debts on the other. A month therefore had not passed before he brought to the attention of Congress the importance of getting immediate ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of manufacturing platitudes for tomorrow, which is to say, ideas so novel that they will be instantly rejected as insane and outrageous by all right thinking men, and so apposite and sound that they will eventually conquer that instinctive opposition, and force themselves into the traditional wisdom of the race. I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed shelves of yesterday, with new labels stuck rakishly upon them. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... like a moan—came from the porch behind us. Instantly the old gentleman turned and with a gesture as fierce as it was instinctive, shouted out: ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... consideration—of frank and winning charm, with a free-and-easy intimacy with Balzac, of fearless truthfulness regarding his deficiencies, and with a golf handicap of one. The Colonel's hand and heart went out in instinctive coordination. The Colonel Winwoods of this country are not gods; they are very humanly fallible; but of such is the Kingdom ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the clear lamplight, he was a tall, finely-made man, in the prime of life, with a florid complexion, golden-brown hair, and sparkling blue eyes. Noticing Madame Lagarde, he instantly checked the flow of his satire, with the instinctive good-breeding of a gentleman. "I beg your pardon," he said; "I have a great many faults, and a habit of making bad jokes is one of them. Is the servant right, madam, in telling me that I have the honor of presenting ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... all new ideas and reforms of a moral and political order. They are adopted with the instinctive fear, the vague apprehension inspired by the new and unknown. There is much talk of their objectional features and dangers for the established order of things. You might think the firmament was going to crumble to pieces or the world was threatening to go out of joint. However, after the innovation ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... her grades of blue according to the Chinese colors of this oldest domestic art of the world, and be correspondingly happy in the result. Chinese design, however, had no influence in the growing practice of embroidery, and here also an instinctive law prevailed. She recognized that even the highly artificial landscape art of her idolized plates would not suit the flexible and broken surfaces of her equally cherished linen, or the surroundings ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... at the Toft and at Tallington's Fen farm, Grimsey, a track often quite impassable after heavy rains. There was neither hedge nor ditch to act as guide, no hard white or drab road; nothing but old usage and instinctive habit kept those who traversed the way from going off it to right or left into the oozy fen with its black soft peat, amber-coloured bog water, and patches of bog-moss, green in summer, creamy white and pink in winter; while ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... down towards them when she saw herself observed, and the two men silently dismounted as she approached, and pulled off their caps, less in salutation than from instinctive respect for deep emotion. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... brewing animal known to scientific research. All other creatures take their food and drink neat, or in a raw state. Of course, almost all mammals are enabled by a highly ingenious internal mechanism to brew milk, or some other lacteal substitute, but this is performed by a natural, instinctive impulse towards the preservation of their young and conserves none of the spirit of artifice and calculation so necessary to authentic ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... them all. It is only by constant practice and patient attention to technical details in the operating room and at the bedside, that the carrying out of surgical manipulations in such a way as to avoid bacterial infection will become an instinctive act and a second nature. It is only possible here to indicate the chief directions in which danger lies, and to describe the means most generally adopted ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... indeed, when warm gushes of pity swept away her instinctive resentment of his condition, when she still found his old self in his eyes as they groped for each other through the dense medium of his weakness. But these moments had grown rare. Sometimes he frightened her: his ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... with their bites— and an exceedingly small fish that seemed to be in myriads in parts of the stream, and to make up in absolute ferocity for their want of size. This savageness of nature was of course but their natural instinctive desire for food, but it was dangerous in the extreme, as I knew later on. Our ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... that should become instinctive and effortless for every worker? What acts can we make our lower nerve centers—our subconscious selves—do for us or remind us to do? The following constitutes a daily routine that should be as involuntary as the process ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... not marvel at the sting of the bee, when used against the enemy, causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such great numbers for one single act, and being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen-bee for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidae feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars; and at other such cases. The wonder, indeed, is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the want of absolute perfection have not ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... been neither polite nor politic. Moreover, I reflected that I had no particular reason for wishing to do Mr. Harold a bad turn; and that it would be kinder to him, as well as to her, to conceal the reasons on which I based my instinctive inference. So I took up a strong strategic position. 'I have an intuition that I saw him in the village this morning,' I said. 'Family likeness, perhaps. I merely jumped at it as you spoke. A tall, languid young man; large, poetical eyes; an artistic moustache—just ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... afraid to assume heaven. I may take pride in that which I may abstract from my anatomy. I must not allude to my body as frankly as to my soul. I must withdraw my body from the public eye. From discussion. From its instinctive avowals. Our bodies must be coffined. Treated as dead before they are born. Regarded as conveniences. Not as essential entities. The body is only for a little while. The soul is forever. But why is that little while not as holy as forever? They don't ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... they ever dream of it it is not what they have imagined when a man suddenly comes crashing through the barriers of friendship and stuns them with an incoherent recital of his own desires. And yet, in spite of the shock, it is with them instinctive to be kind. No woman can endure an appeal unmoved; except for them there would be no beggars; their charity is not a creed: it is the essence of them, the beginning of all things for them—and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... formula expresses the instinctive judgment as to right of plain men everywhere, it has been made diligent use of by the masters of German intrigue to lead the people of Russia astray and the people of every other country their agents could reach-in order that a premature peace might be brought about before autocracy has been taught ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Andrea though the long flight of dimly-lighted rooms, the thick soft carpets deadening every sound; and even through the almost uncontrollable tumult of his soul, the young man was conscious of an instinctive feeling of repulsion against her, without being able to assign an ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... animal spontaneity. For even those advocating determination must admit that the morally acting subject distinguishes itself from its object, and does not take its motives to action from the material and from the instinctive life which is bound to the sensual and dependent ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... itself into a definite plan. He recalled the story Uncle Peter had told at the Oldakers' about the woman and her hair. A woman could be coerced if a man knew her weakness. He could coerce her. He knew it instinctively; and the instinctive belief rallied to its support a thousand little looks from her, little intonations of her voice, little turnings of her head when they had been together. In spite of her calculations, in spite of her love of money, he could make her feel her weakness. He was ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... bullet usually was followed by yells and fierce growlings, for the hear is a natural sort of a beast and always bawls when he is hurt very badly. There is no affectation about a Grizzly, and he never represses the instinctive expression of his feelings. Probably that is why Bret Harte calls him "coward of heroic size," but Bret never was very intimately acquainted with a marauding old ruffian of ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... house, if not in the settlement. Mack Hooper was sitting by the door. Attracted by a rustling sound in his direction, I looked up just in time to see his heels disappearing under the nearest bed. Leaping to my feet with an instinctive impulse to do likewise, I was confronted in the doorway by a stalwart Confederate officer fully uniformed and armed. Behind him was his quartermaster-sergeant. This was a government party collecting the tax in kind, which at that time throughout ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... reclining chair and threw his own arm, long and muscular, over the back. There had come to be a saying in the gray battalion, when Willett was seen strolling with a comrade, his arm caressingly encircling him, "Well, Willett's doing the bunco act again." Possibly it was the instinctive shrinking of the wounded shoulder; certain it was that Harris drew perceptibly away, and Willett noticed it. "I didn't hurt you, did I?" ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... on her way to visit another crone, who lived hard by, and with whom she was in the constant habit of consulting. She had seen the deacon in the distance, and took that occasion to run across the road, having a sort of instinctive notion that her presence was not required when the two men conferred together. What was the subject of their frequent private communications, the Widow White did not exactly know; but what she imagined, will in part appear in her discourse with ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... to wake Gloria he first stood over her, looking queerly down upon her sleep. She showed less trace of the hard day and wild night than he had expected to see; his preparations for her comfort, instinctive and thorough, had been made with the cunning skill of a man familiar with situations like the present. She had rested; she lay curled up, snug and warm, under the covers, upon which a thin layer of fluffy snow had gathered. Her face was against a curved arm, and the sweetness ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... over the beautiful face, and was at no loss to understand their meaning. During the last fortnight he had more than once been a witness to a storm of misery and rebellion, and apart from that fact he had an instinctive understanding of the girl's moods, which seemed all the more curious, as his own nature of happy optimism was as great a contrast to hers as ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... another, as accident or caprice might incline him, apparently without any forethought, consideration, or design. He seemed to form no plan, to live for no object, to contemplate no end, but was governed by a sort of blind and instinctive impulse, which led him to love danger, and to take a wild and savage delight in the performance of military exploits on their own account, and without regard to any ultimate end or aim to be accomplished by them. Thus, although he evinced great power, he produced no permanent effects. ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of useful information, or sound opinion—and she started from them when I let them off, as if they had been crackers. No matter how incidentally or naturally I endeavoured to form my little wife's mind, I could not help seeing that she always had an instinctive perception of what I was about, and became a prey to the keenest apprehensions. In particular, it was clear to me, that she thought Shakespeare a terrible fellow. The formation ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... brought forcibly to our minds when we hear persons conversing in a foreign tongue, or when we pick up a book the characters of which are wholly unlike those of our own language. To us an English book is full of instinctive beauty, every letter or mark possessing a definite meaning that is instantly conveyed to our minds, because we have become familiar with them by diligent study ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... slightest doubt in the world that the argument which applies to the improvement of the horse from an earlier stock, or of ape from ape, applies to the improvement of man from some simpler and lower stock than man. There is not a single faculty—functional or structural, moral, intellectual, or instinctive, there—is no faculty whatever that is not capable of improvement; there is no faculty whatsoever which does not depend upon structure, and as structure tends to vary, it is ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... ventured to seek votes on the avowal that he was for giving up the Union. There have been much impugning of motives and much heated controversy as to the proper means and best mode of advancing the Union cause, but on the distinct issue of Union or no Union the politicians have shown their instinctive knowledge that there is no diversity among the people. In affording the people the fair opportunity of showing one to another and to the world this firmness and unanimity of purpose, the election has been of vast value to the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... picturesquely in his unrestrained conversation. Such language is forcible as all primitive words are. Refinement seems to make for weakness—or let us say a cutting edge—but the old vulgar monosyllabic words bit like the blow of a pioneer's ax—and Mark was like that. Then I think 1601 came out of Mark's instinctive humor, satire and hatred of puritanism. But there is more than this; with all its humor there is a sense of real delight in what may be called obscenity for its own sake. Whitman and the Bible are no more obscene than Nature herself—no more obscene than a ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... buried somewhere in the shapeless mass of wood and iron? It certainly was not unmixed sorrow. On the contrary, I had a distinct feeling of elation at the thought that I was probably rid forever of this haunter of my peace, this menacing and mysterious existence which (if instinctive foreboding was to be trusted) had been about to cross and ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... pointed out, and stared at with superstitious terror by thousands every night. The fact that there was nothing really mysterious about it made no difference. Even those who knew well that it was an inevitable optical result of the division of the bright comet were thrilled with instinctive dread when they saw that forked umbra, mimicking their every movement. There is nothing that so upsets the mind as a sudden change in the ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... interest, but it was an interest altogether masculine. Valentine also looked at her attentively, with that searching, penetrating look one woman invariably casts upon another. As for Zuleika, her eyes literally devoured the peasant girl, flashing with what was not exactly hatred for a rival but rather an instinctive fear and distrust. She was well aware that Giovanni had flirted with this girl, had been enthralled by her physical charms, had almost yielded to her sway, and she felt a peculiar interest in the creature who had ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... It is one of those books which depend upon individual will and feeling, rather than upon a broad subject founded in nature and tractable by the largest laws of art. Hence, though not irrespective of laws, such works depend upon instinctive felicity—felicity in the choice of topics and the mode of execution, felicity both in doing and in leaving undone: this high and perfect excellence, perhaps, In Memoriam has not reached, though omission and revision might ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... they must fight—they must be driven to blows—she must somehow set them at each others' throats. It was so hard to think at all! Yet she could think forward to one occurrence only that could give her respite and a frail chance for freedom: if they would only fight as, in some dim instinctive way, it was given her to understand that such men would fight once a wrathful blow had been given and taken—if the others would only watch them and not her, if she could come to one ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... Oh beautiful instinctive faith in maternal love and maternal wisdom! Wot ye the moulding power ye wield, ye mothers ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... in Female Instinctive Function 14 and smoothed her graying Spun-Tex hair, feeling the hard ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight
... conviction; his contemptuous "better to marry than to burn" is only out of date in respect of his belief that the end of the world was at hand and that there was therefore no longer any population question. His instinctive recoil from its worst aspect as a slavery to pleasure which induces two people to accept slavery to one another has remained an active force in the world to this day, and is now stirring more uneasily than ever. We have more and more Pauline ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... Professor Barrett Wendell, in his "Temper of the Seventeenth Century in English Literature," discovered and revealed to the world that Shakspere, except as a "phrase-maker" and except as the inventor of "historical fiction" in "Henry IV." and "Henry V.," was "the most skilful and instinctive imitator among the early Elizabethan dramatists," and "remained till the end an instinctively imitative follower ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... presentiment. The cattle seek the shed; the birds fly back to their nests; and the gentle flower folds its delicate petals, as if for sleep. Is It wonderful that as life closes in, especially when protracted to a good old age, the human spirit should feel an instinctive consciousness of approaching dissolution? or that the aged Christian, after long and patient endurance in his Master's service, should joyfully anticipate the hour of rest? Yes, REST, not death; "For whosoever liveth, and believeth in me," saith the ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... at last vouchsafed some little light as to his motives. There was an old story, he told her, that his estate would go to a Feltram. He had an instinctive distrust of that family. It was a feeling not given him for nothing; it might be the means of defeating their plotting and strategy. Old Trebeck, he fancied, had a finger in it. Philip Feltram had told him that Mardykes was to pass away to a Feltram. Well, they might ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... when Cantrell, a high-strung individual at best, reacted violently to the change in the creature. In an instinctive blaze of anger and frustration, Cantrell reached out and slapped him brutally ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... combined attack of Jarrick and myself, was maintaining the argument. "There is no such thing as instinctive bravery," he affirmed, for the fifth time at least, "amongst intelligent men. Every one of us is naturally a coward. Of course we are. The more imagination we've got the more we can realize how pleasant ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... an instinctive feeling that something had happened, but I never tried to find out.... Now, as a matter of fact, twenty years ago, a relation of mine, a distant cousin, used to live at the Domaine de Halingre. I hoped, because of the name I bear, that ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... an interesting group as they clustered round the girls from Sunnyside and bade them welcome, Maud taking the lead, and finally attaching herself to Rosamund; for she guessed, in some sort of instinctive way, that Rosamund had more character than the other school-girls, and would be more likely ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... limit ourselves to the psychology of the human mind, since that concerns us vitally as nurses. Animal psychology, race psychology, comparative psychology are not within the realm of our practical needs in hospital life. We would know the workings of man's mind in disease and health. What are the instinctive responses to fear, as shown by babies and children and primitive races? What are the normal expressions of joy, of anger, or desire? What external conditions call forth these evidences? What are the acquired responses to the things which originally caused fear, ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... The first instinctive reaction or impulse of these unfortunates was and still is, unhappily, to destroy the machines and to see in them only the ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... a living force—and so it is indeed—but it does not act as a reasoning, intellectual Something, in one sense—instead it manifests rather the "feeling," wanting, longing, instinctive phase of mind, akin to those "feelings" and resulting actions that we find within our natures. The Will acts on ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... entitled "Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts." The thought is well and tersely put by Prof. Frank Granger—"Language is the instinctive expression of national spirit." (The Worship of the Romans, p. ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... referred to many thousands of cases. The knowledge obtained from such books and from continual practice in court may ultimately lead a barrister to acquire comprehensive principles, or at least an instinctive appreciation of their application in particular cases. But to refer a student to such sources of information would be a mockery. He wants a general plan of a district, and you turn him loose in the forest to learn its paths ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... she might not sit so with her hand on his knee, looking up at him with lips parted in a happy smile, gray eyes eager with anticipation under the long, curving, brown lashes. She was so very dear to him. Not alone because of the instinctive yearning of flesh to flesh, not altogether because of the grace of her vigorous young body, the comeliness of her face, the shining coils of brown hair that gave him a strange pleasure just to stroke. Not alone because of the quick, keen mind that so often ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of great doubt, they cried out for joy with so great a shout as hath not been lightly heard a greater, God be praised; the Lord strengthen thee, Cardmaker. The Lord Jesus receive thy spirit."[477] Every martyr's trial was a battle; every constant death was a defeat of the common enemy; and the instinctive consciousness that truth was asserting itself in suffering, converted the natural emotion of horror ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... packet of pink shells, he kindly inquired whether he could be of any further use to him. Popanilla was loth to retire without his gold, of the utility of which, in spite of the convenience of competition, he seemed to possess an instinctive conception; but as his friend rose and withdrew, he could do nothing less than accompany him; for, having now known him nearly half a day, his confidence in his honour and integrity was ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... upbuilding and rebuilding is the strongest instinctive impulse of our being; and this being so, a wrong proportion may cause the upbuilding of things which are different and ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... opposition—the instinctive opposition which men manifest to having this embarrassing subject dragged out into the light of day. Even men who have been chaste themselves—good fathers of families like the major—cannot be unaware of the complications incidental to frightening their women-folk, and ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... spend the whole of our lives in this human machine, considering that it is our sole means of contact and compromise with the rest of the world, we really do devote to it very little attention. When I say 'we,' I mean our inmost spirits, the instinctive part, the mystery within that exists. And when I say 'the human machine' I mean the brain and the body—and chiefly the brain. The expression of the soul by means of the brain and body is what we call the art of 'living.' ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... picturesqueness. It seems as if the German weirdness perceptible in Albrecht Duerer had in Rembrandt taken a homelier, but a more comprehensible and effective Dutch form. Kugler argues, that the long winter, with its short dark days, of Northern Europe produces in its inhabitants instinctive delight in hearth-warmth and light, and that the pleasure in looking at Rembrandt's pictures is traceable to this influence. It is in scenes by fire-light, camp-light, torch-light, that he triumphs, and his somewhat grim but very real romance owes its origin to the endless suggestions ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... distinctions were very sharply defined, eludes analysis, but it seems to have lain largely in her exquisite sense of fitness, her excellent judgment, her administrative talent, the fine tact and penetration which enabled her to avoid antagonism, an instinctive knowledge of the art of pleasing, and a kind but not too sensitive heart. These qualities are not those which appeal to the imagination or inspire enthusiasm. We find in her no spark of that celestial flame which gives intellectual distinction. In her amiability there seems to be a ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... what is the question before us? For what do you think we are stipulating? We are making a claim for five or six hundred thousand maidens, protected by their instinctive timidity, and by the high price at which they rate themselves; they understand how to defend themselves, just as well as they know how to sell themselves. The eighteen millions of human beings, whom we have excepted from this consideration, almost invariably contract marriages in accordance ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... He still had the instinctive crook sense to conceal his natural voice. Hicks was afraid, but as mile after mile fell behind them and the westerning sun gave promise of the early shelter of dark, he began to gain confidence. He ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Peggy and Eyelids it was different. Half-breeds as they were, and, by reason of their Indian blood, instinctive disguisers of emotion, their aversion for Spurling was plain. Sometimes, when his back was turned and they thought that they were unobserved, they would glance swiftly up at one another, and an expression would come into their eyes, a small pin-point ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... own sake, with less, mayhap, of enthusiasm to carry them on, but with what is at least as strong to take its place as a moving force, that wind and bottom of formed habit through which what were at first acts of the will pass into easy half-instinctive promptings of the disposition. In order to acquaint myself with the fossiliferous deposits of Scotland, I have travelled, hammer in hand, during the last nine years, over fully ten thousand miles; nor has the work been in the least one ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... was a perfectly natural, instinctive movement. To Zahara her own beauty was a commonplace to be displayed or concealed as circumstances might dictate. In a certain sense, which few could appreciate, this half-caste dancing girl and daughter of El Wasr ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... With an instinctive movement, he touched a spring and the door slid back. He drew from the cupboard thus revealed two bottles and a glass and returned to seat ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... which brought Austria to the brink of ruin, added to the Archduchess's instinctive repulsion for Napoleon. At Vienna the panic was extreme; the Imperial family was obliged to flee in different directions. Marie Louise was only fourteen years old, and she was already learning bitter lessons ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Podsnap, it's very foolish I know, but I have an instinctive presentiment that if Hamilton gave away anybody else first, he would never give away baby.' Thus Mrs Veneering; with her open hands pressed together, and each of her eight aquiline fingers looking so very like her one aquiline nose that the bran-new jewels ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Nathaniel's together, I asked Hilda why she had spoken throughout with such unwavering confidence. "Oh, it was simple enough," she answered. "There were two things that helped me through, which I didn't like to mention in detail before Lina. One was this: the Le Geyts have all of them an instinctive horror of the sight of blood; therefore, they almost never commit suicide by shooting themselves or cutting their throats. Marcus, who shot himself in the gun-room, was an exception to both rules; he never minded blood; he could cut up a deer. But Hugo refused to be a doctor, because ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... fundamental ideas have been cleared up, the methods of investigation really tried, and an ample supply of facts collected. But this very justified reluctance becomes a real danger if it grows into an instinctive fear of coming into contact at all with practical life. To be sure, in any single case there may be a difference of opinion as to when the right time has come and when the inner consolidation of a new science is sufficiently advanced for the technical service, but it ought to be clear that ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... absolute out of the world, must we then conclude that the world contains nothing better in the way of consciousness than our consciousness? Is our whole instinctive belief in higher presences, our persistent inner turning towards divine companionship, to count for nothing? Is it but the pathetic illusion of beings with ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... print nor to destroy. His first satire speaks contemptuously of 'giddy fantastic poets,' and, when he allowed himself to write poetry, he was resolved to do something different from what anybody had ever done before, not so much from the artist's instinctive desire of originality, as from a kind of haughty, yet really bourgeois, desire to be indebted to nobody. With what care he wrote is confessed in a passage of one of his letters, where, speaking of a sermon, he says: 'For, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... With an instinctive movement to put herself between the danger and her son, Madame de Montrevel, while complying with that request, pushed Edouard behind her. That instant sufficed for the boy to seize the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... the Phalanx was upon them. The enemy fought with uncommon spirit; it was the first time "F. F. V's," the chivalry of the South,—composing the Army of Northern Virginia,—had met the negro soldiers, and true to their instinctive hatred of their black brothers, they gave them the best they had; lead poured like rain for a while, and then came a lull. Ferrero knew what it meant, and prepared for their coming. A moment more and the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... destroyed, he is forced to seek new haunts and to eat such food as his new location affords. It is not strange that, constricted in his range by ranchers and cattlemen, with no opportunity to seek food according to his instinctive habits, ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... Then those instinctive good manners of Halcyone's came uppermost, inherited, like her slender shape and balanced head, from that long line of La Sarthe ancestors, and she thanked the old man with a quaint, courtly, sweetly pedantic grace. Then she got up ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... incestuous alliances. Desirable as it may be from a social point of view that this strong sentiment against incest should continue, it is not yet proven that even the closest blood relationship between the parents is directly injurious to the offspring. The "instinctive horror of incest" is a myth, for although a horror of incest does very properly exist in civilized, and in some tribal societies, it is purely a matter of custom and education, and not ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... win a battle the will of the commander as expressed through his subordinates down the line from the second in command to the squad leaders, must be carried out by everyone. Hence the vital importance of prompt, instinctive obedience on the part of everybody, and of discipline, which is the mainspring of obedience and also the foundation rock of law ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... they were spent, and Ave lay on her bed half torpid, feebly moaning, but with an instinctive dread of being disturbed. Henry anxiously watched over her, and Dr. May thought it best to leave the brother and sister to one another. Absolute quiet was best for her, and he had skill and tenderness ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... does. Not being a man, she does not understand: her end is only his beginning: his object is possession, still to come: hers is already gained in the form of the tribute to her charm: she was only playing (every woman is a child), he was in deadly earnest, and took her purely instinctive self-congratulation for a promise deliberately made. Suddenly illuminated, she lets him down abruptly with a bump, all the harder that she never meant to do it (the coquette does: but she is a horrible professional, methodising feminine instinct, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... to find other ministers who to equal abilities would add equal subservience, it is not surprizing that the highest offices were constantly filled by men of notorious incapacity. Indeed, the King seemed to have an instinctive antipathy to everything great and noble. During the reign of George II the elder Pitt had won for himself a reputation which covered the world, and had carried to an unprecedented height the glories ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... had been concerned in Professor Blackie's onslaught. I hope, however, that I have avoided anything that could give just offence to Professor Blackie, even if he should be present here tonight. Though he abuses me as a German, and laughs at the instinctive aversion to external facts and the extravagant passion for self-evolved ideas as national failings of all Germans (I only wonder that the story of the camel and the inner consciousness did not come in), yet I know that for many ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... words, and it seemed that the light had gone out of my life. I pray that I may never again witness such a harrowing sight as that of Myra, leaning her beautiful head on my shoulder, suddenly stricken blind, doing her best to pacify her dog, who was heart-broken in the instinctive knowledge of a new, swift grief which ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... first turned out in the spring, often eat poisonous herbs, which they afterwards avoid, we cannot feel sure that the apes do not learn from their own experience or from that of their parents what fruits to select. It is, however, certain, as we shall presently see, that apes have an instinctive dread of serpents, and probably of other ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... halt passed only too soon, and its later moments were made uneasy by the instinctive aversion which every one felt for the sound of the whistles that would mark the end of it. The Battalion, however, had no sooner swung into the road, than the Colonel, who had been reading a message with an expression of surprise, held up his hand to signal ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... magnificent vocal gesture rested on the single word Si in reply to Guido's "Tu ne reviendras pas?" Her performance of this work, however, offers many examples of just such instinctive intonations. One more, I must mention, her answer to Guido's insistent, "Cet homme t'a-t-il prise?"... "J'ai dit la verite.... Il ne m'a pas touchee," sung with dignity, with force, with womanliness, and yet with growing impatience and ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... and hard of hand, his speech remained that of the thinker, and much of his reading was still along high, philosophical lines. He had been a singular youth, and he had developed into a still more singular man. With an instinctive love of the forest, he had become a daring and experienced mountaineer. As he described to me his solitary trips over the high Cascades I was reminded of John Muir, for he, too, often spent weeks in the high peaks above his claim with only ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... sympathy went forth to others, it attracted others to him. Especially those whom he called the "plain people" felt themselves drawn to him by the instinctive feeling that he understood, esteemed, and appreciated them. He had grown up among the poor, the lowly, the ignorant. He never ceased to remember the good souls he had met among them, and the many kindnesses they had done him. Although in his mental development he had risen far above them, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... country, where there is nothing visible to indicate its presence, is quite a matter of chance. We have often unconsciously passed well-filled water-holes, at less than a hundred yards distant, whilst we were suffering severely from thirst. Our horses and bullocks never showed that instinctive faculty of detecting water, so often mentioned by other travellers; and I remember instances, in which the bullocks have remained the whole night, not fifty yards from water-holes, without finding them; and, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... is all the difference in the world between Herbert and his deistical successors. They connected religion with the 'intellectual and sensational,' and we with the 'instinctive and emotional' sides ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... I am one—cannot "abide" hypnotism in fiction. In my own case the dislike has been merely instinctive, and I have never yet found time to examine the instinct and discover whether or not it is just and reasonable. The appearance of a one-volume edition of Trilby—undoubtedly the most successful tale that has ever dealt with hypnotism—and the success of the dramatic ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the dark of the movement of the man beside you? I looked suddenly sideways toward Jeremy, knowing, although I couldn't see him, that his eyes were seeking mine. It is only the animals who omit in the darkness those instinctive daylight movements; men don't have sufficient control of themselves. We had both heard Grim's voice at the same ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... from an instinctive feeling of delicacy, left the tent, while the Rose of Oregon related to her brother the story of her life with Paul Bevan, and then followed it up with the story of God's love to ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... cloth, and shot back again towards the office and the waiters' quarters. By the time he had come under the eye of the office clerk and the waiters he had become another man in every inch of his body, in every instinctive gesture. He strolled among the servants with the absent-minded insolence which they have all seen in their patrons. It was no new thing to them that a swell from the dinner party should pace all parts of the house ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... could have torn open with one stroke of their mandibles! They are capable of tearing it, but they do not dream of doing so! There can be only one explanation of this suicidal inaction. The insect is well-endowed with tools and instinctive faculties for accomplishing the final act of its metamorphosis, namely, the act of emerging from the cocoon and from the cell. Its mandibles provide it with scissors, file, pick-axe and lever wherewith to cut, gnaw through and demolish ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... his instinctive precaution, the poor animal, which had no light to guide him, struck against a stone and nearly fell. The rider soon perceived that his horse was lamed, and on seeing a trail of blood upon the snow, discovered that it ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... action becomes extremely swift and sure. Promptness, too, being of the utmost importance for protective purposes, creatures which are rich in such instincts have a large practical advantage over those who lack them. It is often assumed that brutes alone are instinctive, and that man must deliberate over each occasion. But this is far from the fact. Probably at birth man has as many instincts as any other animal. And though as consciousness awakes and takes control, some ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... the nun with a resentful question in her tone. 'If the word really means anything, which I often doubt, it is an instinctive discernment of right and wrong in one's own particular case, to be applied to the salvation of one's own soul. ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... actual life (p. 347); (5) to the insufficiency of the causes enumerated to produce doubt without taking account of the moral causes; which objection is not only admitted, but shown to be at once the peculiar property which belongs to the analysis of intellectual phenomena, and also a witness to the instinctive conviction that the ultimate cause of belief and unbelief is moral, not intellectual; which had been constantly assumed. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... particular direction. As long as Ellinor and Miss Monro stayed in the dining-room, a sort of moody peace had been kept up, the ladies talking incessantly to each other about the trivial nothings of their daily life, with an instinctive consciousness that if they did not chatter on, something would be said by one of the gentlemen which would be distasteful to ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... admitted me; a necessary precaution, as I afterwards found, to prevent the prying eye of some inquisitive domine, whose nose has a sort of instinctive attraction in the discovery ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to such an extremely exemplary gentleman was a little difficult, but in his present housemaid, Mary MacLean, he had a girl with a strong Highland strain of fidelity to a master, and an instinctive devotion to his interests, even if his person was hardly the chieftain her heart demanded. She was a soft voiced, anxious looking young woman, almost pretty despite her nervous high strung air, and of a ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... It's not in her to be jealous. If she doesn't like you, Madalena, it's instinctive mistrust. I don't think she's even seen the claws sticking out of the velvet. But I have. I've seen exactly what you are up to. You talk about our 'past'. You want to force my hand. You expect me, because I've been a decent pal, and paid what I thought ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... said the thoughtful girl, to whom the comfort of every one who came near her was an instinctive anxiety. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... between his idolatrous, silent worship of the lovely woman and clubbing his dogs into quiescence. Their angry protests seemed to express something more abiding than mere displeasure at the intrusion of a stranger. They seemed to feel a strong instinctive antagonism ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... be what they call a Nut, are you?" she inquired with some anxiety, partly with the idea that a Nut would be an extravagance which her sister's small household would scarcely be justified in incurring, partly, perhaps, with the instinctive apprehension that a Nut, even in its embryo stage, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... browsing sheep and cattle; but his soul knows the lecherous intent, the petty hate, the cankerous envy, the evil discontents, indigenous only to the soul of man. Plainly, Caliban is man, not beast; for his proclivities, while bestial, are still human. In a beast is a certain dignity, in that action is instinctive, irrevocable, and so far necessary. Caliban is not so. He might be other than he is. He is depraved, but yet a man, as Satan was an angel, though fallen. The most profligate man has earmarks of manhood on him that no beast can duplicate. And Caliban (on whom Prospero ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... themselves. Then, with a compassionate "click" to his horse, started up the road. Except for a few chance wayfarers and an occasional coffee-stall, the main streets were deserted, but they were noisy compared with Beaufort Street. Every house was in absolute darkness as the cab, with instinctive deference to slumber, crawled slowly up and ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... not ask her what troubled her; he had an instinctive feeling that the question would bring back her tears, but ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... alone in her desolation and shame, the thought of self-destruction had surged up in the lava of other tumultuous thoughts occasioned by the artist's scorn, and at first she had shrunk from it with natural and instinctive dread. But the awful thought began to fascinate her like a dizzy height from which it seems so easy to ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... that all struggle for law has been conscious, that very little of it has been blind or merely instinctive. It is the fashion to say, as if with superior knowledge of affairs and of human weakness, that every age has been an age of transition, and that no age is more full of change than another; yet in very few ages of the world can the struggle for change have been so widespread, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... of to-day finds the duodecimal system of commerce; or as the Babylonians of old found that singularly curious system, the sexagesimal. Habituation, the laws which the habits and customs of every-day life impose upon us, are so powerful, that our instinctive readiness to make use of any concept depends, not on the intrinsic perfection or imperfection which pertains to it, but on the familiarity with which previous use has invested it. Hence, while one race may use a decimal, another a quinary-vigesimal, and another ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... the death of the unhappy lad, Athalaric, in his eighteenth year, the victim of unwise strictness, followed by unwise licence, and of the barbarian's passion for swinish and sensual pleasures. When her son was dead, Amalasuentha, who had an instinctive feeling that the Goths would never submit to undisguised female sovereignty, took a strange and desperate resolution. She sent for Theodahad, now the only surviving male of the stock of Theodoric, and, fashioning her lips to a smile, began to apologise for the humiliating ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... fully materialism, as a philosophy, may accord with the merely human reason, is it not wholly antagonistic to the instinctive faculties ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... these was my young friend fully imbued; and thus is it especially worthy of observation that the uninterrupted enjoyment which distinguished his life was in great part the result of preconcert. It is, indeed evident, that with less of the instinctive philosophy which, now and then, stands so well in the stead of experience, Mr. Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary successes of his life, into the common vortex of Unhappiness which yawns for those of preeminent endowments. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... about any such event is thus already generically predetermined by the event's nature; and one may accordingly say with a perfectly good conscience that it virtually pre-exists. Common sense is thus right in its instinctive contention. ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... his name from the lips of his beloved, Ralph drew very close to her, with that instinctive drawing which he was now experiencing. It was that irresistible first love of a man who has never wasted himself even on the harmless flirtations which are said to be the embassies ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... (TABOOS) WHICH IMPEDE THE FREE EXERCISE OF OUR FACULTIES." (1) Obviously this definition is gravely deficient, simply because it is purely negative, and leaves out of account the positive aspect of the subject. In Man, the positive content of religion is the instinctive sense—whether conscious or subconscious—of an inner unity and continuity with the world around. This is the stuff out of which religion is made. The scruples or taboos which "impede the freedom" of this relation are the negative forces ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... I think, know what they are doing only too well, because performance never agrees with desire. They know what they are doing because it is never exactly what they meant to do, or what they wanted to do. Now, with fairies, desire to do and performance are instinctive and simultaneous. If they think, they think in action. In this they are far more like animals than human creatures, although the form in which they appear to us, their shape and colouring are like ours, enhanced and refined. Here now stood this creature in the semblance of a ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... were identical with man's, if Eve were a mere tautology of Adam, it would only give rise to a monotonous superfluity. But that she was not so was proved by the banishment she secured from a ready-made Paradise. She had the instinctive wisdom to realise that it was her mission to help her mate in creating a Paradise of their own on earth, whose ideal she was to supply with her life, whose materials were to be produced and ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... presumably become interesting enough to justify him in securing a seat nearer to her. The talk returning to ruins, Miss Elsie informed him that they were going to see some on Kelpie Island. The consul, from some instinctive impulse,—perhaps a recollection of Custer's peculiar methods, gave her a sign of warning. But the Englishman only lifted his eyebrows in ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... thinness of the little face, made into a wolf's face by hunger; the mingled horror and desperation of the eyes; the big man would not have believed a child's face could express emotions of such magnitude. He was wonder-stricken at the sight, and felt an instinctive sympathy for ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips |
