"Intuitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who was quick in intuitive power, knew instinctively what awaited him. He opened the letter and read it while the two friends busied themselves with a consideration of Jim's bookcase, reading-table, and toolchest combined, all made out of one goods ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... department of the mind."(40) Again: "It is by an intuition of our nature that we believe this thought or feeling could not have been produced without a cause; and that this same cause will again and forever produce the same effects. And this intuitive principle leads us to expect the reign of causation, not only among the thoughts and feelings generally, but among the wishes and volitions ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Shaftesbury derived some of the most conspicuous features of his character. From his father he inherited his keenness of intellect, his habits of laborious industry, and his iron tenacity of purpose. From his mother he may have acquired that strong sense of personal dignity—that intuitive and perhaps unconscious feeling of what was due to his station as well as to his individuality—which made his presence and address ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... looked like a throned Justice by some grave Florentine painter; and it seemed to Glennard that her most salient attribute, or that at least to which her conduct gave most consistent expression, was a kind of passionate justice—the intuitive feminine justness that is so much rarer than a reasoned impartiality. Circumstances had tragically combined to develop this instinct into a conscious habit. She had seen more than most girls of the shabby ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... force at his command, to thwart it. Burnside and he are about equidistant, by this time, from the intersection of the Sudley road, running South, with the Warrenton Pike, running West. Much depends upon which of them shall be the first to reach it,—and the instinctive, intuitive knowledge of this, spurs Evans to his utmost energy. He leaves four of his fifteen companies, and Rogers's section of the Loudoun Artillery,—which has come up from Cocke's Brigade, at the ford below—to defend ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... but known by direct cognition, like the intuitive perception of first principles, per ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... the site in deep thought. His instinct told him that what the agent had said was true. A cheap site. And the beauty of it was, that he knew the agent did not really think it cheap; so that his own intuitive knowledge was a victory over ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... differs from the adult female, he differs in the same way from the young of both sexes. Can this law be applied in the case in which the adult female possesses characters not possessed by the male: for instance, the high degree of intuitive power of reading the mental states of others and of concealing her own—characters which Mr. Spencer shows to be accounted for by the relations between the husband and wife in a state of savagery. If so, the man should resemble "the young of both sexes" in the absence of these ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... not know all, nor half. But I know enough. A man who suspects such, a woman as you deserves to be hanged. Besides," he added irrelevantly, but with an intuitive keenness that startled Corona, "besides, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... of all, perhaps, the simplicity with which he came to accept it as part of the natural order of things. The intuitive brain is rarely analytical. Moreover, he had seen; he had felt; he knew. It is the invincible argument of the mystic. Against belief born of vivid, reiterate experience, the loquacity of logic, the formulae of pure intellect break like waves upon a rock—and with as little result. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of her reasons came to him, for he had a strange and intuitive understanding of her. At any rate, he accepted her decision with a meekness which would have astonished many people who knew only that side of him which he showed to the world. Gently she released her hand, and folded up the bundle again and gave it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "The intuitive decision of a bright And thorough-edged intellect to part Error from crime; a prudence to withhold The laws of marriage character'd in gold Upon the blanched tablets of her heart; A love still burning upward, giving light To read those laws; an accent very low In blandishment, but a most ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... intuitive eye, foresaw that I was likely to prove a vigorous employer, and while there was yet time he devoted most of it to conceive how it were possible to withdraw from the engagement. He received permission ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... She rose, and, with intuitive delicacy, changed the subject. "I am going out earlier than usual this morning," she resumed. "Is there anything I can do for you?" She laid her hand tenderly on Stella's shoulder, waiting for the reply. Stella lifted the hand and kissed it with ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Laura Bridgman had shown the same intuitive desire to produce sounds, and had even learned to pronounce a few simple words, which she took great delight in using, and I did not doubt that Helen could accomplish as much as this. I thought, however, that the advantage she would derive would not repay her for the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... have heard this process deliberately defended by people who should know better. I have heard it said that those moods of intense concentration are, as a matter of fact states of soul in which the intuitive or mystical faculties work with great facility, and that at such times connections and correlations are perceived which at other times pass unnoticed. The events of the world then are, by such people, regarded as forming links in a chain of purpose—events even which are obviously to the ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... about that, goodman," replied Mrs. Boulby, with intuitive discernment of the true from the false, mingled with a desire to show that she was under no obligation for the news. "All t' other's a tale of your own, and you know it, and no more true than your rigmaroles about my brandy, which is French; it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... transfixed, all but transported. Here was something better than Gounod and Verdi, something above and beyond the obvious one, two, three, one, two, three of the opera scores as she knew them and played them. Music she understood with an intuitive quickness; and those prolonged chords of Liszt's, heavy and clogged and cloyed with passion, reached some hitherto untouched string within her heart, and with resistless power twanged it so that the vibration of it shook her ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... only a mood, she wondered, or was it the expression of a profound disappointment? Sympathy such as John Benham had never awakened overflowed from her heart, and she was conscious suddenly of some deep intuitive understanding of Vetch's nature. All that had been alien or ambiguous became as close and true and simple as the thoughts in her own mind. What she saw in Vetch, she perceived now, was that resemblance to herself which the Judge had once turned into a jest. She discerned his ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... of the German constitution, the same, in a far higher degree, were charged against Kaiser William I and Bismarck,—and these charges were true,—but it is also true that thereby those men saved and built up their country. As a matter of fact, the intuitive sense as well as the reflective powers of Germans seem to show them that the real dangers to their country come from a very different quarter—from men who promote hatreds of race, class, and religion within the empire, and historic international ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... would be content to remain as bystanders, secure from remark or disturbance, in a hazy cloud where the only thing distinct is their denial that there is anything definite. Their creed is not strengthened by its being vague and curtailed. "Moral sense," "intuitive truth," "general utility"—their ultimate appeal—is just as far out of reach of algebraic logic as any of the propositions are which they reject because these cannot be proved thus. Try this scrimp creed by their own standard of ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... citadel of life? There is but one explanation: a Mind having minute and perfect knowledge of the structure of both has designed the one to be capable of inflicting death upon the other. This mental purpose and resolve is the one thing which our intelligence perceives with direct and intuitive recognition. The method of creation by which this purpose has been carried into ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... the further away from the essence and vitality of Emerson's mind and teaching. In philosophy proper Emerson made no contribution of his own, but accepted, apparently without much examination of the other side, from Coleridge after Kant, the intuitive, a priori and realist theory respecting the sources of human knowledge, and the objects that are within the cognisance of the human faculties. This was his starting-point, and within its own sphere of thought he cannot be said to have carried it any ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... hold to the illumination theory to account for the origin of the Bible revelation claim that there is in every man an intuitive faculty that grasps the supernatural, that lays hold of God and spiritual things; and that whatever insight into the nature and being of God is given man, is produced by the divine Spirit playing upon this spiritual ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... beautiful and lofty influences of the countries in which you are traveling and sojourning: and mine is to be learnt from a page as different as the chapters of Lindley Murray's Grammar are different from those of a glorious, illuminated, old vellum book of legends. I not only believe through my intuitive instincts, but also through my rational convictions, that my own peculiar task is the wholesomest and best for me, and though I might desire to be with you in Italy, I am content to be without you in America.... How much all separation and disappointment ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... and we shall employ ourselves entirely in the contemplation and examination of things; because there is naturally in our minds a certain insatiable desire to know the truth; and the very region itself where we shall arrive, as it gives us a more intuitive and easy knowledge of celestial things, will raise our desires after knowledge. For it was this beauty of the heavens, as seen even here upon earth, which gave birth to that national and hereditary philosophy, (as Theophrastus ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... regards the higher social life, the exclusive circles of civilized existence, which are not ruled merely by the Ten Commandments. The knowledge of what to do in those zones, and of how to do it, can come only by training, by experience, by observation, and by the intuitive recognition ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... better things, the necessary fruit of ignorance. Old things are passed away, and the new order is yet too unfamiliar for rules to have formulated and settled in any routine of action. While there is, at the North, more intuitive and inherited sense of how things should be done, there is on many points an almost equal ignorance, more especially among the cultivated classes, who, more than at any period of woman's history, are at the mercy of their servants. Every science ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... present purpose to divide the cognitive faculties into intuitive and non-intuitive. If I rightly understand Mr. Spencer, when he says of the subject matter of Religion that it "passes the sphere of experience," he means that the content of Religion results from the action of the non-intuitive faculties upon material ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... modern speakers of English it is denoted as Consciousness. This, according to its grades and applications, is qualified as personal, moral, intellectual, or, including all its higher functions, as intuitive or spiritual. Of this high spiritual sense, this self-recognition of soul, all the master-words of the language—God, Immortality, Life, Love, Duty—are either wholly, or in all their grander suggestions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... helped him here at all, and would most likely have been a stumbling-block to him. And, in my view of the matter, the most distinguishing feature of the Poet's genius lies in this power of broad and varied combination; in the deep intuitive perception which thus enabled him to put a multitude of things together, so that they should exactly fit and finish one another. In some of his works, as Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, and the three Parts ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... went at once and brought it in separate glasses on a tray, and mixed it by pouring, while Aunt Mary looked on with an intuitive understanding that passed instinct and bordered on a complete comprehension of things to her ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... to occupy, and with seeming condescension invite us to fill some posts of honor and profit, while they undertake to confine us within their bounds, leaving nothing to our good sense, intelligence, intuitive desires, and aspiring hopes. The truth is, "It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." God alone is competent to do this, and in the present movement His power, wisdom, and will, are so conspicuous, that it will ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in a way of which we can form no idea. Whatever she knows has been learned through mental operations of an utterly unimaginable kind. But we may be tolerably sure that she thinks about most things in some odor-relation to the experience of eating or to the intuitive dread of being eaten. Certainly she knows a great deal more about the earth on which we tread than would be good for us to know; and probably, if capable of speech, she could tell us the strangest stories of air and water. Gifted, or afflicted, as she is with such ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... it, and these, with once a sudden brow of suffering, and a difference Meredith felt in Helen's manner when they stood together by the sick man's bedside, had given the young man a strong impression, partly intuitive, that in spite of the short time the two had known each other, something had happened between them at Plattville, and he ventured a guess which was not far from the truth. Altogether, the thing was fairly plain—a sad lover is not so hard to read—and ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the more socially presentable portions hang frantically over the swirling current. Occasionally an enthusiastic golfer, driving from the eighth or ninth tees, may be seen to start immediately in headlong pursuit of a diverted ball, the swing of the club and the intuitive leap of the legs forward forming so continuous a movement that the main purpose of the game often becomes obscured to the mere spectator. Nearer, in the numerous languid swales that nature has generously provided to protect the interests of the manufacturers, or in the rippling ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... Gaston and myself alone existed that perfect freedom of speech and intuitive understanding that lie at the root of all true and deep affection. His delicacy of appearance, his stunted stature, his invalid requisitions, nay, his very deformity, for his twisted limb amounted to this, put aside all thought ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Finally his shrewd, intuitive good-sense flashed the solution on him. He returned rapidly to his pack, assumed the straps, and arrived at the first dam about dark of the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... not arise from association, as the agreeable does, but sometimes lies in the rupture of association; it is not different to different individuals and nations, as has been said, nor is it connected with the ideas of the good, or the fit, or the useful. The sense of beauty is intuitive, and beauty itself is all that inspires pleasure without, and aloof from, and even ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Cicily, with the intuitive sensitiveness of a woman to recognize a lover's hostile feeling beneath the spoken words, was acutely conscious of the annoyance; she ignored the modicum of sympathy. To conceal her hurt, she had ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... as truly as if they had all been his own familiars. But of his intuitive knowledge of men of all ranks, there is no need to speak, for every line he writes attests it. Of his fetches of moral wisdom something has already been said. He would not have been a Scotchman, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... first time actually saw Mr. Beauclerc. She had before looked at him without seeing him, and really did not know what sort of looking person he was, except that he was like a gentleman; of that she had a sort of intuitive perception;—as Cuvier could tell from the first sight of a single bone what the animal was, what were its habits, and to what class it belonged, so any person early used to good company can, by the first gesture, the first ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... of his dramatic powers. It was not necessary that the demoniac should be represented in the moment of recovery, if its certainty could be expressed by other means. It is implied, it is placed beyond all doubt, by the glorious apparition above; it is made nearly intuitive by the uplifted hand and finger of the apostle in the centre, who, without hesitation, undismayed by the obstinacy of the demon, unmoved by the clamour of the crowd, and the pusillanimous scepticism of some of his companions, refers the father of the maniac, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... under false colours, I saw Curzon laughing almost to suffocation at my wretched predicament, and (so strong within me was the dread of ridicule) I thought, "what a pretty narrative he is concocting for the mess this minute." I rose to reply; and whether Father Malachi, with his intuitive quickness, guessed my purpose or not, I cannot say, but he certainly resolved to out-maneuver me, and he succeeded: while with one hand he motioned to the party to keep silence, with the other he took hold of Curzon, but with ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... Man is intelligent when he reasons, but the Supreme Intelligence does not need to reason; there is neither premise nor conclusion for him, there is not even a proposition. The Supreme Intelligence is wholly intuitive, it sees what is and what shall be; all truths are one for it, as all places are but one point and all time but one moment. Man's power makes use of means, the divine power is self-active. God can because he wills; his will is ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... outstanding ability and his wide range of general knowledge, as well as his keen perception, he has during his long term of office practically recreated the Force in many particulars. He has unusual power for getting to the heart of a situation by a sort of intuitive insight. He has the reputation of being able to grasp and analyse the contents of documents almost at a glance and seize their salient points for action. His decisions are thus made after rapid assimilation of the facts, and he expects his orders to be carried out with exactness and dispatch. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... the first of the fox pens. He was watching David closely, a little anxiously—thrilled by the touch of that box. He read men as he read books, seeing much that was not in print, and feeling by a wonderful intuitive power emotions not visible in a face, and he believed that in David there were strange and conflicting forces struggling now for mastery. It was not in the surrender of the box that he had felt David's triumph, but in the voluntary ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... setting out. The tragedy of her father's life was settling on the girl's heart with a nameless misery. It is the first instinct of the child's nature to look up to the parent as its refuge, its tower of strength. That bulwark may be shattered before the world, and yet to the child's intuitive feeling it may remain the same. Proudly, steadfastly the child heart continues to look up to the wreck that is no wreck in the eyes of its love. Ah! how well it is if the undeceiving never comes! But when all that seemed strong, when all that seemed true, becomes ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... saying thou hast no common mind, Alroy; indeed thou hast a mind unlike all others. Listen, my Prince. Thou hast read mankind deeply and truly. Few have seen more than thyself, and none have so rare a spring of that intuitive knowledge of thy race, which is a gem to which experience is but a jeweller, and without which ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... in a genial mood—and the mild excitement of social intercourse generally put him in such a mood—his familiar talk was equally delightful and instructive. He was, in truth, an improvisatore. Quick perception, an almost intuitive insight into character, an inexhaustible fund of fresh, original thought and incident, the happiest illustrations, and a memory that never faltered in recalling what he had once read or seen, easy self-control, and ardent sympathies, all conspired to give him this ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... really top-flight investigator, had developed intuitive thinking to a fine art. Ever since the Lancaster Method had shown the natural laws applying to intuitive reasoning, no scientist worthy of the name failed to apply it consistently in making his investigations. Only ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... spontaneity of speech was lost, and that faculty became atrophied which enable man to arrange with psychic rapidity ever new combinations of sounds to express emotion and thought. Believing then that speech was originally intuitive, and that it only need introspection and a careful analysis of the sounds of the human voice, to recover the faculty and correspondences between these sounds and forces, colours, forms, etc., it will be seen why I do not regard my ignorance of these languages ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... existence: ethics is a still deeper and more vital part of it: and in that, as much in England as elsewhere, the current opinions are still divided between the theological mode of thought and the metaphysical. What is the whole doctrine of Intuitive Morality, which reigns supreme wherever the idolatry of Scripture texts has abated and the influence of Bentham's philosophy has not reached, but the metaphysical state of ethical science? What else, indeed, is the whole a priori philosophy, in morals, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... intuitive knowledge of human nature, the great poet purposely uses the above objectionable word. How could he do otherwise, or how more effectually, and less offensively, extricate Molly Brown from the unpleasant tenantry of the proposed under-ground floor? Command ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... the effect of spiritual intuition, would become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself into relation with him. But old Roger Chillingworth, too, had perceptions that were almost intuitive; and when the minister threw his startled eyes towards him, there the physician sat; his kind, watchful, sympathizing, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to extremities, unless it can leave its sting somewhere upon the face of its victim, and usually as near as possible to the eye; for bees and all other members of the stinging tribe, seem to have, as it were, an intuitive perception that this is the most vulnerable spot upon the "human face divine." If the head is quietly lowered, and the face covered with the hands, they will often follow a person for some rods, all the time sounding their war note in his ears, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... himself or trying to deceive me. The great roots of worry are conscience, fear, and regret. Undoubtedly we ought to be conscientious and we ought to fear and regret evil. But if it is to be better than an impediment and a harm, our worry must be largely unconscious, and intuitive. The moment we become conscious of worry we are undone. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we cannot leave conscience to its own devices unless our lives are big enough and fine enough to warrant such a course. The remedy for the ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... own Abhidharma as the highest authority.[233] They also held that Gotama had an ordinary human body and passed first into a preliminary form of Nirvana when he attained Buddhahood and secondly into complete Nirvana at his death. He was superhuman only in the sense that he had intuitive knowledge and no need to learn. Their contempt for sutras may have been due to the fact that many of them discountenance the Vaibhashika views and also to a knowledge that new ones were ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... man affect that character beyond a very slight degree. Whatever rights may be given to them, and whatever duties may be charged upon them by human laws, their general character will remain unchanged. Their modesty, their delicacy, and intuitive sense of propriety, will never desert them, into whatever new positions their added rights or ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... her features, it awoke in him recollections that had long slumbered; of the time when his heart beat but for one. If, in her immediate sphere, any littleness of feeling was brought to her notice, it was met with an intuitive doubt, followed by painful surprise, that such feeling, foreign as she felt it to be to her own nature, could really have existence ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... her eyes subdued the beast in the men. An indefinable personal quality ran through her utterance, a sadness, a sympathy, and an intuitive comprehension of the sin of the world unusual in one so young. She had been carefully reared: that was evident in every gesture and utterance. Her dress was a studiously plain gray gown, not without a little girlish ornament at the neck and bosom. Every detail ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... wonderful subconscious mental factulties have a very highly developed power of reasoning deductively from a given premise or fact. In fact, the subconscious faculties are almost perfect reasoning machines, providing they are supplied with correct data in the first place. Much of the so-called "intuitive reasoning" of persons arises from the operations of the subconscious mental faculties ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... merely by the good pleasure and power of the Creator."... "All the great ends of morality and religion," he adds, "are well secured without philosophical proof of the soul's immateriality." As to our knowledge "of the actual existence of things, we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and a demonstrative knowledge of the existence of God; of the existence of anything else, we have no other but a sensitive knowledge, which extends not beyond the objects present to our senses."[Footnote: Is not an intuitive knowledge suspiciously ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... the effect of the night, with its misty silver coloring, and perhaps their long experience of war, giving them an intuitive knowledge, that made these foes know nothing was to be gained by further combat. They were so well balanced in strength and courage that they might destroy one another, but no one could march away from the field ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... under such admirable control, Susan, glancing at him quickly, saw a shade of expression, too fine for amusement, too cordial for resentment, pass over his features. His colour, which was always high, deepened, and raising his head, he brushed the smooth dark hair back from his forehead. Through some intuitive strain of sympathy, Susan understood, while she watched him, that his plays were as vital a matter in his life as the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... law, like all basic laws, is so simple in expression and so obvious in application that any man above the moron level has an intuitive grasp of it. It is the first law one ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... rivals could only have exhibited disgusting scenes of forced civility and exaggerated profession, thinly veiling the inveterate animosity which neither party could hope effectually to hide from the intuitive perception of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... effect the punch even in perspective, had upon the visual organs of the company; second-sight was rather its precursor than its attendant; for, with intuitive penetration, they now discovered various good qualities in his ghost-ship, that had hitherto been beyond their ken; and those very personal properties, which before struck them dumb with terror, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... immediately before us is one which can never be determined. The truth which is to be proved is one which we already believe; and if, as we believe also, our conviction of God's existence is, like that of our own existence, intuitive and immediate, the grounds of it can never adequately be analysed; we cannot say exactly what they are, and therefore we cannot say what they are not. Whatever we receive intuitively, we receive without proof; and stated as a naked ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Fournier at Bayeux, Bessie Fairfax had disconcerted this fine gentleman, but now the tables were turned, and on board the yacht he often disconcerted her—not of malice prepense, but for want of due consideration. No doubt she was a little unformed, ignorant girl, but her intuitive perceptions were quick, and she knew when she was depreciated and misunderstood. On a certain afternoon he read her some beautiful poetry under the awning, and was interested to know whether she had any taste for poetry. Bessie confessed that at school she had read only Racine, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... for the change in her feelings and judgment, the evidence was just as strong as before, and she could not help acknowledging the fact; she only knew that she felt Hadley was innocent; and she would trust this intuitive conviction in preference to any anonymous communication that could be produced against him. But what should she say to her parent? How could she impress him with her own feelings, or even fix a doubt of Hadley's guilt ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... and fatigue of the past few days had caused Penn to fall asleep almost immediately after Carl left him. The rude ground on which he stretched himself proved a blissful couch of repose. Virginia climbed the mountain to meet him, and no fine intuitive sense of her approach thrilled him with wakeful expectancy. Carl was captured, and still he slept. The lost young girl wandered within fifty yards of where he lay steeped in forgetfulness, dreaming, perhaps, of her; and all the time they were as unconscious ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... habit. No one now is aware that he has ever done it at all; just as we cannot recollect the individual movements which enabled us to walk up a hill a year ago. This arises from the fact that we move and live and have our being in matter. Our knowledge of it has become intuitive. ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... all sides—the lieutenant and his crew clearing all before them with a valiant cheer, which Snowball re-echoed with a terrific shout like an Indian war-cry, perhaps from some intuitive recollections of his native wilds on the banks of the Congo, in which the words "golly, take dat now!" could, however, be plainly distinguished—the attack proved a trifle too hot for the mongrel lot of scoundrels whom the pirate captain, or cut-throat, commanded; ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... came—it was made in a box at the theatre—she had not courage sufficient to make her stipulation. His expression filled her with horror—for the first time. She often thought of it afterwards. Instead of acting upon this intuitive perception, she began to speculate on what would happen if she were again to say No! She had accepted his friendship although she knew what was coming. The conditions, the conditions—they should settle it! If he accepted them, it should be as he wished, and then there could be no ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... evening I went among the rushes where I thought the marshy ground would bear me, and while I was there three swans came. Something in their manner of flying seemed to say to me, 'Look carefully now; there is one not all swan, only swan's feathers.' You know, mother, you have the same intuitive feeling that I have; you know whether a thing is right ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Elder politely found for me) I should have sent you one of my own, cut out from a Volume of Essays by other friends, Spedding, etc., on condition that you should send me a Copy of such Reprint as you may make of it in America. It is extremely interesting; and I always think that your Theory of the Intuitive versus the Analytical and Philosophical applies to the other Arts as well as that of the Drama. Mozart couldn't tell how he made a Tune; even a whole Symphony, he said, unrolled itself out of a leading idea by no logical process. Keats said that no Poetry was worth [anything] ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... all listened, and Monkey, whose intuitive intelligence soaked up hidden meanings like a sponge, certainly caught the trend of what was said. She detailed it later to the others, when Jinny checked her exposition with a puzzled 'but Mother could never have said that,' while ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... had discovered her son's hiding-place of the curious slips of paper which engrossed his nightly attention, and, to make an end of the matter at once, the good woman swept up the whole lot one morning, and threw it in the chimney. Very likely there was in her mind some intuitive perception of the fact that her son's poems 'wanted fire.' John was greatly distressed when he found his verses gone; and more still when he discovered how the destruction happened. To prevent the recurrence of a similar ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... "The Pariah" we are more than ever struck by the sharp intuitive perception and the satirical balancing of judgment which makes the author's writings such extremely entertaining reading. There is not a dull page—we might say, not a dull sentence—in it.... The girls are delightfully drawn, especially the bewitching ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... similar, will be attended with similar effects." I shall allow, if you please, that the one proposition may justly be inferred from the other; I know, in fact, that it always is inferred. But you must confess that the inference is not intuitive; neither is it demonstrative. Of what nature is it, then? To say it is experimental is begging the question. For all inferences from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the future will resemble ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... expressiveness of this young man's eyes. They watched him and they watched Amanda with a solicitude that seemed at once pained and tender. And there was something about Amanda, a kind of hard brightness, an impartiality and an air of something undefinably suspended, that gave Benham an intuitive certitude that that afternoon Sir Philip would be spoken to privately, and that then he would pack up and go away in a state of illumination from Chexington. But before he could be spoken to he contrived to ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... simplicity, and to give it full development, retaining unimpaired meanwhile such original excellences as Nature in Sambo shapes and inspires, was the task of the time. But the task fell into bungling hands. The intuitive utterance of the art was misapprehended or perverted altogether. Its naive misconceits were construed into coarse blunders; its pleasing incongruities were resolved into meaningless jargon. Gibberish became the staple of its composition. Slang phrases and crude jests, all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... realisation that at once came to him with a touch of dismay was, that during his sleep some definite change had been effected in the room. He felt this with that intuitive certainty which amounts to positive knowledge. The room was utterly still, but the corroboration that was speedily brought to him seemed at once to fill the darkness with a whispering, secret life that chilled his blood and made the sheet feel ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... formulate clearly in his mind the exact problem to be solved, yet the keenness with which he detected in imperfect material the real solution is often marvellous. Again and again the later student finds but little more to do than to prove more fully and from a wider range of material the intuitive conclusions of his master. ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... the first time it is seen, and on the fiftieth occasion. I see these every day, and always stop to look at them; the colour excites the sense of beauty in the eye, and the shape satisfies the idea of form. The undulating curve of the neck is at once approved by the intuitive judgment of the mind, and it is a pleasure to the mind to reiterate that judgment frequently. It needs no teaching to see its beauty—the feeling ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... stillness of the house the sound of the opening front door stole up to her, and she heard George come in and stop for a minute to take off his hat and coat in the lower hail. Then she heard his footsteps move to the staircase; and while she listened she had a curious intuitive sense that it was not George at all, but a stranger who was coming to her, and that this stranger walked like a very old man. She heard him reach the bend in the stairs, and without stopping to put out the light, pass on to her door, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the French call la force du sang was suited to her affectionate temper and ardent imagination, and it had taken full possession of her mind. The eloquence of romance persuaded her that she should not only discover but love her father with intuitive filial piety, and she longed to experience those yearnings of affection of which she had ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Used of hardware or software designs, implies 'elegance in the small', that is, a design or implementation that may not hold any surprises but does things in a way that is reasonably intuitive and relatively easy to comprehend from the outside. The antonym is 'grungy' or {crufty}. 2. v. To remove unneeded or undesired files in a effort to reduce clutter: "I'm cleaning up my account." "I cleaned up the garbage and now have 100 Meg free on ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... upon people injured by railway accidents. When some poor mangled plate-layer or a railway-porter crushed almost out of resemblance to humanity would be borne in and laid on an empty cot in the accident ward, this woman was at the bedside with a seemingly intuitive perception of what would best conduce to soothe and ease the poor shattered fellow; and she would wait on him "hand and foot" with an intensity of devotion far in excess of what mere duty, however conscientiously fulfilled, would have demanded of her. Indeed, her ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... its conscience. Here it will continue to stand, seeking peace and prosperity, solicitous for the welfare of the wage earner, promoting enterprise, developing waterways and natural resources, attentive to the intuitive counsel of womanhood, encouraging education, desiring the advancement of religion, supporting the cause of justice and honor among the nations. America seeks no earthly empire built on blood and force. No ambition, no temptation, lures her to thought of foreign dominions. The ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... and hesitated at the car door, for he had an intuitive flash which made him doubtful. But what if Hartley did make a show of this marriage? The marriage itself was the vital thing. Lane helped Mel out of the car and led her up the icy steps. The maid ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... excursions, attended anti-slavery meetings and also spiritual seances, which were then attracting great attention. Of the many discussions which arose as to existence or non-existence after death, she writes: "The negative had reason on their side; not an argument could one of us bring, except an intuitive feeling that we should not cease to exist. If it be true that we die like the flower, what a delusion has the race suffered, what a vain ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... seeks, what he hath, and possesses, that so he may be able to enjoy it, or use it, according to the nature of it. This is a great point of God's image and conformity with him, whose infinite blessedness and joy riseth from that perfect comprehension and intuitive beholding of himself, and his own incomprehensible riches. So then, man's happiness or misery must depend upon this,—both what the soul fixeth upon, and what it apprehendeth to be in it. For if that eternal and universal good, the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... consideration of the domestic evils such a line of conduct is calculated to produce, might, one would think, of itself be sufficient to prevent its adoption; but, independent of these, policy should influence you; for there is in woman an intuitive quickness, a sagacity, a penetration, and a foresight into the probable consequences of an event, that make her peculiarly calculated to give her opinion and advice.—"If I was making up a plan of consequences," said the great Lord Bolingbroke, "I should like first to consult ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... mind, as has been shown, has a power to abstract its ideas, and so they become essences, general essences, whereby the sorts of things are distinguished. Now each abstract idea being distinct, so that of any two the one can never be the other, the mind will, by its intuitive knowledge, perceive their difference, and therefore in propositions no two whole ideas can ever be affirmed one of another. This we see in the common use of language, which permits not any two abstract words, or names of abstract ideas, to be affirmed one of another. For how near ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... for D'Artagnan, who did not lose a moment in hurrying to him. But it was in vain he attempted to make him understand his reasons, and in vain also that D'Artagnan did understand them; and, further, it was equally in vain that both their sharp and intuitive minds endeavored to give another turn to the adventure; there was no other resource left for Malicorne but to let it be supposed that he had wished to enter Mademoiselle de Montalais's apartment, as Saint-Aignan had passed for having wished to force Mademoiselle ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and the histories half known, half woven, weaving fast, which flew their, threads to provoke speculation; pleasantly embraced and diverted the cool-blooded lady surrounded by her courtiers, who could upon occasion supply the luminous clue or anecdote. She had an intuitive liveliness to detect interchanges of eyes, the shuttle of intrigue; the mild hypocrisy, the clever audacity, the suspicion confirmed, the complication threatening to become resonant and terrible; and the old ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was most happy in his intercourse with men, for he had, when a mere youth, a geniality and tact which drew all toward him, and it has been said that he never forgot a face or a fact. There has never been a better example of the good old stock of printer-editors, who seemed to have an intuitive capacity for public affairs, and never to love political success well enough to leave their newspapers in order to pursue the glittering ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Nevertheless, he believed in her; loved her for her real warmth of heart, which her veil of sentimentality did not in any degree alter for him, for her optimism, her absolutely unfailing good nature, and for an intuitive womanliness he believed to be eminently ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... refusal to understand, although he understood instantly what Myra meant. But he shrank from her intuitive penetration of his troubled spirit. Like any other wounded animal, he wanted to be ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... means of its amassing. The possession, or at least the direction, of great sums was imperative to him, but he valued them only for what they could achieve, and Belding always got the sensation of his new approach to subjects hitherto deemed well worn, and that remarkable mixture of impatience and intuitive power which characterized his analysis. Again there were evenings when Clark did not want to talk, but slipped off to the piano. Then the engineer saw another man within the man, one who, plunged in profound ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... of the two young girls met. They were both good physiognomists and intuitive judges, of character. Consequently in the full meeting of their eyes they read, understood and ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... of something infinite, we learn of the infinite. All the students, teachers, learned men and women of the world have added to the world's spiritual ideas revealed by their study of the finite as well as their intuitive knowledge of the infinite. Charles Kingsley gives us a hint of how to learn: 'Do not study matter for its own sake but as the countenance of God. Try to extract every line of beauty, every association, every moral reflection, every inexpressible ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... last bid them good-night and descended the stair, the young Scot turned to go, feeling, with intuitive delicacy, that he was in the way, but once again he met the soft blue eyes ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... was very slight. This was set down, at first, to his absent-mindedness; but looks can be as eloquent as spoken words. Mme. Foucher, with a woman's keen intelligence, noted the adoring gaze of Victor Hugo as he silently watched her daughter. The young Adele herself was no less intuitive than her mother. It was very well understood, in the course of a few months, that Victor Hugo was ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... listless droop of his heavy shoulders, and the bluish pallor about his firm jaw contrived to make him appear older than he was. There was a kindliness in the wrinkles about his eyes, and his mouth, though solid, was not lacking in indications of intuitive understanding. It was perhaps the formality of his bearing, the stiffness of his body from the hips, that gave him the air of one who belonged by right to a past ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... universe be against me"? How fine it sounds! But who has done it? No, there is but one escape, one chink through which we may see light, one rock on which our feet may find standing-place, even in the abyss; and that is the belief, intuitive, inspired, due neither to reasoning nor to study, that the billows are God's billows; and that though we go down into Hell, He is there also; the belief that not we, but He, is educating us; that these seemingly incoherent miseries, storm following earthquake, and earthquake fire, as if the ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... simply tells us how things are; it answers the question, how is it? There is nothing in which we are more interested than we are in the how is it? Let us not ruin philosophy; consciousness is her foundation with us; for in order to knowledge there must be primary and intuitive beliefs; the man who has no faith in his own ability to see truth, when it is presented through the medium of the senses, will never come to any definite conclusions about any thing. So mind is innate, ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... variable circumstances—depending on persons, passions, fancies, whims; caprices royal, national, parliamentary, and personal, is above theory, and beyond the reach of books; and can only be learned by experience, by practice, and by the most perfect and intuitive tact. The traditional political maxims, the character of the loading sovereigns, statesmen, and public men in any given court, as well as the conduct of negotiations, may be acquired by study, by observation, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... of them—really believed that the example of half a million illiterate and vicious monks was all the education they needed. And yet one notes with surprise that the Government was perpetually at loggerheads with the ecclesiastical authorities. True; but it is wonderful with what intuitive alacrity they joined forces when it was a question of repelling their common ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... he said, and broke into a slow smile as he looked at Amory. The robes which the prince had provided for the evening were rather harder to become accustomed to than the notion of intuitive knowledge. ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... until the artist's imagination, as with a divine ray, has penetrated the mass and inspired it with an ideal existence. Among the numerous attempts of his contemporaries to define the creative faculty of the poet, this comparatively simple one of Hazlitt's is worth noting. "This intuitive perception of the hidden analogies of things, or, as it may be called, this instinct of imagination, is perhaps what stamps the character of genius on the productions of art more than any other circumstance: for it works unconsciously, like nature, and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of his nature and intuitive understanding of others, there was a certain trait in the character of Paul Mario not infrequently found in men of genius. From vanity he was delightfully free, nor had adulation spoiled him; but his interest in the world was strangely abstract, and his outlook almost cosmic. He dreamed ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... Selina, while Elizabeth, who by some miraculous effort of intuitive genius, had succeeded in collecting the luggage, was now engaged in defending it from all comers, especially porters, and making of it a comfort ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... been whole, clean, and neatly made; her temptations did not lie in that line. She had insisted on beginning to work in order to help her mother support the family, and to make it a little easier for them all to get along. She admired pretty things, of course, as all girls do, but she had an intuitive feeling that Sunday-school was not the place in which to show off fine clothes. Bertie's chatter did not please her, and though they were old friends, or rather companions, having been to both school and Sunday-school ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... exigency, the hopes of Amaryllis budded; in the other, her intuitive belief in the strength of Laodice discouraged her. And while she alternately hoped and doubted, Philadelphus, in the chair ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... set out to come, he had come, but Huz was intuitive. He realized in his doggish consciousness that he wasn't wanted and he deemed it wise not to make his ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... us the thought of how near the dead may be to us, to purify that thought, and to breathe upon our fevered hearts a consoling hope. And when I combine its intrinsic reasonableness with the spirit and spiritualism of Christianity, and that intuitive suggestion which springs up in so many souls, I can urge but faint objection to those who entertain it, and would, if possible, share and diffuse the comfort which it gives. Nearer, than, than we imagine—close as in mortal contact, and more intimately—may be those ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... she was fighting," said Theodore with the intuitive knowledge that one child has of ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... these artistic prodigies do not represent the union of variations which we find in the greatest genius. Such men are often distinctly lacking in power of sustained constructive thought. Their insight is largely what is called intuitive. They have flashes of emotional experience which crystallize into single creations of art. They depend upon "inspiration"—a word which is responsible for much of the overrating of such men, and for a good many of their illusions. Not that they do not perform great feats ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin |
