"Instinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for Alice, she became a veritable little fury when the possibility of your guilt was suggested. We have had some rare battles and rows over that and her absolute refusal to speak to Fred, whom from the first she insisted was at the bottom of it, though how she arrived at that conclusion, except by instinct, is more than I can tell. Her joy when Harry here was found, and of course took the position I had intended for you, and her delight in Fred's discomfiture, were, as I told her several times, absolutely indecent. Not that she minded a farthing; she is the most insubordinate ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... equation of a hundred unknown quantities, I followed Professor Hering of Prague in reducing it to one of ninety-nine only, by showing two of the supposed unknown quantities to be so closely allied that they should count as one. I maintained that instinct was inherited memory, and this without admitting more exceptions and qualifying clauses than arise, as it were, by way of harmonics from every proposition, and must be neglected if thought and language ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... muse! For when mankind ran wild in grooves Came holy Orpheus with his songs And turned men's hearts from bestial loves, From brutal force and savage wrongs; Amphion, too, and on his lyre Made such sweet music all the day That rocks, instinct with warm desire, Pursued him ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... instinct of self-advancement was already attaching himself to Maurice as to the wheels of the chariot going steadily up the hill, was not indisposed to loosen his hold upon the man through whose friendship he had first risen, and whose power was now perhaps on the decline. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... easily conferred, resolved into an affection merely selfish, an involuntary perception of pain at the involuntary sight of a being like ourselves languishing in misery. But this sensation, if ever it be felt at all from the brute instinct of uninstructed nature, will only produce effects desultory and transient; it will never settle into a principle of action, or extend relief to calamities unseen, in generations ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the little stream on the old log and passed the point where he had met Vashti the evening before, when he thought he heard something fall a little ahead of him. It could not have been a squirrel, for it did not move after it fell. His old hunter's instinct caused him to look keenly down the path as he turned the clump of bushes which stopped his view; but he saw no squirrel or other moving thing. The only thing he saw was a little brown something with a curious ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... who had called upon Mrs. May, felt quite certain that, in obtaining Jane for a nurse, she had been fortunate. She gave, confidently, to her care, a babe seven months old. At first, from a mother's natural instinct, she kept her eye upon Jane; but every thing going on right, she soon ceased to observe her closely. This was noted by the nurse, who began to breathe with more freedom. Up to this time, the child placed in her charge had received the kindest attentions. Now, however, her natural indifference ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... girl leading her friend on to spit upon the portrait of a father who has lived and died for nothing and no one but herself; and when we find in real life a desire for melodramatic effect, it is generally the 'sadic' instinct that is responsible for it. It is possible that, without being in the least inclined towards 'sadism,' a girl might have shewn the same outrageous cruelty as Mlle. Vinteuil in desecrating the memory and defying the wishes of her dead father, but she would not have given them deliberate expression ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... as a person to be pitied—a person with a morbidly sensitive imagination, conscious of the capacities for evil which lie dormant in us all, and striving earnestly to open her heart to the counter-influence of her own better nature; the effort was beyond him. A perverse instinct in him said, as if in words, Beware ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... now come to the question how far the fish are your property. If the fish only bred on purpose to please you, and make you a present of their stock, it might then require a different line of argument; but as in breeding they only acted in obedience to an instinct with which they are endowed on purpose that they may supply man, I submit to you that you cannot prove these fish to be yours more than mine. As for feeding with the idea that they were your own, that is not an unusual ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... revelation was complete, and the young man understood, as clearly as if she had told him in so many words, that she was not a widow and that her husband was the cause of her sorrow. His quickened instinct marvelously divined (or else it was conveyed to him by some intangible method of hers) that the Count de Vaurigard was a very bad case, but that ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... Kentuckian. He would follow her footsteps wherever she went, and affectionately kiss her hands. But then, as Kate said, "Hector had more common sense than half the people in the world," and he seemed to know by instinct that she whom he so fondly caressed had once watched over his young master, who was now sleeping in his silent grave, unmindful that in his home he was still sincerely mourned even ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... parenthesis as Pope-and-Drydenism was in ours. As in the age of the Reformation, so in this, the German element of the modern character predominates. During the two centuries from which we have emerged, the Latin element had the upper hand. Our love of the Alps is a Gothic, a Teutonic, instinct; sympathetic with all that is vague, infinite, and insubordinate to rules, at war with all that is defined and systematic in our genius. This we may perceive in individuals as well as in the broader aspects of arts and literatures. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... observed, the special point of the praise conferred, by the great German poet should be no less sufficient to dispose of the vulgar misconception yet lingering among sciolists and pretenders to criticism, which regards a writer than whom no man was ever born with a finer or a stronger instinct for perfection of excellence in execution as a mere noble savage of letters, a rough self-taught sketcher or scribbler of crude and rude genius, whose unhewn blocks of verse had in them some veins of rare enough metal to be quarried and polished by Shakespeare. What most ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... crime not to be certain at once that no Englishman, be he ruffian from the gutter or be he Duke's son, ever stabs his victim in the back. Italians, French, Spaniards do it, if you will, and women of most nations. An Englishman's instinct is to strike and not to stab. George Higgins or Lord Arthur Skelmerton would have knocked their victim down; the woman only would lie in wait till the enemy's back was turned. She knows her weakness, and she does not mean ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... their walk and gait, but everywhere they seem to exhibit the same tendencies, and to hunt for their bread by the same means, as if they were not of the human but rather of the animal species, and in lieu of reason were endowed with a kind of instinct which assists them to a very limited extent and ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... course get into any or all of the thousand mischief-scrapes which are the heritage of puppies. But, a single reproof was enough to cure him forever of the particular form of mischief which had just been chidden. He was one of those rare dogs that learn the Law by instinct; and that remember for all time a command or ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... be driven by a coachman of whose capacity and sobriety you are uninformed?" On being assured that such was the case, he concluded that "the love of risk and adventure must be a very widely-spread instinct, seeing that so many people are ready to expose themselves to such fearful casualties." He was grateful to think that he had never been exposed to such terrific hazards. What the worthy clerk would have said concerning the risks of ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... of Bellona near Bootham Bar, and paid his devotions unmolested, let us hope, by any prevision of the misbehavior of his son Caracalla (whose baths I had long ago visited at Rome) in killing his other son Geta. Everywhere I could be an early Christian, in company with Constantine, in whom the instinct of political Christianity must have begun to stir as soon as he was chosen emperor. But I dare say I heard the muted tramp of the Sixth Legion about the Yorkish streets above all other martial sounds because I stayed as long as Doncaster Week would let me in the railway hotel, ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... Spontini, the impartial examination of the traditions of instrumentation and of little-used forms and combinations, conversations with virtuosi, and the effects I made them try on their different instruments, together with a little instinct, did the rest ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... down by want, burdened with fear, deprived of individuality, and colorless. It breathed no sighs of a strength hungering for space; it shouted no provoking cries of irritated courage ready to crush both the good and the bad indiscriminately. It did not voice the elemental instinct of the animal to snatch freedom for freedom's sake, nor the feeling of wrong or vengeance capable of destroying everything and powerless to build up anything. In this song there was nothing from the old, slavish world. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... she said, but by some unaccountable instinct speaking, even in the extremity of her surprise, in a tone of voice that scarcely reached beyond the person she addressed,—"In Heaven's name, what do you here?—in this disguise? Aunt Alice will detect you, and then my situation will be ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... only the restlessness of grief. Like all other pain, grief is haunted with the illusion that change means relief; motion is the instinct of escape. Puddock walked beside him, and they went swiftly ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... grace so good to us as sin in its guilt and filth? What makes sin so horrible and damnable a thing in our eyes, as when we see there is nothing can save us from it but the infinite grace of God? Further, there seems, if I may so term it, to be a kind of natural instinct in the new creature to seek after the grace of God; for so saith the Word, 'They that are after the flesh, do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit' (Rom 8:5). The child by nature nuzzles in its mother's bosom ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... dispersive; and if we are to interpret the evolution of mental on the analogy of physical life, we shall find, M. Bergson says, nothing in the latter which compels us to assume either that intelligence is developed instinct, or that instinct is degraded intelligence. If that be so, then, we may say, neither is there anything to warrant us in assuming either that religion is developed magic, or magic degraded religion. Spell is not degraded prayer, nor is prayer a superior form of spell: neither does become ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... organization—and neither geographical remoteness nor unwieldiness of number nor local interests and differences were untractable obstacles to that spirit of fusion which was at once the ambition of the few and the instinct of the many; and cities, even where most powerful, had become the centres of the attracting and joining forces, knots in the political network—while this was going on more or less happily throughout the rest of Europe, in Italy the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... people is not only an English people; it is much more Anglo-Saxon than the English themselves. We have already seen how the essential quality of both peoples is an Anglo-Saxon quality—what has been called (and the phrase will do as well as any other) their "Particularist" instinct. The Angles and Saxons (with some modification in the former) were tribes of individual workers, sprung from the soil, rooted in it, accustomed always to rely on individual labour and individual impulse rather than on the initiative, the protection, or the assistance of the State or the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... two women sat down side by side and looked into each other's faces. Katherine's instinct was to soothe and protect the shy creatures that shrank from her, and Audrey in her doubt and timidity appealed to her more than she had ever done in the self-conscious triumph of her beauty. She took her hand, caressing it ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... wound, his beard and his hair[40] laying aside their hoariness, assume a black hue. His leanness flies, being expelled; his paleness and squalor are gone. His hollow veins are supplied with additional blood, and his limbs become instinct with vigor. AEson is astonished, and calls to recollection that he was such four ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... carved oak ceilings and pillars at Penrhyn, and the use of stone from St. Helen's there, as well as the bedstead that is made of slate, and the enormous table of the same material in the servants' hall. The interest in materials is a special instinct, a kind of sympathy with Nature showing itself by appreciation of the different qualities of her products. This instinct has always been very strong in me, and I have often noticed it in others, especially in artists. Some poets are very fond of describing beautiful materials; ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... saw in his way only a four-legged creature of the brute world, which, in his arrogant brutalness he esteemed more brute than himself. All the pretty picture of the soft puppy, instinct with communicativeness, bursting with tenderness of petition, was veiled to his vision. What he saw was merely a four-legged animal to be thrust aside while he continued his lordly two-legged progress toward the bottle that could set maggots crawling in his brain and make him dream ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... congratulated himself upon the expediency of virtue, another image appeared in his reflections, and the paternal instinct, so strong in men of his kind, responded instantly to the argument which clothed his mere natural impulse. Marriage, he told himself, would mean a son of his own, and the stability which he had always missed in any relation with a woman would ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... instinct, busied herself with the pillow—with the little adjuncts of a sick-room which had already found their way to the bedside. She looked at Mrs. Harrington's face, saw the hard eyes fixed on Fitz, and something in the glance made her leave ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... addressed to himself and of feeling the sharp, clean impact of the club head upon a ball that flew a surprising distance. His obedient young muscles soon conformed to the few master laws of the game. He kept down, followed through and forebore, against all human instinct, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... the liberty of his native jungle; but also because his wife feared that in some way her son might learn the whereabouts of the ape and through his attachment for the beast become imbued with the roving instinct which, as Tarzan explained to Paulvitch, had ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... side of the tunnel showed her gigantic shadows walking slowly on either side of the gliding car. She felt the little hands of her associates seeking hers, and knew they were awake and conscious, and she returned to each a reassuring pressure from the large protecting instinct of her maternal little heart. Presently the car glided into an open space of bright light, and stopped. The transition from the darkness of the tunnel at first dazzled their eyes. It was ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... Version the rendering is not "by" but "in," "which" referring to the word "spirit,"—not the third Person of the Godhead, but the human spirit of Jesus—in which spirit, separated from the body yet instinct with immortal life, He went and "preached to the spirits in prison," or rather to the spirits in custody. The passage marks an antithesis between "flesh" and "spirit." In Christ's "flesh." He was put to death. His enemies killed His body, but His soul was as beyond their power. His ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... of the dark—wrought into instinct by a thousand generations of ancestors who crouched at night around flickering campfires in jungles through which crept hostile men and marauding beasts—had fastened upon him, stripping him of the thin veneer ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... away from the main road toward the north. The country we traversed was one of wide, woody bottoms separated by rocky hills. The trapper proved to be an excellent guide. Seemingly by a sort of instinct he was able to judge where a way would prove practicable for our animals down into or up out of the numerous canons and ravines. It was borne in on me very forcibly how much hampered we should have been by our inexperience had we tried ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... years. When men who knew him wanted business advice, they went to him by preference, and nobody came away empty. He knew the City and its intricacies like a book. He knew who was safe and who was shaky, as if by a kind of instinct, and he knew where and when to invest, and where and when not to invest, as few men did. 'You can't get at me,' he would say; for, old-fashioned as he was, he used a little of the new-fashioned slang to give spice and vigour to his conversation. ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... did at the moment I can't say; for with that selfish instinct of self-preservation which makes a man in the instant of danger grasp anything, regardless of what his comrades in distress might be doing, I grappled hold of one of the oars and the pork breaker, besides the stern-sheet grating, which I forgot ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Jeff's instinct for fair play was roused at once, all the more because of the ripple of laughter that came from the ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... landlord shooting. These Saxon settlers have no imagination. Like mill horses, they move in one everlasting round, unvaried even by a modicum of brigandage. An occasional murder, a small suspicion of arson, might relieve the wearisome monotony of their prosaic existence, but they lack the poetic instinct. They have not the sporting tastes of their Keltic countrymen. They are not ashamed of this, but even glory in it. An Orangeman asked me to quote a case of shooting from behind a wall by any of his order. He says no such thing ever ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... seemed to strain and give way. I lost all sense of pain, all capacity to suffer. How long this lasted I know not. When the revelry was at its height, when the wine had dulled every human instinct of these rough "Soldiers of the Church," Ortez raised his voice above the tumult; he knew his men were in the humor for a diversion ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... savage, we find traces of it among primitive men. The child in his earliest years loves to trace the forms of objects familiar to his eyes. The savage takes a pleasure in depicting and rudely giving shape to objects which constantly meet his view. The artistic instinct is of all ages and of all climes; it springs up naturally in all countries, and takes its origin alike everywhere in the imitative faculty of man. Evidences of this instinct at the earliest period have been discovered among the relics of primitive men; rough sketches on slate and on stone of the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... countries without inhabitants, or seas never navigated. Thus I might say that all prior to the commencement of these Memoirs was the barrenness of my infancy, when we can only be said to vegetate like plants, or live, like brutes, according to instinct, and not as human creatures, guided by reason. To those who had the direction of my earliest years I leave the task of relating the transactions of my infancy, if they find them as worthy of being recorded as the infantine exploits ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the callousness with which she insisted on getting rid of it so soon, but she argued with common sense that the poor child had much better be put somewhere before it grew used to her. Philip had expected the maternal instinct to make itself felt when she had had the baby two or three weeks and had counted on this to help him persuade her to keep it; but nothing of the sort occurred. Mildred was not unkind to her baby; she did all that was necessary; it amused ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... had dismissed the court, no one moved. As if by instinct, all felt that there was something more to be said. What had prompted Judge Bolitho to make this statement they did not know, they could not conceive; but they felt rather than thought that something tremendous was at stake. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... thy genius, thy youth, and thy name— Thou, born of a Russell—whose instinct to run The accustomed career of thy sires, is the same As the eaglet's, to soar with his ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... is not avoided by having recourse to the popular theory of a natural faculty, a sense or instinct, informing us of right and wrong. For—besides that the existence of such a moral instinct is itself one of the matters in dispute—those believers in it who have any pretensions to philosophy, have been obliged to abandon the idea that it discerns what is right or wrong in the particular ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... lines of brooding recollection. Immediately Amelia was aware that those years had been bitter to him, and that the fruit of them was stale and dry. She cut by instinct into a ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... really want to know my sole reason?" She looked at him somewhat suspicious, somewhat reliant, awaiting her womanly instinct to reveal to her the ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... and shipping business, with a Chinaman. He'd been the wildest of us all in the Hebe Maitland days, and always acted youthful for his years. There were two things in him that never could get to keep the peace with each other, his conscience and his sporting instinct. Yet he was a capable man, and forceful, and I judge he could do 'most anything he set his ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... governing the relations between people and their names, he should have been Irish—but he was not. He was colored, and very much so. That was the reason he lived on Douglass Street. The negro has very strong within him the instinct of colonization and it was in accordance with this that Patsy's mother had found her way to Little Africa when she had come North ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... his time; none less than John Locke, the most learned philosopher of the day. Strong company this, for a young and unknown man, yet in the belief of Montague, himself a young man and a gambler by instinct, not too strong for this young Scotchman who had startled the Parliament of his own land by some of the most remarkable theories of finance which had ever been proposed in any country or to any government. As Law had himself arrogantly announced, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... retire, wheel round and round, 700 Then plunging back with sudden bound, Headed by one black mighty steed, Who seemed the Patriarch of his breed, Without a single speck or hair Of white upon his shaggy hide; They snort—they foam—neigh—swerve aside, And backward to the forest fly, By instinct, from a human eye. They left me there to my despair, Linked to the dead and stiffening wretch, 710 Whose lifeless limbs beneath me stretch, Relieved from that unwonted weight, From whence I could not extricate Nor him nor me—and there we lay, The dying on the dead! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... scholar, or, indeed, gave any voluntary attention to the course of learning laid down by the authorities of Muirtown Seminary. He sat unashamed at the foot of every class, maintaining a certain impenetrable front when a question came his length, and with the instinct of a chieftain never risking his position in the school by exposing himself to contempt. When Thomas John Dowbiggin was distinguishing himself after an unholy fashion by translating Caesar into English like unto Macaulay's History, Speug used to watch him with keen interest, and ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... After threading their way along the weedy water-path, which was barely wide enough to give passage for the boats, they emerged at a slant into another stream. Down this, with the sure instinct for direction of the hereditary jungle-dweller, Tucu turned his prow without asking the women whether to go with or against the current. Once more on the waters of their home creek, the Mayorunas quickened their strokes and howled merrily on ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... he had grown fairly gluttonous of hate—had tended it with a passion that was like that of love. Now he felt that he had never really had enough of it—had never feasted on the fruit of it till he was satisfied—had never known the delight of wallowing in it until to-day. Deep-rooted like an instinct as the feeling was, he knew now that there had been hours when, for very weakness of his nature, he had almost forgotten that he meant to pay back Fletcher in the end, when it seemed, after all, easier merely to ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... in some degree both the popularity and merit of Gustavus; yet he rarely permitted his anger to rage beyond a harsh expression, and with generous instinct he knew how to open the door of reconciliation, not only by frankly confessing his irritability, and by conferring fresh favors, but also by demanding fresh services from those noble natures which in his heat and rashness he had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... kindly the counsels of the elder, in her paternal circle, and how does she grace a sweet portion of her appropriate sphere. Nor will I omit to say, that whether united to another by the sacred bond of marriage or not, if she be a true woman, she is instinct with those inward charms, and Christian dispositions, which qualify her for that responsible connection. Intelligence, wisdom, disinterested affection, a mind to advise, a heart rich with sympathies, and a hand to aid,—these ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... elements are lacking in our soils, we could merely supply these; but frequent analyses are expensive, and often misleading, at best. The safest plan is always to keep within reach of the plants the food we know they require, and the roots, with unerring instinct, will attend to the proportions. Hence the value of barnyard manure in the estimation of plain common-sense. A sensible writer has clearly shown that from twenty-three cows and five horses, if proper absorbents are used, $5.87 ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... industrious after the Oriental method—that is to say, he is always doing something, but is economical of energy rather than time. If there are more ways than one of doing a thing, he has an unerring instinct which guides him to choose the one that costs least trouble. He is a fatalist in philosophy, and this helps him too. For example, when he transplants a rose bush, he saves himself the trouble of digging very deep by breaking the root, for if ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... his dirty knotted hands before his face and howled again. But even that involuntary sound was furtive lest any one should hear. He might have shrieked and roared with all the strength that was in him—there was no human ear within reach—but the instinct of cowardice kept him from making any more noise than was necessary to rend and break the heart of the woman beside him,—that, although he was only half conscious of it, was his purpose in crying. He had a fiendish desire to make her suffer ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... lifted her bowed head, and rising slowly to her feet, she genuflected before the altar. Then she turned and slipped through a door of a small side chapel, into which the black-bearded man closely followed. Paul's instinct was to follow, too, and, in the calm security of a mind made up, he retraced his ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... name fallen from my lips before a change swift as lightning came over her countenance; all doubt, anxiety, petulance, hope, and despondence, and these in ever-varying degrees, chasing each other like shadows, had vanished, and she was instinct and burning with some new powerful emotion which had ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... dew on them, and was in the act of cutting some adorable "Mrs. Sharman Crawfords," when she found it behoved her to let down her carefully tucked up petticoats, as the Marquis of Walderhurst was walking straight toward her. An instinct told her that he wanted to talk to her about Lady ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... extraordinarily potent, when there has been frequent copulation and heavy grain feeding, when the weather is warm and the animal has had little exercise, and when the proximity of other horses or mares excites the generative instinct without gratification, this congestion may grow to actual inflammation. Among the other causes of orchitis are blows and penetrating wounds implicating the testicles, abrasions of the scrotum by a chain or rope passing inside the thigh, contusions and frictions on the gland under rapid ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... the first instinct," replied Helen, surprised at a strange, deep thrill in the depths of her. "I'd fight for ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... are far stronger than those designated as race-prejudice. Nature has spent her most painstaking efforts in establishing within the human organization a mechanism to ensure, above all other ends, that the individual shall continue. The instinct to propagate is the strongest of the instinctive impulses with which mankind has been fitted. It dominates and conquers the race instinct on all occasions save one. Sex impulse is the battery which breaks down race-barriers. Race instinct ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith
... escaping, but the instinct of self-preservation asserted itself, as it always will, and prompted me to avail myself of even the slenderest and most doubtful chance ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... brawl might have ended, no one can say, had the two gentlemen actually crossed swords; but Mrs. Polly, with a wonderful presence of mind, restored peace by exclaiming, "Hush, hush! the beaks, the beaks!" Upon which, with one common instinct, the whole party made a rush for the garden gates, and disappeared into the fields. Mrs. Briggs knew her company: there was something in the very name of a constable which sent ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cautiously felt my way down the avenue—it was still black dark under the dark trees—and later up the tunnel of the side road which I hit upon by an instinct that made me feel for it at the precise moment when I reached the point of its junction with the avenue—I returned with a sense of satisfaction to the memory of the last four hours. I was conscious of some kind of plan in the way the comedy of ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... After half an hour's interval, during which I drank a glass of port wine and ate cakes, the signal was given for the comedy competition. I was fourteenth on the list for this, so that I had ample time to recover. My fighting instinct now began to take possession of me, and a sense of injustice made me feel rebellious. I had not deserved my prize that day, but it seemed to me that I ought ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... They talked. About places—places. Places they had seen and hadn't seen; places they wanted to see, and the ways you could get to places. He trusted to luck; he risked things; he was out, he said, for risk. She steered by the sun, by instinct, by the map in her head. She remembered. But you could buy maps. He ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... front and rear, searching for some means of ingress to this mysterious dwelling. I do not know why the thing stuck in my mind. Perhaps some appealing quality of youth in the face and voice stirred in me the instinct for the championship of dames that is to be found in every man. At any rate I was grimly resolved not to depart without an explanation of ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... His hearers, he obviously felt assured, knew him better than to imagine that he was really at a loss. "It is difficult to deal with—er—persons of this description. What do you propose that we should do?" he inquired, turning, as if by instinct, to Cornish. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... at this hour he was reverting to all he had learnt—more from watching and imbibing it than any other way—from Boase, so Nicky had absorbed from him what made him what he was. And yet, so till the end did the deep inherited instinct of the man who lives by land hold him, Ishmael took pleasure in the thought that, after all, Nicky was of Ruan blood.... So much of earth held by him as everything else began to ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... established, checks impulsiveness. (c) What respective shares in checking impulsiveness are taken by the feelings which the social state fosters—such as the fear of surrounding individuals, the instinct of sociality, the desire to accumulate property, the sympathetic feelings, the sentiment of justice? These, which require a social environment for their development, all of them involve imaginations of ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... sob he was on his feet. He put his arms round her; he laid his cheek against her hair; but he did not kiss her. Afterwards he wondered what instinct it was that kept him from kissing her. He ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... authority of results repeatedly shown. His speech, his clothing, his gestures, the blinking of his eyes, were law to the country-side, where every one, after studying him as a naturalist studies the result of instinct in the lower animals, had come to understand the deep mute wisdom ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... of our philosophers, "rises and stoops by turns; it is often imperfect, because it does not take the trouble to improve itself. It is great in great things, because they are adapted to excite its sublime instinct, and call it into action. It is negligent in ordinary things, because they are beneath it, and have nothing in them to stir it up: if, however, it do turn its attention to them, it fertilizes them, aggrandizes them, and gives them a new and unexpected appearance, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... Christian, we have good measure, shaken together, and running over, for our christian Lord's day. And I say again, that the first day of the week, and the spirit of such a Christian, suit one another as nature suiteth nature; for there is as it were a natural instinct in Christians, as such, when they understand what in a first day was brought forth, to fall in therewith to keep it holy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... him with a bright smile and a very emphatic shake of the head. She knew by instinct that he alluded to the accusation of his wife, touching Rachel Frost. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was running down towards the postern gate, he came with great violence against a man who was struggling up through the torrent of the people, without cap or cloak, and seemingly maddened with terrors. Urged by some strong instinct, my grandfather grasped him by the throat; for, by the glimpse of the lights that were then placing at every window, he saw it was Winterton. But a swirl of the crowd tore them asunder, and he had only time to cry, "It's ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... single great play, we must wonder what he might have done had he outlived his wretched youth and become a man. Here and there his work is remarkable for its splendid imagination, for the stateliness of its verse, and for its rare bits of poetic beauty; but in dramatic instinct, in wide knowledge of human life, in humor, in delineation of woman's character, in the delicate fancy which presents an Ariel as perfectly as a Macbeth,—in a word, in all that makes a dramatic genius, Shakespeare stands alone. Marlowe ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... greater characters of The Ring and the Book, this intensity of vigour in good and evil flashes out upon us. Even Pompilia, the most gentle of all his creations, at the first prompting of the instinct of motherhood, rises to the law demanding resistance, and casts ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... actions of some of them are very profitable and pleasant; others are very hurtful; yet, seeing they have no moral faculty, or sense of desert, and do not act from choice guided by understanding, or with a capacity of reasoning and reflecting, but only from instinct, and are not capable of being influenced by moral inducements, their actions are not properly sinful or virtuous; nor are they properly the subjects of any such moral treatment for what they do, as moral agents are for their faults ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... he replied, with the same half-apologetic, half-humorous smile, "it is instinct. I feel, somehow, that this man Halyard has got an auk—perhaps two. I can't get away from the idea that we are on the eve of acquiring the rarest of living creatures. It's odd for a scientist to talk as I do; doubtless ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... much for your kindness," he said courteously. Then, by a common instinct, without any spoken word between us, we all went from the ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... calling. "A prime virtue in the pulpit is mental integrity. The absence of it is a subtle source of moral impotence. It concerns other things than the blunt antipodes represented by a truth and a lie. Argument which does not satisfy a preacher's logical instinct; illustration which does not commend itself to his aesthetic taste; a perspective of doctrine which is not true to the eye of his deepest insight; the use of borrowed materials which offend his sense of literary equity; an emotive ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... sprouting of seeds, into holy vegetable furnished with the six tastes. And it is these which constitute the food of all creatures upon the earth. Thus the food that supporteth the lives of creatures is instinct with solar energy, and the sun is, therefore, the father of all creatures. Do thou, hence, O Yudhishthira, take refuge even in him. All illustrious monarchs of pure descent and deeds are known to have delivered their people by practising high asceticism. The great Karttavirya, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... excited; she did not notice how Kindar started, turned pale, and fixed his eyes on the floor. She was so charmed with the courage of her beau cousin that she could think of nothing else. Even her frivolous nature had this feminine instinct—she prized personal daring and courage in a man more than all other things; of strength of mind she knew nothing, and therefore she could not appreciate it, but she demanded courage, dignity, and strength of physique. She laid her hands upon her cousin with cordial approbation, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... view to the immediate vicinity of the sledge. Our guide, however, took us through this trackless waste of smooth ice, a distance of over twenty-five miles, without deviation from the direct line, with no landmarks or sun to steer by; but on he went with the unerring instinct of a dog, until we struck the land at the western banks of Pfeffer River. Arrived at the cairn we found it as he said, "a white man's cairn" unmistakably, but before proceeding to take it down we examined it carefully and found scratched on a clay stone with ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... sailing and anchoring was most amusing. He used to say: 'Ship walk—walk—all night—hard walk—then, by-and-by, anchor tumble down.' His manner of describing, his interviews with the wicked 'northern men' was most graphic. His countenance and figure became at once instinct with animation and energy, and no doubt he was then influenced by feelings of baffled hatred and revenge, from having failed in his much-vaunted determination to carry off in triumph one of their gins. I would sometimes amuse myself by asking him how he was to excuse himself to his friends ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... reticent with any man, high or low, about any pleasure in which he saw fit to indulge; to-day he had been shy over confessing to the commanding officer his leaning to cock-fights—a sign of his approach to the correct mental attitude of the enlisted man. Being corporal had wakened in him a new instinct, and this State-House affair was the first chance he had had to show himself. He gave the order to proceed at a walk in such a tone that one of the troopers whispered to another, "Specimen ain't going to forget he's wearing ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... hugged him, embraced him again and again, then turned and took me by the hand, grasping it firmly. He gave me a thrilling illustration of his joy over the return of his old-time boy friend which impressed me with the sincerity and true instinct of the Indian attachment for his friends. Satanta called Col. ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... of all, and (as I now especially believe) most pregnant with meaning for the future, was to find the inherited experience in me of so much teaching and careful habit—instinct of command, if you will—all that goes to make what we call in Western Europe a "gentleman," put at the orders and the occasional insult of a hierarchy of office, many of whose functionaries were peasants and artisans. Stripes on the arm, symbols, suddenly became of overwhelming ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... himself is the better and the higher for having cherished them. The mother, when she forgets self in her child, though her love and self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice may, in some respects, be called but an animal instinct, is elevated and ennobled by the exercise of them. The patriot and the thinker, the philanthropist, ay! even—although I take him to be the lowest in the scale—the soldier who, in some cause which he thinks to be a good one, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... from the galleries, up from the floor, in from the boxes, focussing itself from all sides upon that single, lonely, dominant figure before it. And Cotton Mather Thayer, as he listened with a quiet, impassive face, felt his heart leaping and bounding within him. He knew, by an instinct which he had learned to trust completely, that in the years to come, he would never reach a greater height of artistic success than he had done just then. One such experience could justify many a year of halting indecision. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... forget the enemy, and to call to mind only associations of the beautiful. Under such inspirations it was impossible to resist the impulse to sing. It was a thing of unsophisticated nature. Music came to our lips as if it were an instinct, as if it were the very condition of our being, just as if we had been birds. It will be difficult for any one not of that company to realize with what tender, touching pathos the simplest home melodies melted over those waters, though the words and airs ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... a week, yes, fully ten days more had gone, with the Marshall game only a few more days away. All this while the coach had kept at his constant grind, trying to get the eleven so accustomed to the many plays of the game that they could act through instinct rather than reason. ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... rendezvoused in the arbour by some common instinct. Then came a bull's-eye flash of struggling moonshine, which disclosed their four figures standing huddled from the wind in a raffle of flying drapery, and not without a considerable need for more. At the humiliating ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which gained for the Kings of France the title of "Most Christian King." The real meaning of this was that he should always support the Pope against the Emperor, and in return be allowed more than ordinary power over his clergy. The great feudal vassals of eastern France, with a strong instinct that he was their enemy, made a league with the Emperor Otto IV. and his uncle King John, against Philip Augustus. John attacked him in the south, and was repulsed by Philip's son, Louis, called the "Lion;" ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tone of compunction, and averred that the deed had been unpremeditated; that it had been the result of a panic or an ecstasy of fear inspired by the suddenly discovered designs of the Huguenots; and that, in the instinct of self-preservation, the King, with his family and immediate friends, had plunged into a crime which they now bitterly lamented. The French envoys at the different courts of Europe were directed to impress this view upon the minds of the monarchs to whom they were accredited. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and on the throne as an idol that justified sins committed in its worship. At all times there have been men, resolute and relentless in the pursuit of their aims, whose ardour was too strong to be restricted by moral barriers or the instinct of humanity. In the sixteenth century, beside the fanaticism of freedom, there was an abject idolatry of power; and laws both human and divine were made to yield to the intoxication of authority and the reign of will. It was laid down that kings have ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... up boldly in his mother's lap and spoke so forcibly to the judges that he soon secured her acquittal. Once when he was five years old, while playing in the street, he saw the messengers of Vortigern. Warned by his prophetic instinct that they were seeking him, he ran to meet them, and offered to accompany them to the king. On the way thither he saw a youth buying shoes, and laughed aloud. When questioned concerning the cause of his mirth, he predicted that the youth would die ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the part of public authorities to insist on single women or widows only among the medical women whom they employ. There is a big fight to be waged here—one of the many that our pioneers have left for us and our successors. The lack of social instinct which lies behind this edict is amazing. What can be more anti-social than that a young, healthy, and highly-trained woman should have to decide between marriage and executing that public work for which she has ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... on through and into the creamy light of this glowing atmosphere, where the sunshine seems to pour into and blend with everything, we can hardly wonder that sun worship was an instinct of the earliest races, or that the little child believes that the East lies near the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... her brother—or so it seemed; for quick, resolute action in the next step of Life was all she required, while he deliberated and trembled, and often did wrong from his very deliberation, when his first instinct ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... in the lake are innumerable, but they are more difficult to catch than those in the stream, a fact which pleases the true fisherman, who fishes to match his skill and science against the instinct and cunning of the fish, rather than with the one sole intention of making his bag larger than that of any ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... There was a cool spring in the dry creek bed near by, well hidden by a clump of choke-cherry bushes, and she turned thither to cool her thirsty throat. In the depths of the ravine her eye caught a familiar footprint—the track of a doe with the young fawn beside it. The hunting instinct arose within. ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... wait to make it. The satisfaction of our expectation is like the satisfaction of a bodily desire or need; no, not like it, it IS that. The conditions and causes of rhythm and our pleasure in it are more deeply seated than language, custom, even instinct; they are in the most fundamental functions of life. This element of music, at least, seems not to have arisen as ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... rather than scientific, regards congenital inversion as a large and inevitable factor in human life, but, taking the Catholic standpoint, he condemns all sexuality, either heterosexual or homosexual, and urges the invert to restrain the physical manifestations of his instinct and to aim at an ideal of chastity. On the whole, it may be said that the book is the work of a thinker who has reached his own results in his own way, and those results bear an imprint of originality ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... could stop here. Why should there be painful things in the world which must be written about? That pretty courtesy, that spring from the earth were poor Mignon's last. She had risen and bowed with the instinct which all players feel to act out their parts to the end, but as the curtain fell down she dropped again, this time heavily. Mr. Currie, much frightened, lifted and carried her to his wife's tent. The band, who were playing out the audience, stopped ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... dexterously jumped out on to the pavement; the occupant of the other hansom, whose wheel was locked into theirs, obeying the same instinct, had done the same. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... one of them was a free agent," he said. "They were all tied to the merciless industrial machine. And the pathos of it and the tragedy is that they are tied by their heartstrings. Their children—always the young life that it is their instinct to protect. This instinct is stronger than any ethic they possess. My father! He lied, he stole, he did all sorts of dishonorable things to put bread into my mouth and into the mouths of my brothers and sisters. He was a slave to the industrial machine, and it ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... Catulus, the best of men, and choose Lepidus, the worst! It will be well for you to be vigilant, now that you have strengthened your opponent against yourself." Sylla spoke this, it may seem, by a prophetic instinct, for, not long after, Lepidus grew insolent, and broke into open hostility to Pompey ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... had come to it through the tortuous cuts and passes was a marvel of homing instinct—the heart that homed to its object. It had seemed to her all along this strange, tense journey, that she had had no will of her own, that she had held her breath and shut her eyes, as it were, and gone forward in obedience to some strange ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... certain kinds of food, and disgust at other varieties, which particular races of men exhibit, is an instinct which they cannot avoid obeying. Instead of exciting our disgust, as it too frequently does, it should exalt our admiration of the infinite wisdom of the Creator, who by simply adapting man's desire for particular kinds of food to the external conditions under which he is placed, ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... understand Frances, you can understand me. That's how I felt about Dickey. I wasn't in love with him. I was sorry for him. I knew he'd go to pieces if I wasn't there to keep him together. Perhaps it's the maternal instinct." ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... volatile thing called Human Reason, which is merely a name for whatever opinion we happen to adopt for the time—it is a thing which totters on its throne in a fit of rage or despair—there is nothing infinite about it. Guide yourself by the delicate Spiritual Instinct within you, which tells you that with God all things are possible, save that He cannot destroy Himself or lessen by one spark the fiery brilliancy of his ever-widening circle of productive Intelligence. But make no attempt to convert the world to your way of thinking—it ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... and clean-shaved at the age of sixty-six. Of his four sons, only two could be found sufficiently without the E to go on making ploughs. Stanley's grandfather, Stuart Morton, indeed, had tried hard, but in the end had reverted to the congenital instinct for being just a Moreton. An extremely amiable man, he took to wandering with his family, and died in France, leaving one daughter—Frances, Stanley's mother—and three sons, one of whom, absorbed in horses, wandered to Australia and was killed by falling from them; one ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... River station, and slipped off unnoticed into the darkness of the wet night. She had two miles to walk, and a cold rain was falling. Soon the Old Lady was wet to the skin and chilled to the marrow. She felt as if she were walking in a bad dream. Blind instinct alone guided her over the last mile and up the lane to her own house. As she fumbled at her door, she realized that a burning heat had suddenly taken the place of her chilliness. She stumbled in over her threshold and ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... its necessity is not naturally indicated is as harmful as to eat a meal when it is not craved, but unquestionably it is of advantage to have the bowels move of their own accord, as the result of a natural impulse. Movements that do not come through the call of an instinct for relief are rarely satisfactory, and, though we strongly emphasize the necessity of regularity of the bowels, it is not absolutely necessary that this call should come at a certain time during each day; and ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... portraitist, so there are certain combinations of earthly ease, of the natural and social art of giving pleasure, which fail of character, or accent, even of the power to interest, under the strain of transposition or of emphasis. Rupert, with an instinct of his own, transposes and insists only in the right degree; or what it doubtless comes to is that we simply see him arrested by so vivid a picture of the youth of the world at its blandest as to make all his culture seem a waste and all his questions a vanity. That is ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... them at once appeared venerable as soon as it was built; but even at the present day the work looks as fresh as ever, for they bloom with an eternal freshness which defies time, and seems to make the work instinct with ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Presently they all disappeared. Just then I felt myself drawn down by someone getting hold of my foot under the water, but, managing to kick off my shoe, I quickly rose again and struck out away from the spot, impelled by instinct rather than anything else, for I had no time for thought; then directly afterwards up came the masts almost with a bound, as it were, and stood out of the water, with a slight list only to starboard, with the fore, main, and mizzen tops all above water, ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... death—for Jack attended him to the end through a fatal illness;—and it showed a face thin and worn, and much lined by unspeakable hardships. But I burst out crying at once the very moment I looked at it. For a second or two, I couldn't say why: I suppose it was instinct. Blood is thicker than water, they tell us; and I have the intuition of kindred very strong in me, I believe. But at any rate, I cried silently, with big hot tears, while I looked at that dead face of silent suffering, ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... dark and bright, with brown clear eyes that looked full of intelligence, and, alas! seemed to say that their owner might have kept his place in the school with ease had he but so chosen. He did not seem very conscious or very miserable: he had the true boyish instinct of hiding feelings, and looked much as usual, though there was nothing like bravado or nonchalance in his manner. When his father shook hands with him gravely, and merely said, 'Well, Cecil,' in a short dry way, a sudden flush mounted up in his brown cheek; and there was a little anxiety in ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... "I can always trust my instinct. I knew the moment I saw him that he was a cavalier worth letting blood. Now, sir, your sword and harness, and I am at your ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... has at last spread out into the stagnant pool of humanitarianism. He wrote when the rebellion of Wat Tyler and Jack Straw was fermenting, when the people were beginning to cry out for their rights, and his vision is instinct with the finest spirit of love for the downtrodden and the humble. Yet never once does his compassion or indignation lead him to neglect spiritual things for material. Let me copy out a few of his lines ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... best with her, for she had a passion for that exercise, and had mastered some of the most difficult dances. Long before this period, she had manifested some most extraordinary singularities of taste or instinct. The extreme sensitiveness of her father on this point prevented any allusion to them; but there were stories floating round, some of them even getting into the papers,—without her name, of course,—which were of a kind to excite ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... better hands, Miss Yerba; and let me thank you now," he added in a lower tone, "for recognizing it as you did a moment ago. I'm glad that you instinctively liked Colonel Pendleton. Had you known him better, you would have seen how truthful that instinct was. His chief fault in the eyes of our worthy friends is that he reminds them of a great deal they can't perpetuate and much they would like to forget." He checked himself abruptly. "But here is your letter," he resumed, drawing Colonel Pendleton's missive from ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... polygamy. The Koran says a man must have four wives in order to always be able to find one in a good humor. There is one answer to polygamy which forever settles the question. The highest orders of animals and men are gifted by nature with an instinct prompting the union, in pairs, for life of the male and female. This instinct is located in the occipital region of the brain, and is called, in Phrenological language, Conjugality. It is large in the lion and the eagle, and in all mating birds and animals. Those ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... even for his coolness. He jumped up thoughtlessly, leaving the pistols on the ground. The irresistible instinct of an average man (unless totally paralyzed by discomfiture) would have been to stoop for his weapons, exposing himself to the risk of being shot down in that position. Instinct, of course, is irreflective. It is its very definition. But it may be an inquiry worth pursuing ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... at this poltroon, who had worked himself into a fit of rage without knowing why, perhaps, owing to an obscure presentiment, the instinct of the deceived male who does not like closed doors. He had talked about her to me in a tender strain; now assuredly he was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... were no more to be feared. He found that he knew, as if by instinct, every trick of the riverman's trade,—the slow stroke, the fast stroke, the best stroke for a long day's sail, the little half-turn in his hands that put the blade on edge in the water and gave him the finest ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... shelf or on one of the steps of the Titanic ladder, to rest and summon energy for another upward rush. His good fortune seemed as marvelous as his endurance and daring. He never once slipped and never once had to turn back from an ascent. As if guided by instinct or divine intuition, he chose always the safest, the least difficult, the most continuously scalable way on ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... garden, Jenny Wren and her friend Lizzie were sitting one day, together, when Mr. Fledgeby came up and joined the party, interrupting their conversation. For the girls, perhaps with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack, over which some humble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book, while a basket ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... made against him of coldness and "political ingratitude" was that he steadfastly refused to barter public offices for political support. He is by instinct, as well as by conviction, utterly opposed to the "spoils system." He considers government the people's business to be conducted as such and not as a matter of personal exchange of political favours. Nor can those who failed to get from ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... visible upon a bundle of stalks just within range of uncle Nat's eye. Not that Salina intended it, or that uncle Nat had any particular regard for neatly clad feet, but your strong-minded woman has an instinct which is sure to place the few charms sparsely distributed to the class, in ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... ruler who covets supremacy on the European Continent. England is always opposed to him—inevitably and instinctively. It took the Germans twenty years to prepare their people for this War. It took us two days to prepare ours. Our instinct is quick and sound; for the resources and wealth of the Continent, if once they were controlled by a single autocratic power, would make it impossible for England to follow her fortunes upon the sea. But we never ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... in Christ Jesus. The people of India are, perhaps, the most religious upon earth. In this respect they are very unlike the Japanese and Chinese, who are worldly, prosaic, practical. Hindus are poetic, other-worldly, and spiritually minded. They have a keen instinct for things of the spirit. They are, also, very unlike the people of the West. Among Westerners, religion is largely an incident in life. It has for them a separate department, a small corner, in the life. In the East, on the other hand, religion enters ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... sort he doeth in a maner patronize all the idolatrous sects of his Realme, and shewing himselfe ready to embrace any false religion whatsoeuer, be liueth in sundry and manifolde kindes of superstition. [Sidenote: The ciuill gouernment of China most agreeable to the instinct of nature.] Out of all the former particulars by me alledged, you may easily coniecture that the administration of kingdome of China doeth, for the most parts agree with the instinct of nature, authority being committed, not vnto rude ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... mercy; and Henrich saw the savage preparing to strike a deadly blow, that would have cleft the head of the stranger in twain. Could he stand and see the noble Briton thus fall by a secret and unresisted attack? No! every feeling and every instinct of his heart forbad it! One instant his tomahawk flew in a gleaming circle round his head; and the next it fell with crushing force on the right shoulder of the savage, and sank deeply into his chest. It was a timely blow, and saved ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... her of his conversation with Ballantyne about the photograph. "He was in a panic. He had delusions," he said and left the matter there. Thresk had the lawyer's mind or rather the mind of a lawyer in big practice. He had the instinct for the essential fact and the knowledge that it was most lucid when presented in a naked simplicity. He was at pains to set before Jane Repton what he had seen of the life which Stella lived with Stephen ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... are born with a predominant instinct, with some vocation or some desire which has been evoked as soon as they begin to speak or ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Dramatic instinct is a delicate perception of, quick and keen sympathies for, and ability to express the various phases of human nature. Deep study and care are necessary for the best development of these faculties; but the nerves must be left free to be guided to the true expression,—neither allowed to vibrate ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... college to a sleepy city on the borders of the South, his problem is, whether he shall subside into local business affairs, keep up the home which his father has struggled to maintain, or whether he shall follow his instinct and try to do something worth while in literature. This problem is made intensely practical through the death of his father. The story of what the young man does is exceedingly interesting. It takes the hero to New York ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... sweeping promise to mother suddenly seem to have been very ill-advised indeed. He wondered if his mother could have known that he would meet this kind of thing at school. In that first instant after Curly's blow was struck, instinct told him that fists were made to be used, and reason added that self-defense is right; and now something else was stirring in his heart—something which might not, perhaps, be wholly unexpected, under such circumstances, to stir in the heart of a boy whose grandfather had carried a musket ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... for to children acting is as natural as eating, and their stage work always convinces because they never consciously act—never, that is, aim at preconceived effects, but merge their personalities wholly in this or that idea and allow themselves to be driven by it. When to this common instinct is added an understanding of stage requirements and a sharp sense of the theatre, the result is pure delight. We live in a little age, and, in the absence of great figures, we are perhaps prone to worship little things, and especially to cultivate to excess the wonder-child and often the pseudo-wonder-child. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke |
