"Self-preservation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... emanating from the Saturnalia were merged in the customs of the Christian feast, and do still survive in modified forms till the present day. In many of our Christmas customs we can thus perceive the influence of the self-preservation policy of the early Roman Christians, and in the survival of many other pagan customs in this and other of our festivals, we can trace the influence of another policy, the worldly-wise policy of ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... lamp in the lavatory was unshaded, and in the lighted aperture thus disclosed Mr. Rolles could see the head of Mr. Vandeleur in an attitude of deep attention. He was conscious that the gaze of the Dictator rested intently on his own face; and the instinct of self-preservation moved him to hold his breath, to refrain from the least movement, and, keeping his eyes lowered, to watch his visitor from underneath the lashes. After about a moment, the head was withdrawn and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like about you is your caution. The very soul of prudence, that's what you are. Your instinct for self-preservation is exceeded by ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... SELF-PRESERVATION is nature's first law, and the first and essential means of preserving one's existence is the taking of food and drink sufficient to nourish the body, sustain its strength and repair the forces thereof weakened by labor, fatigue or illness. God, as well as nature, obliges us ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... were becoming serious, they suddenly took to their heels, and got into the Temple of Esculapius on one side of the Forum. The mob followed, the ministers of the sacred place attempted to shut the gates, a scuffle ensued, and a riot was in progress. Self-preservation is the first law of man; trembling for the safety of his noble buildings, and considering that it was a bread riot, as it really was, the priest of the god came forward, rebuked the mob for its impiety, and showed the absurdity of supposing that there were ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... winter, and happily Lord Rotherwood had turned and made a step or two back, when the rock began to give way under his feet, so that, being a slight and active man, a spring and bound forward had actually carried him safely to the firm ground, and the others, who had started back in self-preservation, then in horror, fully believing him borne down to destruction, saw him the next instant lying on his face on the path before them. When on his feet, he had declared himself unhurt, and solely anxious as to what the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the arms of death cursing God for their miserable fate, while the last whisperings of others were prayers and songs of praise to the Almighty. After the first few deaths, but the one all-absorbing thought of individual self-preservation prevailed. The fountains of natural affection were dried up. The chords that once vibrated with connubial, parental, and filial affection were torn asunder, and each one seemed resolved, without regard to the fate of others, to escape ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... have lost all fear when he flew to absolute power—a sovereign remedy unworthy of a great spirit, though convenient for a timid one like his own. Hobbes considered men merely as animals of prey, living in a state of perpetual hostility, and his solitary principle of action was self-preservation at ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... every family library. The author is connected with the Harvard College Gymnasium, and the contents of the volume are made up of practical talks delivered before the ladies' class of the Gymnasium. His aim is to give such practical information as will aid to self-preservation in times of danger, and to teach a few of the simplest methods of meeting the common accidents and emergencies of life. The illustrations are ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... to me that, having taken no note of the house, I should be unable to recognise it and denounce it to the police. But when one is in peril of one's life all other thoughts or instincts are submerged in the one frantic effort of self-preservation. Still, it was annoying to think that such scoundrels should be allowed to go ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... unsatisfactory condition of telegraph rivalry drifted on from bad to worse until 1854, when, from dire necessity of self-preservation, a few of the more prudent and far-sighted proprietors of telegraph property were induced to combine their interests with some of their competitors and thus avoid the ruinous policy which had been so rapidly exhausting their vitality. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... observance of the Sabbath [Sunday] as required in the spiritual kingdom of Christ; but when Christianity becomes the moral and spiritual life of the State, the State is bound through her magistrates to prevent the open violation of the holy Sabbath, as a measure of self-preservation. She cannot, without injuring her own vitality and incurring the divine displeasure, be recreant to her duty in ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... they found themselves sitting comfortably among a knot of Templetonians, in the glorious Grandcourt meadow, with a superb view of the match. They lost all their reserve, and joined wildly in the cheers for the old school, heedless of every consideration of prudence and self-preservation. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... might have existed upon the earth and acquired all the arts necessary for its subsistence without possessing a single sensation, idea, or emotion. Natural selection might have secured the survival of those automata which made useful reactions upon their environment. An instinct of self-preservation would have been developed, dangers would have been shunned without being feared, and ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... moment later, to a ruder awakening than even his companion outlaws ever gave him. Lying unsuspectingly on his back, he woke to feel a hand laid lightly on his shoulder. The instinct of self-preservation acted like a flash. His eyes opened and his hands struck out like cat's paws to the right and left: no knife and no revolver met them. Instead, in the semidarkness a strange face bent over him. His fists ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... those moments when it occurred to him that his act might need justification. But if he thought he was entitled to avail himself of these excuses, he deceived himself, for no such considerations had been in his mind before or during his act. He had proceeded on the impulse of self-preservation alone, with no further thought as to the effect on her feelings than the hope that her feelings would be moved in his behalf. He had been totally selfish in the matter, and yet, while it is true he had not stopped to reason whether the act was morally ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... self-preservation is secure," says Herbert Spencer, and with culture it is the same, and so the word is not in the bright lexicon of pioneers. All of their service is of the Connecticut variety—if you need things, they have them for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... The chorus men have invaded society with their fox-trots and maxixe steps. We club men will have to countercharge the enemy, for self-preservation, to play heavy villains upon ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... destroying society and all principles; with the idea of nonplussing every one and making hay of everything, and then, when society was tottering, sick and out of joint, cynical and sceptical though filled with an intense eagerness for self-preservation and for some guiding idea, suddenly to seize it in their hands, raising the standard of revolt and relying on a complete network of quintets, which were actively, meanwhile, gathering recruits and seeking out the weak spots which could be ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... extinction within one single revolution of the moon. For all the rebel movements, subsequent to the morning of Vinegar Hill, are to be viewed not at all in the light of manoeuvres made in the spirit of military hope, but in the light of final struggles for self-preservation made in the spirit of absolute despair, as regarded the original purposes of the war, or, indeed, as regarded any purposes whatever beyond that of instant safety. The solitary object contemplated was, to reach some ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... more unanimity of sentiment or principle existed among our own people in the war of the Revolution, than in this. Democracy, asserting its rights, brought on the conflict then, though aristocracy, goaded by the instinct of self-preservation and self-interest, joined hands and aided it to its consummation. Patriotism grew in the hearts of each, and held us together as a nation for about eighty years; but the subordinate antagonism, tortured by its unnatural alliance during all those years, now in turn strikes also for independence. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... than face the family. She burnt the provisions in a rage at their being forced on her, and she slept most of the time—torpor without acute suffering. Last night in sleep she lost her hold of her resolution, and woke to the sense of self-preservation.' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bachelor, is exemplified by his willingness to marry a woman—against all his instincts, his sense of self-preservation, and his ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... dangers to be feared are that in the present lamentable weakness of the men's unions large sections of farmers may break away from the recommendations of their leaders; and that if depression continues and war savings become depleted farmers will tend to push wages down in self-preservation. These things must be watched. If the general condition of agriculture improves without a corresponding improvement in the workers' condition, or if conditions get worse and the brunt of the burden is ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... its own children. If the banker is to perpetuate himself, he must found a noble house, a dynasty; like the Fuggers of Antwerp, that lent money to Charles V. and were created Princes of Babenhausen, a family that exists at this day—in the Almanach de Gotha. The instinct of self-preservation, working it may be unconsciously, leads the banker to seek a title. Jacques Coeur was the founder of the great noble house of Noirmoutier, extinct in the reign of Louis XIII. What power that man had! He was ruined for making a legitimate king; and he died, ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... old woman! Blamed if she wouldn't do better than that feller!" Detraction like this, no doubt, is often justified; but when it becomes the rule, the only possible inference is that an instinctive jealousy prompts men to it, in instinctive self-preservation. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... purpose shaped itself in his mind,—a purpose which was to make him in after years a leader and a teacher: to strive with all his strength for the conservation of all that, was best in the ancient life, and to fearlessly oppose further introduction of anything not essential to national self-preservation, or helpful to national, self-development. Fail he well, might, and without shame; but he could hope at least to save something of worth from the drift of wreckage. The wastefulness of Western life had impressed him more than ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... of the European belligerents upset the psychical equilibrium of large sections of their populations. Goaded by hunger and disease to lawless action, and no longer held back by legal deterrents or moral checks, they followed the instinct of self-preservation to the extent of criminal lawlessness. Familiarity with death and suffering dispelled the fear of human punishment, while numbness of the moral sense made them insensible to the less immediate restraints ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... this? Had he actually caught and kissed this girl, this girl whose name he did not know, whose face he had never seen, of whom he knew nothing but that she was the daughter of a Turk and utterly forbidden by every canon of sanity and self-preservation? ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the feeling of self-preservation began to assert itself, and Bob Massey was the first to ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... you must fall, Self-preservation is the first of laws; And if, when subjects are oppressed by kings, They justify rebellion by that law, As well may monarchs turn the edge of right To cut for ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... The instinct of self-preservation, it is called by the learned, but it needs a stronger name. It is more than an instinct. It is the very ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... thought offered, perhaps, some respite, and possessed of a brain that had its station considerably above the tumult of the senses, he tried to reduce the vague and wandering incoherency of his emotions to order. The sense of self-preservation was strong in him, and Katharine herself had strangely revived it by convincing him that his family deserved and needed all his strength. She was right, and for their sake, if not for his own, this passion, which could bear no fruit, must ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... North Africa. The burning of the library of Alexandria remains forever the symbol of the triumph of a militarist "culture" over civilization. This easy belief of the dull and violent that war "braces" comes out of a real instinct of self-preservation against the subtler tests of peace. This type of person will keep on with war if it can. It is to politics what the criminal type is to social order; it will be resentful and hostile to every attempt to fix up a pacific ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... cause? Did not Japan throw down the gauntlet to Russia for less cause than the Empress Dowager had for desiring that "each strive TO PRESERVE FROM DESTRUCTION AND SPOLIATION HIS ANCESTRAL HOME AND GRAVES"? It was not for conquest but for self-preservation the Empress Dowager was ready to go to war; not for glory but for home; not against a taunting neighbour, but against a "ruthless invader." Her unwisdom did not consist in her being ready to go to war, but in allowing herself to be allied to, and depend upon, the superstitious ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... of self-preservation inspired Stephen Vallance to make that frantic rush, though there was no possible means of escape out of the vessel, except into the open boat, or the still more open sea. As he receded from the advancing ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... constrained her to go beyond such spots, she had to be packed or carried over them lest she should contaminate the game or meat which had passed that way, or had been brought over these paths; and also for the sake of self-preservation against tabooed, and consequently to her, deleterious food. In the same way she was never allowed to wade in streams or lakes, for fear of causing death to ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Duke de Penthieore, and to whom I had once rendered an important service. Believing that he had not forgotten it, I approached him and told him who I was. The wretch cursed me, and tried to arrest me. The instinct of self-preservation lent me fresh strength. I struggled with him and knocked him down, and while he was calling for help, I ran across the unoccupied ground near the house. A low wall suddenly rose before me. I leaped over it, and found myself in this ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... Kate was no longer doubtful. This was the man to serve the dreaded, summons. An instant of panic seized her. Fortunately her persecutor was regarding his stubborn coffee as he stirred it. Her heart, which had stopped, started with a thump. Her thoughts cleared. Instinct, self-preservation, asserted itself. She thought hard and fast. The first step ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... cottage. Possibly, repose had restored Anne's strength. Possibly, the sight of the place had roused the instinct of self-preservation in her at last. To Geoffrey's surprise, she left the cab without assistance. When he opened the wooden gate, with his own key, she recoiled from it, and looked at ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... seemed to this self-confident man a matter of no great risk. Nor did he find it so. He reached his strong room, procured his securities and was leaving the house, without having suffered an alarm, when some instinct of self-preservation suggested to him the advisability of arming himself with a pistol. His own was in Maine, but he remembered where Sears kept his; he had seen it often enough in that old trunk he had brought with him from the Sierras. He accordingly ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... not told you everything—but I am innocent," thus ran the words which she felt were demanded of her and a legitimate privilege, her duty to herself in sheer self-preservation. And as they wrote themselves down before her mental vision she saw two heavy strokes of the pen underlining "everything," and her own true name, Sarah Manvers, following in the place of the signature—no more "Sara ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... squalid aspect. Whenever it touches sovereign power, the nation is ruined. It is too short-sighted to defend itself. It is a compromising spirit, always ready to yield a part to save the residue. It is too timid to have in itself the laws of self-preservation. Sovereign power is never safe but ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... danger. Not only my book, but I myself, should, in all probability, have been condemned to the flames; and martyrdom was an honour to which I never aspired. I therefore counterfeited folly, like Junius Brutus, from the wisest of all principles—that of self-preservation. You, Lucian, had no need to use so much caution. Your heathen priests desired only a sacrifice now and then from an Epicurean as a mark of conformity, and kindly allowed him to make as free as he pleased, in conversation or writings, ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... little of what is called enjoyment in life, and his prospects, as far as he could see, were none of the brightest, he still had no wish to die, and the instinct of self-preservation made him cling to the wreck with ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... particularly, attached than another to the metropolis of the kingdom; that it was my misfortune to be embroiled with the Prime Minister of my King, but that my resentment should never carry me to solicit assistance among his enemies till I was forced to do so for self-preservation; that Divine Providence had cast my lot in Paris, where God, who knew the purity of my intentions, would enable me in all probability to maintain myself by my own interest. But in case I wanted protection I was fully persuaded I could nowhere find any so powerful and glorious ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... with all its dependent followers, cannot help being against us. The bearing which our success would have on its interests is obvious enough, and we cannot wonder that the instinct of self-preservation opens its eyes to the remote consequences which will be likely to flow from the continued and prosperous existence of the regenerated, self-governing Union. The privileged classes feel to our labor- and money-saving political machinery just as the hand-weavers felt to the inventor and introducers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... or sad; and a general "Hark!-from-the-tombs-a-doleful-sound" style of conversation seemed to be the fashion: a state of things which caused one coming from a merry, social New England town, to feel as if she had got into an exhausted receiver; and the instinct of self-preservation, to say nothing of a philanthropic desire to serve the race, caused a speedy ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... was discharged. In its last analysis, in a biologic sense, this statement holds true of man today. Disregarding for the present the expenditure of energy for procuring food and for procreation, let us consider the discharge of energy for self-preservation. The mechanisms for self-defense which we now possess were developed in the course of vast periods of time through innumerable intermediary stages from those possessed by the lowest forms of life. One would suppose, therefore, that we ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... the certainty I too dread. You think we live merely lives of commerce. You do not realise that there is with us a profound sentiment of affection for the Union. No people worth anything ever lived without the very human desire of national self-preservation. It has the force of a man's personal desire for self-preservation. Pardon me, I suppose that I have the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... something was wrong," he said. "And look here, Morgan, I want to live at peace with all the world, but self-preservation is the first law of nature, and I would rather you did not leave the place again unarmed.—Well, George," he continued, turning to me, "where have ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... of Vienna formed two considerable armies in Bohemia and Moravia; yet pretended that they had nothing in view but self-preservation, and solemnly disclaimed both the secret article, and the design which had been laid to their charge. His most christain majesty declared, by his minister at Berlin, that he had no other intention but to maintain the public tranquillity ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of the American claims of exemption from parliamentary taxation, the destruction of the tea by the Bostonians was warranted by the great law of self-preservation; for it was not possible for them by any other means to discharge the duty they owed ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... "yoke" has been quoted as an illustration of the high training and faithful disposition of the Kamschatkan dogs; but it has its origin in a fur different motive than that of mere fidelity. Their return to the snug shelter of the balagan is simply an instinct of self-preservation: for the sagacious animals well know, that in winter the lakes and streams will be completely frozen over, and were they to remain abroad, they would absolutely perish either from hunger or cold. Even the wretched winter allowance of heads and ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... question of spirit, and men who love to hunt are yielding to and always developing the old primitive instinct to kill. The meaning of the spirit of life is not clear to them. An argument may be advanced that, according to the laws of self-preservation and the survival of the fittest, if a man stops all strife, all fight, then he will retrograde. And that is to say if a man does not go to the wilds now and then, and work hard and live some semblance of the life of his progenitors, he will weaken. It seems that he will, but I am not ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... instincts can be, not to speak of her reason, her love, her conscience, her pride. Pleasure and self-indulgence have indeed gained tremendous power, in these later days, when they can thus break down the force of the strongest law of nature, a law stronger even than that of self-preservation. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the greater number, the sense of pride and of honor was stronger even than the instinct for self-preservation, though these were average enlisted men, not especially chosen because their records proved they ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... of fact, while a number of these lay physicians were brought before the courts, in no instance could the actual harmfulness of the methods employed by them be proven. The natural methods of treatment became so popular that, as a matter of self-preservation, the younger generation of physicians in Germany had to fall in line with the Nature Cure idea ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... him and it. He made a feint towards the left, then as quickly to the right. But doing so, he slipped and fell. The candle dropped to the floor and went out. With a lightning-like instinct of self-preservation he swung over upon his face just as the bear, in its wild rush, passed over his head. He remembered afterwards the odour of the hot, rank body, and the sprawling huge feet and claws. Scrambling to his feet swiftly, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rope which Harry had thrown on the floor, and was about to repeat his work, when Philip exclaimed, partly from the instinct of self-preservation, partly to gratify ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... should be able to supply if my ideas were disturbed, or my attention engaged in any personal concern." Jolter, who could make no objection to the justness of the conclusion, frankly owned that he had no inclination to try the experiment; observing, that self-preservation was the first law of nature; that his connections with the unhappy lunatic were but slight; and that it could not be reasonably expected that he would run such risks for his service as were declined by one who had set out with him from England on the footing of a companion. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... seamen, and allowed them time to recall their scattered senses. This, however, proved unfortunate to Jackson. Had they all hurried in the boat at once, and shoved off; he would in all probability have been permitted to go with them, and Newton in the hurry of their self-preservation, would have been forgotten; but his cool behaviour restored their confidence, and, unhappily for him, gave the seamen time to reflect. Every one was in the boat; for Jackson had quietly prepared and put into ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... morning, I was overcome with tremendous exhaustion. My limbs stiffened in the grip of intense cramps. Conseil had to keep me going, and attending to our self-preservation became his sole responsibility. I soon heard the poor lad gasping; his breathing became shallow and quick. I didn't think he could stand such exertions ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... provoked Brown excessively to see the unceremonious manner in which the thieves shared his property, and made themselves merry at the expense or the owner. But the moment was too perilous to admit any thoughts but what had immediate reference to self-preservation. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... was certainly discouraging and when the train stopped at Wesel—outside the station I afterwards discovered—I acted on the impulse for self-preservation, darted along the corridor, found a place of concealment and tucked myself in. Now I realise that this was the worst thing I could have done, but then my thoughts were centred upon effecting my escape, in the half-hope ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... left, with such fury that they quite forgot their sensations of fear and fatigue. They were utterly unconscious of what was going on around them, acting mechanically, with but one end in view; even the instinct of self-preservation had ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... own happiness—that was the way she had put it. Perhaps he was galled the less because others had striven for the same prize, and had been thrust back, with an almost tender misgiving as to their sense of self-preservation and sanity. Some of them were eligible enough, and all were of some position in the West. Yet she smiled them firmly away, to the wonder of Jansen, and to its satisfaction, for was it not a tribute to all that she would distinguish no particular unit by her permanent favor? But for one so ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... when a patient voluntarily submits to the operator, any attempt to make suggestions against the interests of the patient can invariably be frustrated by the patient. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and some of the best known operators who have recorded their experiments assert that suggestions not in accord with the best interest of the patient could not be carried out. No one ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... swim before recovering foothold on the frail embarkation. This the ducked individual would be certain to do. Drunk as he might have been, and maudlin as he might be, his instincts were never so benumbed as to render him regardless of self-preservation. Even from out his haggard eyes still gleamed enough of intelligence to tell that those dark triangular objects, moving in scores around the raft, and cutting the water, so swift and sheer, were the dorsal fins of the dreaded sharks. Each one was a sight that, ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... men guards over one another; it was not honor but self-preservation that was relied on. And in any event, there was the prison at last; the chain might be lengthened to hundreds of miles, but it held them still. They were convicts; when their terms were up, they would be jail birds. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Basilio to salute the jeweler as though he had been a saint passing. Basilio realized from the expression of Simoun's face that he was leaving the fated house forever, that the lamp was lighted. Alea jacta est! Seized by the instinct of self-preservation, he thought then of saving himself. It might occur to any of the guests through curiosity to tamper with the wick and then would come the explosion to overwhelm them all. Still he heard Simoun say to the ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... now. The luck might be with the soldiers left behind. Always, underneath Dorn's perplexity and pondering, under his intelligence and spirit at their best, had been a something deeply personal, something of the internal of him, a selfish instinct. It was the nature of man—self-preservation. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... included self-preservation quite as much as Indian education. When I saw an opium-eater holding a position as teacher of Indians, I did not understand what good was expected, until a Christian in power replied that this pumpkin-colored creature had a feeble mother to support. An inebriate paleface ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... of revenge floated through his brain, it was no time to indulge such speculations. The hour, the place, his own situation, and perhaps the presence or near neighbourhood of his assailants, made self-preservation the adept's first object. The lantern had been thrown down and extinguished in the scuffle. The wind, which formerly howled so loudly through the aisles of the ruin, had now greatly fallen, lulled by the rain, which was descending very fast. The moon, from the same ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... which will encourage, assist or build up an aggressor. We have learned that when we deliberately try to legislate neutrality, our neutrality laws may operate unevenly and unfairly—may actually give aid to an aggressor and deny it to the victim. The instinct of self-preservation should warn us that we ought not to let that happen ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... not be censured. The life of Clithero was unspeakably more valuable than that of his antagonist. It was the instinct of self-preservation that swayed him. He knew not his adversary in time enough to govern himself by that knowledge. Had the assailant been an unknown ruffian, his death would have been followed by no remorse. The spectacle of his ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... justifies itself. Take, for example, a strong instinct, like that of self-preservation. How completely it stands above all criticism! Not that it cannot be criticised in a kind of dilettante, abstract way; but in the moment of action the criticism simply disappears in face of ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... alcove.] It's hell forty ways from the Jack. It's tough for me, but for a pretty woman with a lot o' rich fools jumping out o' their automobiles and hanging around stage doors, it must be something awful. I ain't blaming the women. They say "self-preservation is the first law of nature," and I guess that's right; but sometimes when the show is over and I see them fellows with their hair plastered back, smoking cigarettes in a [LAURA crosses to chair right of table and leans over back.] holder long enough to reach from here to Harlem, ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... For indeed self-preservation being such a law of Nature, what can a rallied Court do, but attempt and endeavour, or call it plot,—with such wisdom and unwisdom as it has? They will fly, escorted, to Metz, where brave Bouille ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... peaceful home into the bitter, cold, foul, perilous world outside! I feared, if you found out who I was, you would expose me, and I should be cast adrift. And then it all came so suddenly I had no time for reflection. The instinct of self-preservation made me deny my identity before I considered what a falsehood I uttered. Ah, have you no pity for me, in considering the straits to which I was reduced?" she pleaded, clasping her hands before him and raising ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... forbear to look upon every dissenter among themselves with a jealous eye? Within two years after their landing, they beheld a rival settlement attempted in their immediate neighborhood; and not long after, the laws of self-preservation compelled them to break up a nest of revellers, who boasted of protection from the mother country, and who had recurred to the easy but pernicious resource of feeding their wanton idleness, by furnishing ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... towards betterment. In several of the improved cases we have mentioned that it was largely the acquirement of social foresight which made the first step in a moral advance which finally won the day. In this whole matter the first ethical instruction may well be based upon the idea of self-preservation—after all the backbone of much of our morals. When it comes to specific details of treatment these must be educational, alterative, and constructive. In Cases 1 and 3 under treatment we know that when the lying was discovered or suspected the individual was ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... prayer is in the sense of dependance, and in the instinct of self-preservation or self-interest. The first objects of prayer to the infant man will be those on which by his localities he believes himself to be most dependant for whatever blessing his mode of life inclines him the most to covet, or from which may come whatever peril his instinct will teach him the most ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... whispers, which they detect by anticipation in whatever goes wrong, and to which they impute whatever is unaccountable; a religion, the very name of which they cast out as evil, and use simply as a bad epithet, and which from the impulse of self-preservation they would persecute if they could—if there be such a religion now in the world, it is not unlike Christianity as that same world viewed it when first it came forth from its ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Afterwards supper. Cremorne and the Argyle Rooms were my favourite haunts. My mother suffered, and expected ruin, for I took no trouble to conceal anything; I boasted of dissipations. But there was no need for fear; I was naturally endowed with a very clear sense indeed of self-preservation; I neither betted nor drank, nor contracted debts, nor a secret marriage; from a worldly point of view, I was a model young man indeed; and when I returned home about four in the morning, I watched the pale moon setting, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... down, to stifle its voice. Caution seemed to him almost effeminate just then. He remembered how one day Charmian had said to him, after an argument about psychology: "Really, Mr. Heath, whatever you may say, your strongest instinct is a selfish one, the instinct of self-preservation." ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... weather and a dozen other factors, he developed in uncanny foresight. Yet he had to improvise at a moment's notice. With life a continuous high-wire act, he trained every surviving fiber to precision, dexterity, and tenacity. Finally, he avoided help. Not pride, self-preservation; the compulsively helpful have rarely the wit to ask before rushing in to knock you on your face, so he learned to bide his time till the horizon was clear of beaming simpletons. Also, he found an interest in how far he ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... irrigation is the first law of nature, it is self-preservation; but, even in countries where the rainfall can be depended upon with tolerable certainty, irrigation should never be neglected; one dry season in a tropical country may produce a famine, the results of which may be terrible, as instanced lately by the unfortunate ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... his book, reflecting, as he prepared to resume it, on the wonderful provision of nature which endows the growing animal not only with such strong instincts of self-preservation, but with the power to gratify them, and to take itself off at the same time and be happy in so doing, thus saving those who have outgrown these natural proclivities from some of their ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... birds; and each man had the good things of this world in a greater or less degree in proportion to his skill, his strength and his valour. This is what is called living under the LAW OF NATURE; that is to say, the law of self-preservation and self-enjoyment, without any restraint imposed by a regard for the good of ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... bore him swung back. He knew instinctively that they were preparing to hurl him into the heart of the fire, and the instinct of self-preservation rushed upon him, stabbing him to vivid consciousness. With a gigantic effort he writhed himself free from ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... peace is fully re-established and the States have all resumed their normal position in the Union, every State will be found prompt enough to resist any attempt to encroach on its constitutional rights. Its instinct of self-preservation will lead it to resist, and it will be protected by both its own judiciary and ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... 'No self-preservation like a country life and early rising,' said Theodora, laughing. 'You have not kept yourself as well, Georgina. I am sorry to see you ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... self-preservation in the most desperate danger, so man follows an instinct of self-justification in the most ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... in the most delicate way possible let her see. It seemed to him, looking back on it, that he had exercised a perfect tact, parting from her with that air of gaiety and light badinage which his own instinct of self-preservation so happily suggested. Yet he smiled when he recalled her look as she went from him, backing, backing, to the door; it made him feel very tender and chivalrous; virtuous too, as if somehow he had overcome some unforeseen and ruinous ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... the Dutch in the capacity of suffering, although to my mind their cause was not so precious as that of the Hollanders, who had not only to fight against overwhelming forces, but to preserve religious as well as civil liberties. The Dutch fought for religion and self-preservation; the Americans, to resist a tax which nearly all England thought it had a right to impose, and which was by no means burdensome,—a mooted question in the highest courts of law; at bottom, however, it was not so much to resist a tax as to gain national independence that the Americans fought. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... since that the heart's unbiased instinct Impelled me to the daring deed, which now Necessity, self-preservation, orders. Stern is the on-look of necessity, Not without shudder may a human hand Grasp the mysterious urn of destiny. My deed was mine, remaining in my bosom; Once suffered to escape from its safe corner Within the heart, its nursery and birthplace, Sent forth into the foreign, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... is the essential question for us. To prepare us for complete living is the function which education is to discharge. We must therefore classify the leading kinds of activity which constitute human life. In order of importance they are (1) those which directly minister to self-preservation, (2) those which by securing the necessaries of life indirectly minister to self-preservation, (3) those which have for their end the rearing and discipline of offspring, (4) those which are involved in the maintenance of proper social and political relations, (5) those miscellaneous activities ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... themselves and say to our Lord: feed on me, change me, annihilate me, convert me into Thyself. There is nothing, I think, in the world of which we have more absolute possession, or over which we have more entire dominion, than over the food which, for our own self-preservation, we annihilate. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... extend to. It will signify very little what my notions or what their own notions on the subject may be; because, according to the exigence, they will take, in fact, the steps which seem to them necessary for the preservation of the whole: for as self-preservation in individuals is the first law of Nature, the same will prevail in societies, who will, right or wrong, make that an object paramount to all other rights whatsoever. There are ways and means by which a good ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... up, and it was hard work to run—very hard work; and nothing but the instinct of self-preservation enabled him to keep the tall and wiry form of the Zouave in sight. They reached the ravine, where the water was about three feet deep. The shot, and shell, and bullets still fell in showers around ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... the enmity of this class, wherever it exists, is that of the most sordid, unprincipled self-interest. Gold is their god, and all things else are sacrificed to the unhallowed lust. But this enmity is oftentimes assumed from motives of self-preservation. Objects of suspicion to the Simon-Pure Southerner from the very fact of their nativity, and visited with the most horrible retribution wherever they have shown a leaning toward the land of their birth, they find it necessary to out-herod Herod in order to preserve their social ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it as reassuring. He made a brief prowl then through the main sections of the level. Evidence everywhere of a short and furious struggle, a struggle between men panicked and enraged almost beyond any regard for self-preservation. It must have been over in minutes. He found that the big hall portal to the ground level had been sealed, whether before or after the shooting he couldn't know. There would have been around twenty members of the Brotherhood ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... your comfortable rich—seem to have taken a kind of oath of self-preservation. To do what is expected of one, to succeed, you must take the oath. You must defend their institutions, and all that," ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... or some kind of a ratchet at the base of it had got out of order. For a moment—a moment can be the little sister of eternity—I could say nothing. Then I found myself in the clutches of the instinct for self-preservation. I felt it in me to stop the giggles of the girls on the front seat; to take the patronising smiles out of the tolerant eyes of the grown people. Maybe my voice lost something of its piping insistence ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... hatred and rage, added to those of despair, at last animated the people of Carthage. It was the same passion which arrayed Tyre against Alexander, and Jerusalem against Titus. It was a wild patriotic frenzy which knew no bounds, inspired by the instinct of self-preservation, and aside from all calculation of success or failure. As the fall of the city was inevitable, wisdom might have counseled an unreserved submission. Resistance should have been thought of before. In fact, Carthage should not have yielded to the first Africanus. And when she ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... shout to the world I don't," Stubby replied. "It's self-preservation with me. Let old Horace look out for himself. He had his fingers in the pie while we were in France. I don't have to have four hundred per cent profit to do business. Get the fish if you can, Jack, old boy, even if it busts ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... tone of her voice, by the smile parting her lips, I could see that she did not know what had happened. Terror had dulled all faculties save the one overmastering instinct of self-preservation. Thorpe was about to speak, but Ajax caught his eye and with a gesture silenced him. Once more the balloon began ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... to divide his army, which might then more easily be defeated; perhaps he imagined that by remaining without the walls he might be able to collect such a force among his subjects and allies as would compel the beleaguering army to withdraw. Or, possibly, he merely followed an instinct of self-preservation, and fearing that the soldiers of Cyrus might enter Babylon with his own, if he fled thither, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... assigned us the post of danger and of suffering, it is that of unfading glory and of imperishable renown. The question with us is that of national unity and existence, and compromise is treason. To acknowledge the doctrine of secession, to abdicate the power of self-preservation, and permit the Union to be dissolved or disintegrated, is ruin, disgrace, and suicide. We must fight it out to the last. If necessity requires, we can live at home, and reverses or intervention should only increase our efforts. If need be, all—all who can bear arms, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of self-preservation, for the sake of which one shuns perils of death, is much more connatural than any pleasures whatever of food and sex which are directed to the preservation of life. Hence it is more difficult to overcome the fear of dangers of death, than the desire of pleasure in matters of food ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... appreciate the great crude past whose conflicts still persist in the boy's gruesome and tragic dreams, filling him with a fear of the dark, which fear in time past was the wholesome and necessary monitor of self-preservation; if we could only realize how strenuous must be those experiences which guarantee a strong body, a firm will, and an appetite for objective facts, we would not make our education so insipidly nice, so intellectual, so bookish, and so much under the roof. A school ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... place, so far as investigation has yet been able to reveal, in the life of early man. Men were far too busy in the great fight against Nature to fight against each other, far too absorbed in the task of inventing methods of self-preservation to have much energy left for inventing methods of self-destruction. It was once supposed that the Homeric stories of war presented a picture of life near the beginning of the world. The Homeric picture in fact corresponds to a stage in human ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... and think of my cunning at this early age, I am now astonished at it; but it is surprising what forethought even a child will exhibit, when placed in circumstances where self-preservation calls forth all ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... returned lightly, but still breathing hard; "it was the instinct of self-preservation. I was unsteady on my feet for a moment, and sought something to take hold of. That pirate was the nearest thing, and I caught hold of his cloak; I'm sure it was a cloak, and that makes me sure he was a human villain of some sort. ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... mental state must seem like the Nirvana of death. At least death is the only simple term we can use to represent such a complete loss of our habitual mental functions. When life is difficult, we naturally tend to seek death. Were it not for the powerful instinct of self-preservation, suicide would probably be the universal mode of solving our problems. As it is, we reach a compromise, such as that of sleep, in which contact with reality is temporarily abandoned. In so far as sleep is psychologically determined, it is a regressive ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... aspects. Now the idealism of youth is present in nations just as in individuals, though probably a nation is less conscious of it than an individual. It is with the nation one of the effects of the instinct of self-preservation, and for a youthful nation to absorb the vices of an old decadent one would be self-destruction. Thus the youthful Rome rejected most of the Etruscan poison, and thus nature purified herself, and Etruria was buried in the pit of her ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... very little, darling. He was very weak. It was only the morning after the wreck, and he spoke in a whisper!' Then with an instinct of self-preservation she added: 'But how could I learn anything by hearing him when he was a stranger to me? I had never even ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... conformable to this intimation, should be passed in harmless gambols, that exercise the feet and hands, without requiring very minute direction from the head, or the constant attention of a nurse. In fact, the care necessary for self-preservation is the first natural exercise of the understanding, as little inventions to amuse the present moment unfold the imagination. But these wise designs of nature are counteracted by mistaken fondness or blind zeal. The child is not left a moment to its own direction, particularly a girl, and thus ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... old Tom the eye of the Big City, which is an eye expressive of cold and justifiable suspicion, of judgment suspended as high as Haman was hung, of self-preservation, of challenge, curiosity, defiance, cynicism, and, strange as you may think it, of a childlike yearning for friendliness and fellowship that must be hidden when one walks among the "stranger bands." For in New Bagdad one, in order to survive, must suspect whosoever ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... proportion as they are painful, and they are pushed to greater and greater extravagances because what becomes familiar loses the subjective force from which the ascetic person wins self-satisfaction. Asceticism then becomes a mental aberration and a practical negation of the instinct of self-preservation. It leads to insanity.[2153] If it takes a course against other persons, it explains the conduct of great ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... self-preservation is stronger than hope. It thrives, fortunately, upon nothing. It takes root upon the brink of the grave, and blossoms in the jaws of death. Now it flourished bravely upon the breast of dead hope, and urged me onward and upward in a stern endeavor to ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... danger, to level us all! No longer were we captors and captured. Not brigands for this moment. No thought of Grantline's treasure! Trapped humans only! Leveled by the common, instinct of self-preservation. Trapped here ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... adjurations, and urged on by the instinct of self-preservation, so powerful in every human heart, Lacheneur ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... definitely rendered details necessarily leaves the civilized appreciation cold. What distinguishes the civilized from the savage appreciation is the passion for order. The tendency to order, said Senancour, should form "an essential part of our inclinations, of our instinct, like the tendencies to self-preservation and to reproduction." The two latter tendencies the savage possesses as completely as the civilized man, but he does not share the civilized man's instinct for correlation. And in this sense, I think, a certain savagery is justly to be ascribed to the impressionist. His productions have many attractions ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... generation; where they pursue each other in the struggle for life, and carry on their love affairs with the same feelings, the same sufferings, and the same joys that permeate every living being from these microscopic animalcules up to man—self-preservation and propagation—that is the whole story. Fiercely as we human beings struggle to push our way on through the labyrinth of life, their struggles are assuredly no less fierce than ours—one incessant, restless ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... did not often make their laws give way to necessity. But religion has never suffered this, or practised it. Indeed, there must be these compromises, or miracles. It is not strange to be saved by yieldings, and this is not strictly self-preservation; besides, in the end they perish entirely. None has endured a thousand years. But the fact that this religion has always maintained itself, inflexible as it is, ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... very moment when the abbe, yielding to the instinct of self-preservation, uttered one last call for help, in a heart-piercing voice, the door against which he leaned opened behind him, and a firm hand caught hold of him, and pulled him into the church. Thanks to this movement, performed with the rapidity of lightning, the quarryman, thrown forward ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... that thought, that awful knowledge, determinedly away from her. The instinct of self-preservation possessed ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... "it is not for me to vindicate the acts of the master; nor to blame the slave who is of my race. Yet the sage definers of virtue distinguish between the Conscience of a Polity and that of the Individual Man. Self-preservation is the instinct of every community, and all the ordinances ascribed to Lycurgus are designed to preserve the Spartan existence. For what are the pure Spartan race? a handful of men established as lords in the ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton |
