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Instinct   /ˈɪnstɪŋkt/   Listen
Instinct

noun
1.
Inborn pattern of behavior often responsive to specific stimuli.  Synonym: inherent aptitude.  "Altruistic instincts in social animals"



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"Instinct" Quotes from Famous Books



... the wealth-controlling class have learned that "in union there is strength"; collectively they are gripped by the "cohesion of wealth"—the class conscious instinct of an associated group of human beings who have much to ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... John amiably, and started for the fire, such being his instinct, not with the purpose of getting warm, but of cooking something. And in half an hour he had a cup of ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... King Leopold's instinct was not at fault, as the result proved; but it was not without the most careful consideration and many anxious consultations, especially with his trusty old friend, Baron Stockmar, that the King allowed himself to take the initiatory step ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... to describe: and so in that respect is both a maker and a counterfaitor: and Poesiean art not only of making, but also of imitation. And this science in his perfection, can not grow, but by some diuine instinct, the Platonicks call it furor: or by excellencie of nature and complexion: or by great subtiltie of the spirits & wit or by much experience and obseruation of the world, and course of kinde, or peradventure by all or most part of them. Otherwise how was it possible that Homer ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... the will of other men, their equals only, clothed with no legal authority over them. It is a "Coercion" administered not by public and responsible functionaries, but by secret tribunals. Its sanctions are not the law and honest public opinion, but the base instinct of personal cowardice, and the instinct, not less base, of personal greed. Whether anything more than a steady, firm administration of the law is needed to abolish this "Coercion" is a matter as to which authorities differ. I should be glad to believe with Colonel Saunderson that "the Leaguers ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... material world was instinct with powers to influence and control his fate, that good and evil spirits, and existences nameless and indefinable, filled all Nature, that a pervading sorcery was above, below, and around him, and that issues ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... dressed, and had neither hat, shoes nor stockings. We raised him up and gave him wine, which he drank greedily, and presently, without saying a word, disappeared. The guests said they had no doubt that he was a murderer flying from justice, and that the dog by his instinct, even at a distance, knew him to be such. The master said that it was the first time that the dog had ever attacked any one or shown the slightest symptom of ferocity. Not the least singular part of the matter was, that the dog did not belong to the house, but to one ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... feet, but I made no sound. Instinct reminded me that I mustn't wake Brian, but I could breathe better, think ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... centre of the trap, where they contentedly fed till the food was all gone. Then the fact of imprisonment first presented itself, and they vainly endeavored to escape through the interstices of the cage, never once guided by their instinct to return to liberty through the route by which ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... She first opened my eyes, in Italy, to the beauties, as a gorgeous colourist, of Palma Vecchio in his second or Giorgionesque manner. She is in every way a sympathetic and entertaining companion. Going deeper, to the roots of human instinct, I find she represents to me—so chance has willed it—the ewige weibliche which must complement masculinity in order to produce normal existence. But as for the "zieht uns hinan"—no. It would not attract me hence—out of my sphere. I could commit an immortal folly for no woman who ever ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... swamp, on the way to and from school, too, and when he went to bring home the cows he remained longer than even Granny could excuse. For that simple task should have been performed in a very short time. He could trace the cattle through the woods with the sure instinct of a sleuth-hound, could distinguish Spotty's tracks from Cherry's, and might have found his own little heifer's in the midst of the public highway. But his skill did not help to make him any more expeditious, for he often forgot his errand and would lie full ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... pathetic, and her every word and gesture shed a sort of tender light over my devotion. She saw the struggle that was going on in me; my obedience flattered her pride, while my pallor awakened her charitable instinct. At times she appeared to be irritated, almost coquettish; she would say in a tone that was almost rebellious: "I shall not be here to-morrow, do not come on such and such a day." Then, as I was going away sad, but resigned, she sweetened the cup of bitterness by adding: "I am not sure of it, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... in grasping and presenting these causes hitherto by men, seems to show that there should be brought to the question the instinct, the knowledge, the tact of woman herself, and it would seem that, for this, she has need of a system of education to give the mental strength required for searching out those causes, and ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... the reddish coloured bark into strips about two inches wide. The trees are pyramidal, and at a little distance resemble cedars. There is a deep solemnity about this glorious avenue with its broad shade and dancing lights, and the rare glimpses of high mountains. Instinct alone would tell one that it leads to something which must be grand and beautiful like itself. It is broken occasionally by small villages with big bells suspended between double poles; by wayside shrines with offerings of ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... but looked at her, which meant more. I said: "My dear Willie, I hope you are happy with your colleagues at the Bank." He replied: "Lupin, if you please; and with respect to the Bank, there's not a clerk who is a gentleman, and the 'boss' is a cad." I felt so shocked, I could say nothing, and my instinct told me there was ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... shining snow where once had been a dark corner; there a heap of stones where once had been a carpeted corridor. All the human look of indwelling had past away. Where she had been used to go about as if by instinct, she had now to fall back upon memory, and call up again, with an effort sometimes painful in its difficulty, that which had vanished altogether except from the minds ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... what used to be known as the better-dressed parts of the house. Now-a-days the majority of the paying patrons of these seats come from the ranks of the new custodians of the nation's wealth. These people, who have the business instinct very strongly developed, insistently and very rightly demand value for their money; and the problem is how to give them value as they understand the meaning of the word. My friend Mr. ARTHUR COLLINS gives it to them in sand; but that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various

... Voltaire and Paley we have been accustomed to cite as evidences of creative design, have received at the hands of Mr. Darwin a very different interpretation. The lobster's powerful claw, the butterfly's gorgeous tints, the rose's delicious fragrance, the architectural instinct of the bee, the astonishing structure of the orchid, are no longer explained as the results of contrivance. That simple but wasteful process of survival of the fittest, through which such marvellous things have come into being, has little about it that is analogous to the ingenuity ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske

... straight line, his eyes very hard. By instinct Dane's hand went to the grip of the sleep rod slung at his belt. When the Old Man put on his fighting face—look out! Here we go again, he told himself, speculating as to just what type of ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... which Mr. Gorham took. At all events, some of these business acts did not seem to the boy to be in full accord with the altruism which he had learned from his preceptor. Allen had come to know most of the directors and some of the stockholders, and he was convinced that the prevailing instinct which controlled their relations to the Consolidated Companies and to its transactions was self-interest pure and simple. There was no question that the Companies had accomplished important reductions ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... spirit. He filled nature with his overflowing currents. Out from him sprang the sun and moon; from man the sun, from woman the moon."—But he no longer fills the mere shell he had made for himself; "he is shrunk to a drop." Still something of elemental power remains to him. "It is instinct." Such teachings he got from his "poet." It is a kind of New England Genesis in place of the Old Testament one. We read in the Sermon on the Mount: "Be ye therefore perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect." The discourse which comes to us from the Trimount oracle commands ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... hate and fear, as if this were the inevitable destiny of mankind. And naturally, when they grow up, they helplessly exchange the prison of the school for the prison of the mine or the workshop or the office, and drudge along stupidly and miserably, with just enough gregarious instinct to turn furiously on any intelligent person who proposes a change. It would be quite easy to make England a paradise, according to our present ideas, in a few years. There is no mystery about it: the way has been pointed out over and over again. The difficulty is not the way but the will. And we ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... and unity of the movement. It is also the reason for the great diplomatic successes achieved by the Czechs. The chief lieutenants of Professor Masaryk were Dr. Benes, an untiring worker with rare political instinct and perspicacity, and Dr. Milan Stefanik, who entered the French army as a private at the beginning of the war, was gradually promoted, and in May, 1918, rose to the rank of brigadier-general. He rendered valuable service to France as an astronomist before the war, ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... instinct did inspire My soul in childhood with a hope so strong? What secret force moved my desire To expect my joys beyond the seas, so young? Felicity I knew Was out of view, And being here alone, I saw that happiness was gone From me! For this I thirsted absent bliss, And thought ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... Jack returned, and the fact that the little boy had missed him and inquired about him, seemed to give the old African particular pleasure. It was probably a new experience to Daddy Jack, and it vaguely stirred some dim instinct in his bosom that impelled him to greet the child with more genuine heartiness than he had ever displayed in all his life. He drew the little boy up to him, patted him gently on the ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... period had a salutary effect on the prosperity of Delhi; its merchants and storekeepers, trading with the inhabitants of the richly-cultivated Dooab and with more distant countries, became rich and prosperous, accumulating vast treasures, while the people, with the instinct of a penurious race, converted their ready-money into jewels and gold and silver ornaments, and safely stowed them away in hidden ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... the man before him made him seem something less than human. His terror was more that of an animal than of a man and his apparent inability to express himself save by the repetition of that one sentence frightened the boy. Apparently the creature was all instinct and no brains. ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... the sight of blood. She wanted to think that, if the girl were dying, she could do no good. Yet, while reason argued, instinct had already decided that this was the claimant of the vow. Beverley knelt down beside the curiously flat-looking body which lay on the pavement. Her dress dipped into a widening pool of blood, but she did not sicken as she had ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... mother, lived Joshua Jackson, familiarly known as "Uncle Josh." It is a kind instinct which makes humanity in the rural districts claim, as uncle or aunt, any single man or woman who is left one side of the common lot of marriage and its ties. It is a relationship accepted in silent, good-natured consent on both sides. It was difficult to think of Uncle Josh ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... out-stripping the speediest progress of ordinary mortals. A supernatural light seemed to supersede the necessity of recourse to the usual slow and laborious process of reasoning in seeing one's way, and to endow him with an intuition excluding all doubt, and with an instinct ever ready in performance. Thus for everything he found ample time, because no particle of his time was lost. He was a living, palpitating, breathing, vocal, acting temple of the Holy Ghost, and this Divine indwelling ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul

... this first attempt in a line that was new to him? In the first place, he had at least been guided in his choice of subject by an unerring historical instinct. For, surpassingly rich as is Scottish history in the elements both of picturesque and romantic incident and of wild and fascinating character, it is none the less a fact that there is but one period ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... breathless with the sense of the danger he had so narrowly escaped, yet Ormond's instinct of generosity, if we may use the expression, and his gratitude for early kindness, operated; he would not believe that Sir Ulick had been guilty of a deliberate desire to injure him. At all events, he determined that, instead of returning to France, as he had intended, he would go immediately ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... high in the sink—and this struck me with despair. If my mother had been about, and able to work, such a thing would have been impossible. So she either was not there or was not able to work—my instinct told me that; and I ran to the foot of the stairs, and calling as I had so often done when a child, "Ma, Ma! Where are you, ma!" I waited ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... small in Cuba, a curious place of amusement of circular form, called a "pit," where the natives indulge their national passion for cock-fighting and gambling combined. It is astonishing how pugnacious and fierce these birds become by careful training; the instinct must be in them or it could not be so developed. When brought together and opposed to each other in battle, one must die, and often both do so, for they will fight as long as they can stand on their feet. The pit is always crowded, and the amount of money which changes hands ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... "The tiger is by instinct a coward when confronted by his greatest enemy—man. Bold and daring as he may be when circumstances are in his favor, he will hurriedly abandon a fresh kill at the first cry of a shepherd boy attending a flock on the mountain-side and will always weigh ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... fairy stories peep at us out of German-land through a pleasant, clear translation, and they remind us how easily the supernatural and loves to dwell in airborn castles. The beautiful instinct of reverence common to child-life is readily taken advantage of by writers for the young; but where in England we find in stories some angel-mother who discovers the treachery of her governess and teaches her own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... reflected as he went away, he had always known Saltash to be a queer devil, oddly balanced, curiously impulsive, strangely irresponsible, possessing through all a charm which seldom failed to hold its own. He realized by instinct that Saltash was wrestling with himself that night, but, though he knew him better than did many, he would not have staked anything on the result. There were two selves in Saltash and, in Larpent's opinion, one was as ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... of them that, in organizing and promoting their two sharply competing sects, they never failed of fraternal personal relations. They worked together with one heart to keep their people apart from each other. The Christian instinct, in a community of German Christians, to gather in one congregation for common worship was solemnly discouraged by the two apostles and the synods which they organized. How could the two parties walk together when one prayed Vater unser, and the other unser Vater? But the beauty ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... ten feet in width, and has consequently one of the most sharply pointed vaults we shall ever meet. The whole design is as beautiful a bit of early Gothic as exists, but what would take most time to study, if time were to spare, would be the instinct of the Archangel's presence which has animated his architecture. The masculine, military energy of Saint Michael lives still in every stone. The genius that realized this warlike emotion has stamped his power everywhere, on every centimetre of his work; in every ray ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... well, Were strong with People easie to Rebel. For, govern'd by the Moon, the giddy Jews Tread the same Track when she the Prime renews: And once in twenty Years, their Scribes Record, By natural Instinct they change their Lord. Achitophel still wants a Chief, and none Was found so fit as Warlike Absalon: Not, that he wish'd his Greatness to create, (For Polititians neither love nor hate:) But, for ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... instinct must be preserved," he explained. "One of the first things we shall need after the flood recedes is a variety of all kinds of structures. But it's a pretty bad lot at the best. I shall try to reform their ideas during the voyage. As to the other artists, ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... new interest. Danger lurked in Princeman's black eyes, fascination dwelt in his black hair, attractiveness was in every line of his athletic figure. It was upon the tip of Sam's tongue to say that he would join Princeman in his walk, but he repressed that instinct immediately. ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... commander, until after he becomes free. A man who is subject to his own animal desires, cannot command the animal nature of others. A muscle becomes developed by its use, an instinct or habit is strengthened in proportion as it is permitted to rule, a mental power becomes developed by practice, and the principle of will grows strong by exercise; and this is the use of temptations. ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why, hear ye, my masters: Was it for me to kill the heir-apparent? should I turn upon the true Prince? why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules: but beware instinct; the lion will not touch the true Prince. Instinct is a great matter; I was now a coward on instinct. I shall think the better of myself and thee during my life; I for a valiant lion, and thou for a true prince. But, by the Lord, lads, ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... so in early Rome, the same conditions produced the same results: we find the craftsmen of the town forming themselves into gilds, not only for the protection of their trade, but from a natural instinct of association, and providing these gilds, on the model of the older groups of family and gens, with a religious centre and a patron deity. The gilds (collegia) of Roman craftsmen were attributed to Numa, like so many other religious institutions; they included ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... member below the gangway, promptly divining, by a prophetic instinct, the real nature of the ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... foot of the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, he quickened his already hurried pace, and began to run up the uneven steps. The door of his house stood open, and he plunged into the dark well of the hall without waiting to strike a match. By instinct his hand found the smooth banister, and he began his climb ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... according to Rule 17th, "When a verb has two or more nominatives connected by or or nor, it must agree with them singly, and not as if taken together." Therefore, consist should be consists; thus, "We do not know in what either reason or instinct consists."] ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... The instinct which led Henry Esmond to admire and love the gracious person, the fair apparition, whose beauty and kindness so moved him when he first beheld her, became soon a passion of gratitude, which entirely filled his young heart. There seemed, as the boy thought, in her every look ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... massacred, for the brig was overhauling the Indiaman hand over hand; while on the other were the explicit and emphatic instructions of the commodore to pause for nothing. It was certain that unless I interfered the Indiaman would be captured, and every instinct within me rose up in protest against the idea of leaving her to her fate, while the words of the commodore were: "If you should happen to be attacked, fight, but not otherwise". I reflected for a moment ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... bantam cock," replied Martin, seeming quite astonished that Mrs. Caryll did not know all about it by instinct. "Miss Hoodie fetched it in in her basket, unbeknown to me, last night, and had it hidden under her bed. The creature was quite quiet all night, as is its nature, I suppose, and very likely frightened and ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... The grind of steel on iron was blended with the rattle of chains and the rolling of the metal carriages in their tracks. The Genius of Railroading seemed present in the grim strength and rapidity of several machines which moved almost as if instinct with intelligence, and played with the most unyielding substances as if they were soft and pliable clay. In the midst of all the smashing of matter against matter, through the smoke and din and dust and revolution of the place, Mr. ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon

... "'Instinct and Accident.—As Colonel Randolph was driving through our town yesterday and was passing Captain Jones's sample-room, where the colonel lately shot Moses Widlake in the street, the horses took alarm and started violently ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... self-respect and an immense feeling of relief, Burton, after a few moments' hesitation, directed his footsteps towards the National Gallery. He had once been there years ago on a wet Bank Holiday, and some faint instinct of memory which somehow or other had survived the burden of his sordid days suddenly reasserted itself. He climbed the steps and passed through the portals with the beating heart of the explorer who climbs ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the mask-like features of Jefferson Worth. Only the delicate, pointed fingers of his nervous hands caressed constantly his unshaven chin, fingered his clothing, or—gripped the edge of the wagon seat as he leaned forward in his place. Texas— grim, cool, alert, his lean figure instinct now with action and his dark eyes alight—swung his long whip and handled his reins with a master's skill, calling upon every atom of his team's strength, while reading those tracks in the sand as one would scan ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... bower-like and youthful could not have cost anything approaching that sum. Still Jasper said nothing about giving her change out of the money which he had spent, and Hilda feared to broach the subject of the ring to him. Another topic which by a sort of instinct she refrained from was Judy herself. When Jasper was in the house Hilda was always glad when Judy retired to her own room. When the gay little voice, happy now, and clear and sweet as a lark's, was heard singing ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... instinct or delirious folly, I informed Chryseros fully of our purposes, doings and plans. He apologized to Agathemer for his assault on him, affirmed his complete loyalty to me and promised all possible assistance and perfect secrecy. He examined ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... belongs to it, merging gently with no possibility of shock or rudeness. So it is with the people, the real Nantucketers. Each intensely individual they yet blend in a wholesome harmonious whole that joins the outside world with little friction. The sailor instinct is strong in them, and they bring their barks alongside the dock or the stranger with a pleasant hail and ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... heard nothing—but something, some indefinable instinct now seemed suddenly to ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... methinks for the moment he forgot all about everything else than as to whether or no his captain's manoeuvre would succeed, for in the very first moment he divined, as by some instinct, what ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... to appear vanquished, was at a loss how to change the conversation to such a theme as would afford him a suitable opportunity to take his leave in a dignified manner. But good Magde, who had now entirely recovered her usual equanimity, soon assisted him—by means of that instinct which sometimes puts superior knowledge to the blush—out ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... cab homeward, for he had no heart to face the people he had meant to meet, and on his way, just to gratify the natural instinct of self-torture, he bought a copy of the journal, and read there that Messrs. Berry and Smythe, the well-known firm of solicitors in Lincoln's Inn, had that day filed a petition for divorce against Mr. Paul ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... 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 ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... 1805 reproduced what he could of it in "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" and the other metrical romances which, in their turn, led the way to Byron, who himself heard "Christabel" recited in 1811. But the secret of Coleridge's instinct of melody and science of harmony was not discovered. Such ecstasy and such collectedness, a way of writing which seems to aim at nothing but the most precisely expressive simplicity, and yet sets the whole brain dancing to its tune, can ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... to," she said, smiling; "I think I'm a detective by instinct; but there's not much credit due to me, for I knew Beatrice and Mr. Cameron were always planning jokes, and I couldn't believe they'd let the first of April pass by without some special demonstration. So I kept my eyes open,—and I couldn't help ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... I exclaimed, so tenderly impressed by the picture that I was not willing to believe anything else; and I felt that my instinct was guiding me aright. ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic

... dim instinct of self-protection, she went and told her three best friends, great students of character all, of this remarkable phenomenon she had discovered on the other ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... exchequer that is not substantially supported by lovers of good living. Shall we speak of that swarm of cooks who have for ages been annually leaving France, to improve foreign nations in the art of good living? Most of them succeed; and in obedience to an instinct which never dies in a Frenchman's heart, bring back to their country the fruits of their economy. The sum thus imported is greater than might be supposed, and therefore they, like the others, will be honored ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... most natural thing in the world but we must use judgment in our play. A boy or girl who is not allowed to play or who is restrained by too anxious parents is unhappy indeed. Nearly all animals play. We know, for instance, that puppies, kittens, and lambs are playful. It is a perfectly natural instinct. By proper play we build up our bodies and train our minds. The healthy man never gets too old to play. He may not care to play marbles or roll hoops, but he will find his pleasure in some game or sport like tennis, golf, horseback ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... his expedition, told in his particular manner; and endued with the dramatic vitality which he was well able to give it, it was inimitable. It needs but a few words to finish it. Mrs. Clifford, with unerring instinct, made her way to the house of that friendly lady who had assisted our proceedings. But she came too late for anything but abuse. Julia was irrevocably mine. Bitter was the clamor which, in our chamber, assailed ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... hold, and she sat away from him with a little sigh that was almost a shudder. Her hands went as if by instinct to her hair, smoothing it. Another instinct, perhaps, made her turn to him with the ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... never mastered the Indian art by which the foot descending in the darkness on something that will crackle checks before the noise is made. I could do it by day, when I could see what was on the ground, but in the dark the thing was beyond me. It is an instinct like a wild thing's, and possible only to those who have gone all their days light-shod ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... me to do?" said he, mingling with his alarmed protests many law maxims and Latin quotations, an instinct of chattering jays, who pour forth all their vocabulary when they are frightened. "What do you want me to do? Who am I? What can I do? I am nothing. No one is any longer anything. Ubi nihil, nihil. Might is there. Where there is Might the people lose their Rights. Novus nascitur ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... your confidence," said Armstrong. "As the sick beast or the hurt bird knows by an infallible instinct what herb or plant will best promote its cure, so it seems to me does Providence direct me to you. Repulse me not, but ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... an oversight of the maker's, I suppose, that left it so, but I never mended it, because it made such a handy pocket, and there was no other. I remember plain. When the crash came I gathered up the money and thrust it into that place. Instinct told me it was something to be cared for, I guess, because I'm sure I didn't stop to think. Then when I went to bed I must have been too excited to remember about it and left it there. The next day I gave that frock to Luna and she has worn it ever since. ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... decreed had dawned Loud rang the bull-horn; and on every breeze Floated the banners, saffron, green, and blue; While issuing from the horizon's utmost verge The full-voiced People flocked. So swarmed of old Some migratory nation, instinct-urged To fly their native wastes sad winter's realm; So thronged on southern slopes when, far below, Shone out the plains of promise. Bright they came! No summer sea could wear a blithsomer sheen Though every dancing crest and milky plume Ran on with rainbows braided. Minstrel songs Wafted like ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... the children mainly consist in the construction of dwellings, of this kind or that—castle, or ship, or cave, or nest in the treetop—according to the material attainable. It is an outcome of the aboriginal necessity for shelter, this instinct of burrowing: Welbeck Abbey is the development of a weem or Picts' house. Steenie had very early shown it, probably from a vague consciousness of weakness, and Kirsty came heartily to his aid in following it, with the reaction of waking in herself a luxurious idea of sheltered safety. ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... that Clifford Heath was a wronged, and innocent man. She did not reason herself into this belief; and it was absurd, of course. She arrived at her conclusions, as all loving women do, through her feelings, and her instinct. A woman seldom reasons, but in many cases her ready intuition is worth more than all man's wisdom. Her delicate instinct strikes directly at the truth, when ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... Sunday-school days the usual formulas of dogmatic religion, but upon matters of morality her ideas were of the vaguest possible description. The guide of her life had always been her instinct for happiness, her "genial sense of youth." She had never formulated any rule of life to herself, but that which she sought was joy, primarily for herself, and incidentally for other people, because unhappy people were disturbing (unless it were possible to avoid them). In debating within ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... from a sort of instinct for trouble to come. I know that devoted, twenty-second century look in Jane's intense, near-sighted eyes, and I always fend from it. She is a very dear person, and I respectfully adore her. Indeed, I sometimes ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... An instinct of misfortune in common had drawn Little Douglas to George. George, seeing the child ill-treated by everyone, had conceived an affection for him, and Little Douglas, feeling himself loved amid the atmosphere of indifference around him, turned with open arms and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the Indians did, and call upon the Spirit of the Wind to settle the question," Eliza suggested, with a woman's quick instinct for relieving a situation that threatened to become constrained. She and Natalie ran to Trevor's sideboard, and, seizing bottle and shaker, brewed a magic broth, while the two men looked on. They murmured incantations, they made mystic passes, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... poor he accounts the Justices' intelligencers, and cannot abide them. He complains of our negligence of discovering new parts of the world, only to rid them from our climate. His son, by a certain kind of instinct, he binds prentice to a tailor, who, all the term of his indenture, hath a dear year in his belly, and ravens bread exceedingly. When he comes to be a freeman, if it be a dearth, he marries ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... musical is the voice of the Wawa monkey, a bubbling like water running out of a narrow-necked bottle, always to be heard at early dawn, and the sweetest of alarums. A dead stillness reigns in the jungle by day, but at sunset every leaf almost becomes instinct with life. You might almost fancy yourself beset by Gideon's army, when all the lamps in the pitchers rattled and broke, and every man blew his trumpet into your ear. It is an astounding noise certainly, and ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... to hate. This virtue of theirs, the People holds, is not engrained in their nature for any good to itself, but rather for its injury. In direct opposition to this, there are some persons who, being (28) born of the People, are yet by natural instinct not commoners. For my part I pardon the People its own democracy, as, indeed, it is pardonable in any one to do good to himself. (29) But the man who, not being himself one of the People, prefers to live in a state democratically governed ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon

... blood, or to the home where the widowed mother sat in misery and tears;[574] and no one thought that this was a mere figure of speech. It all seemed real, because Gracchus was a true artist as well as a true man, and knew by an unerring instinct when to pause. This type of objective oratory, with its simple and vivid pictures, its brilliant but never laboured wit, its capacity for producing the illusion that the man is revealed in the utterance, its suggestion of something deeper than that ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... themselves. They were unquestionably half-breeds, and had received Christian names, and most of them had houses of their own, and, though hunters, fishermen and trippers, their families lived comparatively settled lives. Yet the glorious instinct of the Indian haunted them. As a rule they had been born on the "pitching-track," in the forest, or on the prairies—in all sorts of places, they could not say exactly where—and when they were born ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... wish I 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 ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... mind that instinct of the man in his hour of triumph—the desire to tell a woman of his greatness. He paused a second outside Sam Hupp's office, turned, and walked quickly down the length of the great central room. He stopped before a little glass door at the end, ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber

... assiduously. He did so more because he wished not to pain her than from furtiveness. By nature he was open and brave, and had always had a reputation for plainness and sincerity. She was in no sense his equal in intelligence or judgment, nor even in instinct. She was a woman of more impulse and constitutional good-nature than depth. It is probable that he knew that, and refrained from letting her into the knowledge of this vice, contracted in the war when, seriously ill, he was able to drag himself about from patient ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... not arrested without knowing what is the crime with which they are charged. Removing the jar of water and the can of food from my pony's back, without stopping to think why I did it, but following a sort of instinct which afterwards saved me from perishing, I fastened these articles on my shoulders and around my waist; then, sobbing, threw my arms around poor pony's neck, and with a pang bade him good-by. He flew snorting away to his stable, ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark

... instinct deep within the spirit of man is thus plainly a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors, and sentiments amid which he exists. And just as the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... of a girl. The face was a delicate oval, the mouth soft and sweet, the eyes bright with youth and health, the whole appearance telling of winning grace and cultured beauty. The fullness of the brows betrayed the artist instinct. The hair was drawn to the top of the head in a strange foreign fashion. The softly curving lines of face and figure showed ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... which it now possesses and would merely be the solitary meditation of a chosen few. Only because it is feeling and sentiment, only because it is the unconscious reawakening of our profound racial instinct, has it the force to stir the soul of the people, and to set free an irresistible current of national will. Only because it is action, and as such actualizes itself in a vast organization and in a huge movement, has it the conditions for determining ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various

... the power of reading a page in moment, as a mathematician sums up a column of figures and as the artist Dore was able to read a book by turning the leaves, can be attained by training and practise. School pressure should not suppress this instinct of omnivorous reading, which at this age sometimes prompts the resolve to read encyclopedias, and even libraries, or to sample everything to be found in books at home. Along with, but never suppressing, it there should be some stated reading, but this should lay down only kinds of reading like the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... the Stony Creek bridge, when, looking across the country to his left and rear, he discovered Mercer's party on its march. Surprised at the appearance of a force of rebels where he least expected to see one, Mawhood, nevertheless, with a soldier's instinct, promptly wheeled about and proceeded to attack Mercer. They met on a hill and exchanged fire, when Mawhood ordered a bayonet charge, and put the Americans to rout. Mercer, on horseback, attempted in vain to rally his men, and was mortally wounded with ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... where the roll is so long and glorious; but I think, at the moment, of O'Donovan, Forbes, Stanley, Burnaby, Collins, and our own Irish-American, MacGahan, the great-hearted correspondent, who changed the political map of Eastern Europe by exposing the Bulgarian atrocities. The instinct which impelled those men was the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... inconceivable, he told himself, that a mind cunning enough to have executed this murder would give itself away in such a fashion. If she had indeed pried among her mistress' papers and found the will and note, would she not, from the most primitive instinct of self-preservation, have pretended total ignorance of the ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... instinct of art is the expression of the sense of beauty. A scene, or a character, or an idea, or an emotion, strikes the mind as being salient, beautiful, strange, wonderful, and the mind desires to record it, to depict it, to isolate it, to emphasize it. The process becomes ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... opens out into the wide smiling plain that thence spreads itself on every side to the sea. Hence there would be easy access to both regions; both would be, in a way, commanded; here, too, was a readily defensible position, one assailable only in front. Experience has shown that the instinct of the first founder was right, or that his political and strategic foresight was extraordinary. Though circumstances, once and again, transferred the seat of government to Thebes or Alexandria, yet ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... simple statement was staggering. The flushed face was unmistakably that of a young girl, a tender, modest thing that shrank before the eyes of a grim audience. Womanly instinct impelled Yetive to shield the timid masquerader. Her strange association with Baldos was not of enough consequence in the eyes of this tender ruler to check the impulse of gentleness that swept over her. That ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... already covered him half a score of times. The stone threshold of his cottage is worn away with his hob-nailed footsteps, scuffling over it from the reign of the first Plantagenet to that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our restless countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them tend always towards "fresh woods and pastures new." Rather than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering on a village-green, toiling in hereditary fields, listening to the parson's drone lengthened through centuries in the gray Norman church, let us welcome ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... conveyed to her mind by naked purity struck her strongly, and she determined to learn the passage by heart. Eight or nine lines were printed separately, like a stanza, and the labour would not be great, and the task, when done, would be complete. "Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, Each stain of earthliness Had passed away, it reassumed Its native dignity, and stood Immortal amid ruin." Which was instinct with beauty,—the stain or the soul, she did not ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... and with a child's quick instinct knew that he had found a friend. The tears that he had been bravely holding back all the afternoon for Robin's sake could no longer be restrained. He sat for a minute trying to wink them away. Then he laid his head wearily down on the window sill and gave way to ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston

... said Bertram. They had reached the edge of the crowd, which circled about some knot of violent struggle and gesture. "Excuse me!" He had sprung from her side and was breaking his way through. By instinct, she followed into the hole back of him, so that she found herself in the second row of spectators to a curious struggle, the details of which flashed in ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... His instinct, quicker to act than his reason, made him shrink from his misery being noticed, much more made any ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... and more conscious and their striving more energetic. At last appeared the man who was the pupil of nobody, the heir of everybody, who felt profoundly and powerfully what to his precursors had been vague instinct, who saw and expressed the meaning of it all. The seed that produced him had already flowered into a Giotto, and once again into a Masaccio; in him, the last of his race, born in conditions artistically most propitious, ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... The old instinct of the man who lives much in the open, telling him danger is close at hand, was stirring at the roots of his hair. But he was just a trifle too late. As he faced about, a form shot out of the cave and Tom, totally unprepared for attack, ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... antic of antithesis, we might say that on one side the places are more prosaic than the names and on the other the names are more prosaic than the places. St. Louis is a fine town, and we recognise a fine instinct of the imagination that set on the hill overlooking the river the statue of that holy horseman who has christened the city. But the city is not as beautiful as its name; it could not be. Indeed these titles set up a standard to which the most splendid spires and turrets could not rise, ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... brief negative; she smiled at the appearance of the questioner, and, with the vulgar instinct, looked about for ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... some sporting instinct, making hazard attractive, or, perhaps, a conviction that Fate is kind, need not be discussed. The fact remains that there were a very few youthful and marriageable folk who had no desire to know beforehand what their ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... made no difference to the fortunes of Virginia. But the same stupidity, that same "wonderful instinct for the wrong side of every question" which made James kill his great subject, also made him try to stifle the infant colony. So while in spite of sickness and massacre the colony prospered, the company at home was passing through strenuous times. The head or treasurer of the company ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... ready to pounce on any suggestion, any bit of stage business, any scenic effect, or any situation, that they may legitimately copy or enlarge upon for their respective uses. This keen attitude is partly a matter of inborn dramatic instinct, but it is even more a matter of ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... insisted that it must have been some instinct that caused elephants, dromedaries, ostrich, zebra and even the toothless old performing lion, Nero, to camp in his back yard in preference to any other ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie

... where I was again to look upon the exquisite resemblance of features which, till then, I had thought without a similar in the world, was a matter of instinct; and, winding my way through the intricacies of galleries and corridors, loaded with the baggage of the emigrant army, and strewed with many a gallant noble who had exchanged the down bed of his ancestral ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... he trusts his eyes, and not his instinct. During this most sour weather of the year, the anemone blossoms; and, almost immediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-tooth violet, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain and snow, and all discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces with progressive haste and rapidity. ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger

... one of the most striking illustrations of that intense sociability of the French which keeps them together, and prevents their spreading over and planting themselves firmly in a new country, as it is the instinct of the men of Teutonic race to do. While, in Upper Canada, the colonists of English and Scotch descent penetrate the forest and the wilderness, each settler living, it may be, miles apart from his nearest neighbour, the Lower ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... from its inception to eradicate the sexual instinct and in so doing has antagonized an instinct that is as fundamental as that of self-preservation. All it has accomplished is a distortion. The church, by claiming that it alone was privileged to regulate sexual desires, has done one of two things to each of its adherents. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... red; she felt by instinct that she must not tell over all the conversation; mamma would ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth

... suspect I shall differ from it in its foundation, although not in its deductions. I gather from his other works that he adopts the principle of Hobbes, that justice is founded in contract solely, and does not result from the constitution of man. I believe, on the contrary, that it is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society: that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another: that the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... to wish to publish from this or that motive, because of this, that, or the other. I was simply dominated by the instinct to do so, which grew more and more urgent as ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... designed to fulfil the lower functions of the organism. To proceed to the obvious application—animals are not moral beings, but act, with the occasional exception of such of their number as have been humanised by contact with men, from instinct and not from conscious choice; and for that reason we are not called upon to reconcile the loving-kindness and tender mercy of God with the habits and general behaviour of the lower creation. In ascribing all sorts of moral qualities to animals we simply exhibit the same {38} tendency which ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... in the physical world has feeling in the true sense of that word. It is the indwelling life which feels, as we may readily see from the fact that a body which responded to the slightest touch while instinct with life, exhibits no sensation whatever even when cut to pieces after the life has fled. Demonstrations have been made by scientists, particularly by Professor Bose of Calcutta, to show that there is feeling in dead animal ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... dizzy, only the fighting instinct enabled him to crane a leg behind the other and throw his whole weight forward. The planks of the floor shivered under the two ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall

... subject. I had eyes good enough to see that my dislike for Krak was pleasanter to my mother than my liking for the Countess. Women seem to me to have the instinct of monopoly, and not to care for a share of affection. Such, at least, was my mother's temperament, intensified no doubt by the circumstance that in future days my favour and liking might be matters of importance. She feared from ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... road on which they had been straying. Trow, as he half saw them in the dark, not knowing how many there might be, or whether there was a man among them, rushed through them, upsetting one scared girl in his passage. With the instinct and with the timidity of a beast, his impulse now was to escape, and he hurried away back to the road and to his lair, leaving the three women together in the cottage. Poor wretch! As he crossed the road, not skulking in his impotent haste, but ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope

... Prince, "let not that beast come nigh me. My soul recoils from him in fear and disgust: there is something in his looks alien from my nature, and which I shudder at as at a loathsome snake, from which my instinct revolts." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... hearts open only to gentle influences, and all that it is in the power of human beings to bestow upon one another comes most readily and most lavishly to those who outrage no social instinct. To be highly and sincerely honored socially means to be well loved, and that must mean to be lovable. Wealth and family position are matters of chance as far as the individual is concerned, but good breeding is a matter of personal ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway

... desires, Pierrette's conduct, and the song which had awakened her with the word "marriage." Like the fool she was, instead of looking through the blinds to see the lover, she opened her window without reflecting that Pierrette would hear her. If she had had the common instinct of a spy she would have seen Brigaut, and the fatal drama then begun would never have ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... against mine, as Alice, whom I had quite forgotten, made a skyward running jump and clasped the arm frantically to her bosom with both her own. With vast relief, I loosed my cramped fingers—only to feel her silken garments begin to slide skyward against my cheek. It was more instinct than sense which made me clutch at her legs. God, had I not done that! As it was, I held both forms anchored with only a slight pull, waiting dumbly for the next move—quite non compos by this time, ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby

... Modesty is ashamed to do any thing that is opposite to the Humour of the Company. True Modesty avoids every thing that is criminal, false Modesty every thing that is unfashionable. The latter is only a general undetermined Instinct; the former is that Instinct, limited and circumscribed by the Rules of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... were employed in fortifying the position. Deep holes were dug along the edge of the wood, and behind these were trenches and pitfalls. Mahmud's own temper grew daily more sullen and fierce. His own fighting instinct was in favour of the attack his followers longed to deliver, but in his heart he was afraid that the result might be fatal. It was not the rifles of the infantry that he feared—of these he had no experience—but the artillery, ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... Nicholson's instinct had not failed him. The natives, for all their innocent appearance, were sepoys carrying swords to a mutinous regiment which ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley

... absorbent, unquestioned, except in the stomach, where the tangible poisons have to go by the act of swallowing and where they are often challenged and ejected. It seems at first thought very strange that we are not so well protected by natural instinct or sensibility from the subtle poisons of the atmosphere as from those that can affect us only by the voluntary act of swallowing. The obvious explanation, however, of this apparent neglect is that Nature protects us in general from gaseous poisons by her own ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... with an intuition which was his peculiar gift, steered an undeviating course. Some of the life-savers used to joke with him and declare that he could smell a drowning man a mile away, for his instinct was almost always right. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... habitually adopts those symbols of thought and those methods of using them which instinct and analysis agree in choosing, as most effective, and becomes poetry by virtue ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... astonishing, the most useful inventions, are not those which reflect the greatest honour on the human mind. It is to a mechanical instinct, which is found in many men, and not to true philosophy, that most ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... caught his eye. He ran to it, and found a nest he had never seen before. It was full of purple eggs, and there was the rare bird he had seen but once. It was chanting the weird song he had often heard, but never traced. But the eggs were the marvelous things. His old egg-collecting instinct broke out. He reached forth to clutch the wonderful prize, and—in an instant all the lights went out. There was nothing but the black woods about him. Then on the pathway shone again the soft light. It grew brighter, till in the ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... entrance. I had been received there on my first setting foot over my lady's threshold; every stranger was led in by that way the first time they came; but after that (with the exceptions I have named) they went round by the terrace, as it were by instinct. It was an assistance to this instinct to be aware that from time immemorial, the magnificent and fierce Hanbury wolf-hounds, which were extinct in every other part of the island, had been and still were kept chained in the front quadrangle, where they bayed through a great part of the day and night ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... the Thibet, the doctor had remained nearly two years without hinting at new explorations; and Dick, supposing that his friend's instinct for travel and thirst for adventure had at length died out, was perfectly enchanted. They would have ended badly, some day or other, he thought to himself; no matter what experience one has with men, one does not travel always with impunity among cannibals and ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... shepherds. The whole account appears to me a curious instance of the pliability of the affections in the dog; and yet, whether wild or however educated, he has a feeling of respect or fear for those that are fulfilling their instinct of association. For we can understand on no principle the wild dogs being driven away by the single one with its flock, except that they consider, from some confused notion, that the one thus associated gains power, as if in company with its own kind. F. Cuvier ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... enemy of the orang-outan. While they fear to encounter the grown animals, they will attack the young, and the orangs seem to have the instinct of danger from that source born ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... mother, where love loses its awe, and veneration is mixed with tenderness. What can I say on such a subject? What can I do but repeat the ready truths which, with the quick impulse of the mind, must spring to the lips of every man on such a theme? Filial love! the moral of instinct, the sacrament of nature and duty, or rather let me say, it is miscalled a duty, for it flows from the heart without effort, and is its delight, its indulgence, its enjoyment. It is guided, not by the slow dictates of reason; it awaits not encouragement ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... as old Jervaise had gone, all of them had turned with an instinct of protection towards the head of the family. He, alone, had been sacrificed. Within an hour his whole life had been changed, and I began to doubt, as Anne had doubted, whether so old a tree would bear transplanting. Whatever ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... Father Darnell used to say we were 'burying our Lady,' and though he would make no remark, I have little doubt the Father thought so too." Perhaps, then, Cardinal Newman's love for vocal and instrumental ecclesiastical music in combination (especially at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost) was a true instinct recognizing the undoubted needs of another day, and is best labelled for a motto with some verses of the 149th and 150th Psalms, which we recommend to the attention of a few purists in case they may have forgotten them? Thus, ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis

... all their atrocity. For a moment, according to certain narratives, his heart failed him; a cloud hid from him the face of his Father; he endured an agony of despair more acute a thousand times than all his torments. But his divine instinct again sustained him. In measure as the life of the body flickered out, his soul grew serene, and by degrees returned to its heavenly source. He regained the idea of his mission, in his death he saw the salvation ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... is an instinct. By and by you will just naturally KNOW one from the other, but you never will be able to explain why or how you know ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... is the proper Object of the Passion so constantly exercis'd about it; and this Restlessness in the present, this assigning our selves over to further Stages of Duration, this successive grasping at somewhat still to come, appears to me (whatever it may to others) as a kind of Instinct or natural Symptom which the Mind of Man has ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... already loving one object with all his force, it is not Nature's plan to make him turn from all others by instinct. No, she is ever ready with others, ever rather prompting him, leading him towards others, in order that, should accident or death remove his first mate, others should not be wanting, and her great scheme should not be ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... answered without thinking, just echoing his words like a parrot; although, now I come to consider the thing fully, I really can see no other reason than this hereditary instinct to account for the passionate longing that possessed me at that period to be a sailor, as, beyond reading Robinson Crusoe like other boys, I was absolutely ignorant of the life and all concerning it. Indeed, up ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... sentiment painted pictures while yet the fagots grew apace for their destruction as well as for the funeral-pyre of their scolding and bellowing enemy, Savonarola. For where Fra Angelico, working from the life, could create a San Sebastian so instinct with earthly vitality and earthly bloom that pious Florentine women could not say their prayers in peace in its presence, there were three easels, each bearing a canvas, in different parts of the room. Before each easel worked a Leatherstonepaugh, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... last moment had come, mechanically he fell to earth, abandoning to its own resources the equine Fate that had served him so ill. Striking the ground, and, still finding consciousness had not deserted him, instinct prompted him to demonstrate that if his armor was too heavy for him to run away in, as the smithy-valet de chambre had significantly affirmed, yet he possessed the undoubted strength and ability to ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... herself intentionally, into one or other of those places of sure destruction. The clergyman entertained an opinion of his own. He thought that, impatient of the watch which was placed over her, this unhappy woman's instinct had taught her, as it directs various domestic animals, to withdraw herself from the sight of her own race, that the death-struggle might take place in some secret den, where, in all probability, her ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... by some special divining instinct of their essential qualities. He understood them. He knew why in an oak forest, for instance, each individual was utterly distinct from its fellows, and why no two beeches in the whole world were alike. People asked him down to paint a favorite lime or ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... important fact of all, is the unanimous firmness of the common soldiers and common sailors. To the last man, so far as known, they have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose commands but an hour before they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic instinct of plain people. They understand, without an argument, that destroying the Government which was made by Washington means no good to them. Our popular Government has often been called an experiment. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... in making the selection. The negro of the Carolinas was the most used to the cotton-field, had less occasion for clothes, and it had been proved by experiment could be fattened on red herrings; while, on the other hand, the negro farther north had the highest instinct, could sometimes reason, and that he had even been known to preach when he had got as high up as Philadelphia. He much affected, also, bacon and poultry. Perhaps it might be well to purchase samples of lots from all the different ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... attributes importance to every sign, sound, or action that is not in harmony with the usual routine of his world, and by actual investigation he must needs satisfy himself of its meaning. This is not idle curiosity, but an instinct born of necessity and life-long training, and it was this instinct that prompted Ungava Bob's action in turning from his ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace



Words linked to "Instinct" :   inherent aptitude, replete, aptitude, id, full



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