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Instinctively   /ɪnstˈɪŋktɪvli/   Listen
Instinctively

adverb
1.
As a matter of instinct.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Instinctively" Quotes from Famous Books



... not occurred to me, and I was not able to catch it. Still, I was touched at her thoughtfulness, even though I had to say that I proposed to stay right here. When she asked me what I proposed to do if the army came retreating across my garden, I instinctively laughed. It seems so impossible this time that the Germans can pass the frontier, and get by Verdun and Toul. All the same, that other people were thinking it possible rather brought me up standing. I just looked at the little house I had arranged such ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich

... and threatening letters being addressed to this prince with a view of inducing him to favor the designs of the writer, he had recourse to the severest measures for the discovery of the guilty party; numbers of persons were arrested, and travellers instinctively avoided Cassel. It was at length discovered that Manger, the head of the police, a court favorite, was ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... of cordial agreement. Yet he found himself, in a sense, embarrassed. Gerald was looking down upon his plate and his face was hidden. Esther's features had suddenly become stony and expressionless. Hamel felt instinctively that ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Instinctively Robin brought his wits somewhat together. "The Sea Wraith," he echoed. "Why, that was long ago ... Sixscore men, we left her hidden between the islet and the land until we should return.... Her mariners were willing to be left—ay, and when I'm a knight ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... instinctively to their queen. Mary had been married in 1558, and in 1559 her husband succeeded to the throne of France under the title of Francis II. A minister was dispatched to inform her of the proceedings in Parliament, but she refused ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... one side or another of his nature responded. He had often thought that if he could make up a composite woman of all of them he might be in great danger of falling in love. But now he was aware that his whole nature responded to the attraction of the girl upstairs, as a dog answers instinctively to the call of its master. He could say to himself that she was this or that,—brave and beautiful, but he knew that such qualities were but an insignificant part of the total effect. His reason could find causes enough to approve her, but something more important had gone ahead, ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller

... is embraced with joy unspeakable. 'The humble and meek' adore it; even while, by the proud and rebellious, it is after a most strange fashion cavilled at, called in question, and denied. We specify the Gospel, instinctively, as that part of the Inspired Word which chiefly concerns ourselves, as Christian men; but the entire deposit shares the same fate. I do not think I am delivering a paradox when I say that the Bible is generally very little read. That the amount of study ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... rhythmic sway and clatter of a moving train had given place to a comparative stillness that awoke John Riviere from sleep. He murmured "Dijon," and composed himself to a fresh position for rest. Some hours later there was again a stoppage, and instinctively he murmured "Lyon-Perrache." The phases of the journey along the main P.L.M. route had been burnt into him from the visits with Olive to ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... Bohemian life, full of ups and downs, of fetes and sheriffs, of orgies and forced sobrieties, Raoul was attracted to the idea of another love,—to the gentle, harmonious house and presence of a great lady, just as the Comtesse Felix instinctively desired to introduce the torture of great emotions into a life made monotonous by happiness. This law of life is the law of all arts, which exist only by contrasts. A work done without this incentive is the loftiest expression of genius, just as the ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... To use the word in its mediaevalsense, he respected the 'mystery' of poetry. Instinctively, doubtless, but also, I should imagine, deliberately, he all his life lived up to the traditional type of the poet, and kept between him and his public a proper veil of Sinaitic mist. You remember Browning's picture of the mysterious poet 'you saw go up and down Valladolid,' and the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... movement was one of irritation. He couldn't bear the Honeychurch habit of sitting in the dark to save the furniture. Instinctively he give the curtains a twitch, and sent them swinging down their poles. Light entered. There was revealed a terrace, such as is owned by many villas with trees each side of it, and on it a little rustic seat, and two ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... continued to go forward, but with shortened stride. Where were the other regiments, and why did these niggers use Martinis? They took open order instinctively, lying down and firing at random, rushing a few paces forward and lying down again, according to the regulations. Once in this formation, each man felt himself desperately alone, and edged in towards his fellow ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... silence and slouched in the saddle. Presently he nodded, recovered, and nodded again. He would not wittingly have gone to sleep in the saddle, being as yet too unaccustomed to riding to relax to that extent. But sleep had something to say anent the matter. He dozed, clasping the saddle-horn instinctively. Pill plodded along patiently. The east grew gray, then rose-pink, then golden. The horse lifted its head and quickened pace. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... (blow-pipe) is found in his room, but the Kenyah usually prefers to carry a spear when he goes hunting. In his almost daily trips to the ladang he also takes it along, because instinctively mindful of enemy attacks. The Kenyahs are physically superior to the Kayans and the other natives I met, and more free from skin disease. They are less reserved than the Kayans, who are a little heavy and slow. In none of these tribes is any distrust shown, and I never saw ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... night as Mr. Aubrey Gilbert left the Haunted Bookshop that evening, and set out to walk homeward. Without making a very conscious choice, he felt instinctively that it would be agreeable to walk back to Manhattan rather than permit the roaring disillusion of the subway to break in upon ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... Instinctively I had covered the map with a newspaper. With amazement I now discovered that my vis-a-vis was the villain of the Adventure of the Young Lady and the Chart, as the author of the "New Arabian Nights" ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... pardner? They had laid out to set out together. Had they sot? This question was a goverin' me, and the follerin' one: If they had sot out together, where wuz my pardner, Josiah Allen, now? As I thought these feerful thoughts, instinctively I turned around to see if I could see a trace of his companion in the distance. Yes, I could ketch a faint glimpse of her as she wuz mountin' a diclivity, and stood for an instant in sight, but long before even, she disopeered ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley

... friends. Such criticisms seemed to bring into a sphere he would have liked to keep solely for the mutual reliance of loving kindness, something of the hard utilitarianism of the world at large. In consequence he gradually came to choose the line of least resistance, to avoid instinctively even the slightly disagreeable. Perhaps for this reason he was never entirely sincere with those he loved. He showed enthusiasm over any plan suggested by them, for the reason that he never dared offer a ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... untruthful boy, and what he said was correct, for he had passed the house half a mile away; but his words gave, and were intended to give the impression that he had not been that day with any of the people of Corbyknowe. His mother objected to his visiting the farmer, but he knew instinctively she would have objected yet more to his spending half the day with Kirsty, whom she never mentioned, and of whom she scarcely recognized the existence. Little as she loved her son, Mrs. Gordon would have scorned to suspect him of preferring ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... He has instinctively discovered the necessity of varying as much as possible the cadence and composition of the last third of his verse, and carefully avoids anything like a monotonous use of his only spondee; in a batch of eighteen lines taken at random, there are only six end-words ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... not to marry. And being without breakfast and unstimulated by the sky, I began to think also what unstable material I had taken in hand when I undertook to work with Indians. Instinctively I knew then what a young southern statesman named Jefferson Davis whom I first met as a commandant of the fort at Green Bay—afterwards told me in Washington: "No commonwealth in a republic will stand with interests apart from the federated whole." White men, who have exclaimed from the beginning ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... fell short of disorder, however, which would have been indecorous; she polished her nails, and, as it was not fit that she should receive Don Luis in a wrapper, she put on a simple house-dress. In fine, she managed instinctively that all the details of her toilet should concur in heightening her beauty and grace, but without allowing any trace to be perceived of the art, the labor, and the time employed in the details. She would have it appear, on the contrary, as if all this beauty and grace were the free gift of nature, ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... the required succour, one is sure at least of meeting kindness and compassion. The heart of the poor supplicant, which remains impenetrably closed to the rest of the world, opens in his presence, as a flower expands before the orb of day, from which it instinctively knows it can derive a cheering and benign ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... complaints from Sir Alfred Venner, Sir Alfred Venner's woods were more out of bounds than any other out of bounds woods in the entire county that did not belong to Sir Alfred Venner? He did? Ah! No, the word for his guidance in this emergency, he felt instinctively, was 'mum'. Time might provide him with a solution. He might, for instance, abstract the cups secretly from their resting-place, place them in the middle of the football field, and find them there dramatically after ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... the furniture and decorations, or lack of them, and had suggested that he be allowed to have it brought more in keeping with his idea of what was appropriate. During the years in which he had been growing into manhood he had come instinctively into sound notions of what was artistic and refined. He had seen so many homes that were more distinguished and harmonious than his own. One could not walk or drive about Philadelphia without seeing and being impressed with the general tendency ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... can recognize at a glance and under any costume the man whose business is with horses. Every trade and calling in life perhaps may be said to impart to its followers some distinguishing peculiarity by which the brethren of the craft at least will instinctively know each other; and amongst horse-fanciers these mysterious signs of recognition are as infallible as the signals of Freemasonry. As one penetrates still farther into Normandy on his way to the Caen races—which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... and an artificially created campaign of interested parties (da artificiose interessate campagna).... It must be remembered that this is the first contact (il primo contatto) which the population, as yet primitive and uncultured in its mass, has had with Italy, where it instinctively sees the enemy and the new oppressor. We must do our best to make them see in Italy their friend and liberator.... It is evident and it leaps to the eyes of all how delicate and important is the moment of this first contact. Nothing ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... that unworthy prelate's power, then, returning to the country, plotted the marriage with your mother, and, by his intimate knowledge of the weakness or vice of each character, which he seems to catch instinctively, adapted his scheme with such cunning to the avarice of his uncle as to ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... Instinctively both stopped. Marcella locked her hands behind her in a gesture familiar to her in moments of excitement; the light wind blew back her dress in soft, eddying folds; for the moment, in her tall grace, she had the air of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the slightest doubt that he would keep his word. Yet, without any reason whatever, I liked him and I had no fear of him; I did not feel for a single instant that Miss Falconer was in danger; she was as safe with him, I knew instinctively, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... came. Few received mail that day; he was one who did. My attention was first called to him by the sound of a moan that seemed to come from a heart utterly broken. He stood leaning against a caisson staring at the letter, his face deathly white. Instinctively I realized it all. It was from her, and its message was as some stroke of lightning from a cloudless sky. Mutely he came to me, pressed the letter in ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... Kenneth's going away affected her like this? She had not had a moment's peace of mind since his departure. She could not sleep. Horrible dreams and thoughts haunted her all night. Some danger threatened, that she felt instinctively. Something dreadful was going to happen. What it was, she did not know. But it was something that threatened her happiness, perhaps her life or Kenneth's——. At the mere thought a shiver ran through her, and a convulsive sob rose in her throat, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... discovered them in each other's embrace, and gave secret orders to waylay the bridegroom and strangle him. He then went to Sigismonda, and reproved her for her degrading choice, which she boldly justified. Next day, she received a human heart in a gold casket, knew instinctively that it was Guiscardo's, and poisoned herself. Her father being sent for, she survived just long enough to request that she might be buried in the same grave as ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... conviction, even were she bodily, in unclouded radiance, to stand before them. I hope I may always have courage sufficient to support my honest convictions, but I must confess the effort has become a painful one, and I instinctively fly all wrangling as I ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... upon this daydream. He had a telegram in his hand, and Thorpe, rousing himself with an effort, took the liver-coloured envelope, and looked blankly at it. Some weird apprehension seized upon him, as if he belonged to the peasant class which instinctively yokes telegrams and calamities together. He deferred to this feeling enough to nod dismissal to the clerk, and then, when he was again alone, slowly opened the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... pious German nobleman, converted by looking at a picture. His faults and his virtues stood out in glaring relief. His very appearance told the dual tale. As he strolled the streets of Berlin or London, the wayfarers instinctively moved to let him pass, and all men admired his noble bearing, his lofty brow, his fiery dark blue eye, and his firm set lips; and yet, on the other hand, they could not fail to notice that he was untidy in his dress, that he strode on, gazing at the stars, and that often, in his absent-mindedness, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... with a serious, troubled face, and patted his hand. He felt instinctively the shadow that was on her heart, and his face may have winced. She saw or knew without seeing, the tremor in ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... kitchen. When he had spoken to Janet of the associations of the old place with his mother's countenance, she had answered with a quotation from some poet, given in a tone of empty sentimentality. He instinctively shrank from mentioning the subject to her again; but to Huldah it was so easy to talk of his mother's gentleness and sweetness. Huldah was not unlike her in these respects, and then she gave him the sort of sympathy that finds its utterance ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... in their chairs, and their sombrely-clad figures were once more merged in the gloom of the narrow box. Instinctively, since the name of the Public Prosecutor had been mentioned between them, they had allowed their voices to ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... one of those first genial days of spring which seem to affect the animal not less than the vegetable creation. At such times even I, sedentary as I am, feel a craving for the open air and sunshine, and creep out as instinctively as snails after a shower. Such seasons, which have an exhilarating effect upon youth, produce a soothing one when we are advanced in life. The root of an ash tree, on the bank which bends round the little bay, had been half bared by the waters during ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various

... the palm-tree beneath which she had often sat, and there the rock, under whose shadow grew white lilies, where she had rested with Nehushta when the Roman captain brought her the letter and the gifts from Marcus. Instinctively Miriam put her hand to her neck. About it still hung the collar of pearls, and on the pearls the ring which the slave-woman had found in her hair and tied there for safety. She took off the ring and placed it back upon her finger. Then she walked to the ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... hesitate; then I would hear him stop beside the window, where I knew the ice bowl and the decanter were placed upon a table which had stood beside the head of his bed so burdened since my early childhood. I had always dreaded his moroseness and instinctively felt the cause of it. I had never really loved him until just the last few days, and now I felt my love rise in a tide that threatened ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... had run through certain streets like a madman, Jonathan's course led him instinctively to his noble patron, to whom he lamented all his unheard-of misery in outbreaks of the most violent passion. It need hardly be added, it is so self-evident a thing, that the young love-smitten advocate was, according to his own desperate assertions, the first and ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... eyes, all clouded with weeping, had a singularly child-like expression as she thus passed on her letter for inspection. And—as when she had stretched out her legs for Mrs. Talcott to put on her stockings—one saw beyond the instinctively confiding gesture a long series of scenes reaching back to childhood, scenes where, in crises, her own craft and violence and unscrupulous resource having undone her, she had fallen back in fundamental dependence on the one stable and ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... Instinctively he dodged, and the mass of wood and steel crashed against the door of the chamber, bursting it open and causing the two ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... or refused to swear, he was alike unable to give a rational explanation of his conduct. If he swore, he could vindicate his swearing only by laying down propositions against which every honest heart instinctively revolts, only by proclaiming that Christ had commanded the Church to desert the righteous cause as soon as that cause ceased to prosper, and to strengthen the hands of successful villany against afflicted virtue. And yet, strong as were the objections to this doctrine, the objections to the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... in walking by her side. She now began to regret that she had not invited Jacob to accompany her, for she was very sure that no one would have ventured to have spoken to her thus had he been her attendant. She instinctively looked round in the hopes that he might still be following, but she could not see him. She therefore went on, trusting that her silence would induce the impertinent stranger to allow ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... in forms of literary art,—in poetry and story,—their conceptions of the world around them. According to many philologists, poetry was the original form of human speech. Be that as it may, whatever flows into the mind, from the spectacle of nature and of mankind, that influx the mind tends instinctively to reproduce, in a shape accordant with its peculiar bias and genius. And those minds in which imagination is predominant, impart to their reproductions a balance and beauty which stamp them as art. Art—and literary art especially—is ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... the Commendatore, briefly. "You must have your joke." And his hand instinctively made for his moustaches. "Well, I am sorry. I can never hope to ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... nowadays that capital fattens on labour, naturally, instinctively, without much sense of wrong-doing, and has so fattened since the days when Laban tried to overreach Jacob. What we are not so often told is that the poor man not less instinctively looks upon the gen'leman as legitimate sport. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... mind rose a discomforting thought of an eventual "squaring things" with Lorry, but he pushed it aside. Future difficulties had no place in the present and its desperate urgencies. The thought of Pancha also intruded, and on that he hung, for a moment, his face evil with a thwarted rage, his hands instinctively bent into talons. Had he dared he would like to have gone to her and—but he pushed that aside too and went back to ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... Instinctively Claire busied herself over the tea-tray. She had a feeling that Cecil would rather be unobserved; she was also afraid that her own expression might betray ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... from the view of Violet, but the sounds were eloquent to him, since they were those made by members of his own general species when threatening atrocities. The accent may have been foreign, but Violet caught perfectly the sense of what was being said, and instinctively he muttered reciprocal ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... You feel instinctively that he is going to be all Mixed Up with that Girl in the Box before Chapter XII. is reached; but who can take any real Interest in the Love Affairs of a ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade

... upending it. A bowl of soup came crashing down, the heavy bowl splintering, the hot contents scalding him. He stood up and heard the girl scream. Instinctively, he grasped two legs of the heavy chair and hefted it. Then he sprinted back ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder

... tranquil, was instinctively conscious that her calm was nothing but the lull which goes before a storm. She was too rich and too happy to escape the envy of other nations. As yet the plains of Pisa had not been reduced to marsh-lands by the combined negligence ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was going east towards Rhadames, and had come too far north. The camels' humps, shrunken and shaking, bespoke the sufferings of the troop. Behind came a little gray ass, a pitiful burrow, interfering at every step, and lightened of its pack because the merchants knew that it was going to die. Instinctively, with its last strength, it followed, knowing that when it could stagger no longer, the end would come and the flutter of the bald vultures' wings. I love animals, which I have solid reasons for preferring to men. But never should I have thought ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... he was "a weigher of scruples and values in a time of transition, a representative of old-school politics on the threshold of triumphant democracy. The people did not understand him, but they felt instinctively that he was not one of themselves; and, therefore, they cast him out." Nobody had ever called him "Old Hickory" or any other name indicative ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... experiments as these above alluded to, the facts elucidated are worth recording, and tend to prove the peculiar herbivorous nature of this genus, which, in common with other strictly herbivorous animals, instinctively knows what to choose and what to avoid, and can partake, without danger, of some of the most virulent vegetable poisons. It is possible that in the forests they eat the fruit of the Strychnos nux-vomica, which is also the favourite food of the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... advantage, they acquire dominion over their weaker neighbors, they monopolize opportunities for themselves, their friends and their children. Only by keeping all men in strict subjection to something outside of themselves can all be kept in comparative equality. This fact was instinctively apprehended by one school of French thinkers. We shall see that the followers of Rousseau, while posing as champions of Liberty, were in fact the founders of a system which is the very antithesis of individual freedom.[Footnote: It is perhaps needless to remark that I have touched here ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... like myself, was about twenty yards from the edge. I instinctively grasped my useless stiletto. How I longed for the assistance which a little earlier I had so much despised! Reaching the block or boulder upon which I had been sitting, he clasped his arms around from behind; his hands closed upon the empty ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... through his prophets (1 Kings 22:21-23); that he sent Isaiah with the command: "Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes" (Isa. 6:10); that he made the covenant people to err from his ways, and hardened their heart from his fear (Isa. 63:17), we instinctively interpret these and other like passages in harmony with the fundamental principle announced by the apostle: "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... all this now; she had a trying task to go through. Sing!—then, and there! And what should she sing? All that class of hymns that bore directly on the subject of their sorrow must be left on one side; she hardly dared think of them. Instinctively she took up another class, that without baring the wound would lay the balm close to it. A few minutes of deep stillness were in the dark room; then very low, and in tones that trembled a little, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... barely reached to her ankles, and displayed a neat pair of golfing shoes, but the skirt was so exceedingly well hung and the fit of the Norfolk coat that matched it so good that Margaret, unversed though she was in such matters, instinctively recognised that Maud's clothes not only became her very well, but had been made by a first-class tailor. Her own simply made coat and skirt of blue serge ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... road the sound of the carriages bearing away Savinien, Herzog and his daughter, resounded in the calm starry night. In the villa everything was quiet. Pierre breathed with delight; he instinctively turned his eyes toward the brilliant sky, and in the far-off firmament, the star which he appropriated to himself long ago, and which he had so desperately looked for when he was unhappy, suddenly appeared bright and twinkling. He sighed ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... yet got to the crucifixion, I have read it over so many times. I should love dearly to read it aloud to my friends, some of whom are seriously inclined; it is so good, and I am sure that they have never heard it, it fits their case exactly, and we should enjoy it so much together,—but I instinctively despair of getting their ears. They soon show, by signs not to be mistaken, that it is inexpressibly wearisome to them. I do not mean to imply that I am any better than my neighbors; for, alas! I know that I am only as good, though I love better ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... in revolt against the arbitrary claims of the cattle king, he had become so hardened to this injustice everywhere that he no longer wasted his time or strength in vain railings against it. Instinctively he felt that this was to be a struggle of strength against cunning, for the very thought of physical resistance to thirty fighting cowboys by half a dozen herders ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... came across an old well; the bucket was drawn up and its chain wet; it was the first sign of habitation I had come across. As my hand touched the windlass, I instinctively gave it a turn; it creaked dismally and a dog barked savagely at the sound from somewhere up the hillside; then the sharp, snappy yelping of other ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... not answer, and was afterward thankful that perhaps fate intervened to save me, for I almost felt that Grace would have yielded to pressure then. There were footsteps in the forest, and, as instinctively we drew back behind a fir, Colonel Carrington walked savagely down an open glade. He passed close to us, and, believing himself alone in that solitude, had thrown off the mask. His face was drawn and haggard, his hands were clenched, and for once I read fear of something in his eyes; ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... and sorrow crossed his face as he spoke, that Estelle instinctively turned away her eyes. She began taking up handfuls of sand to let it ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... voice that said, "I am his wife," rang through his mind and suggested doubts. Under the miserable story that he had instinctively imaged, there probably ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... arranged, and her silky auburn locks curl so prettily, in tiny ringlets, over her shoulders; and then her round fair face looks so sweetly, glows with such innocent curiosity, as her soft blue eyes, deep with sparkling vivacity, wander over the strange scene. She instinctively feels that she is the special object of some important event. Laying her little hand gently upon the arm of an old slave that sits by her side, she casts shy glances at those admirers who stand round her and view her as a marketable ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... or grinding Spaniards. They were, one and all, consciously and unconsciously, dragged to Italy by the irresistible instinct that Italy possessed that which they required; by the greed of intellectual gain. That which they thus instinctively knew that Italy possessed, that which they must obtain, was a mode of thought, a habit of form; philosophy, art, civilization: all the materials for intellectual manipulation. For, in the sixteenth ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... in due course. Redgrave took off his cap and bowed to the Captain on the bridge. Zaidie nodded and fluttered her handkerchief in reply to hundreds of others that were waving on the decks. Mrs. Van Stuyler woke up in wonder and waved hers instinctively, half longing to change crafts. In fact, if it hadn't been for her absolute devotion to the proprieties she would have obeyed her first impulse and asked Lord Redgrave to put ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... some toward the camp, vainly hoping to find refuge there, and others in various other quarters, wherever they saw the readiest hope of escape from their merciless pursuers. Pompey himself fled instinctively toward the camp. As he passed the guards at the gate where he entered, he commanded them, in his agitation and terror, to defend the gate against the coming enemy, saying that he was going to the other gates to attend to the defenses there. He then hurried on, but a full sense of the helplessness ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott

... west side of the Rio del Norte. Indeed, he anticipated no danger to himself, as he was well aware, that the safest time to travel through any section of an Indian country, is just after the savages have been guilty of some highhanded act. They are then, instinctively, as some may say, but, as the fact appears to us, by use of their reasoning powers, well aware that active measures will be set on foot to repay them for ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... Instinctively, with a man's natural reticence, I began to mumble a half-articulate disclaimer; and then I stopped. After all, why should I not confide in him? He was a good man and a wise man, full of human sympathy, as I knew, though so cryptic ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... she said to Vance. She walked to the door, and instinctively the two men, who were ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis

... sexes in holy Matrimony is a law of nature, finding sanction in both morals and legislation. Even some of the lower animals unite in this union for life and instinctively observe the law of conjugal fidelity with a consistency which might put to blush other animals more highly endowed. It seems important to discuss this subject and understand our social evils, as well as the intense passional desires of the ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... who waited upon them, and seemed loth to depart. Silently, but with a growing anxiety, Crowther watched him. There was certainly nothing forced about his gaiety. It was wildly, recklessly spontaneous; but there was about it a fevered quality that set Crowther almost instinctively on his guard. He did not know, and he had no means of gauging, exactly how deeply the iron had pierced. But that some sort of wound had been inflicted he could not doubt. It might be merely a superficial one, but ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... him adoration never hindered accuracy of portraiture. "I will not make my tiger a cat to please anybody," was his answer to well-meaning entreaties of Hannah More to soften his accounts of Johnson's asperities. He saw instinctively that a man who is worth anything loses far more than he gains by such posthumous flattery. The whole picture is toned down, and the lights are depressed as well as the shadows. The truth is that it is unscientific to consider a ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... Rue Vanneau, one of those incidents occurred which, in such women as Madame Marneffe, are a stimulus to vice by compelling them to exert their energy and every resource of depravity. One fact, at any rate, must however be acknowledged: life in Paris is too full for vicious persons to do wrong instinctively and unprovoked; vice is only a weapon of defence ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... was not, as one may say, a specialty. The main idea with him has been the variety, the material bravery and positively social charm of the scene, which finds expression, with irrepressible generosity, in the accessories of the background. Instinctively he imagines an opulent garden—imagines it with a good faith which quite tides him over the reflection that Christ and his disciples were poor men and unused to sit at meat in palaces. Great full-fruited orange-trees peep over the wall before which the table is ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... finished speaking, a distinguished-looking officer, accompanied by several others, appeared on deck, and I knew instinctively that we were in the presence of the famous Admiral Cochrane, whose marvellous exploits had gained for him the ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... been met in no other way. But most important of all was the fact that he personified a great sentiment, which ennobled and uplifted his people, and made them capable of the patriotism which fought the war and saved the Union. He carried his people with him, because he knew instinctively, how they felt and what they wanted. He embodied, in his own person, all their highest ideals, and he never erred in ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... assistance of a musical friend it was found that the old Hawaiian tuned his strings with approximate correctness to the tonic, the third and the fifth. We may surmise that this self-trained musician had instinctively followed the principle or rule proposed by Aristoxenus, who directed a singer to sing his most convenient note, and then, taking this as a starting point, to tune the remainder of his strings—the Greek kithara, no doubt—in the usual manner ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... the service was Spanish, but the character of it was English; the Spanish waiters spoke English, and they looked English in dress and manner; superficially the chambermaid was as English as one could have found her in the United Kingdom, but at heart you could see she was as absolutely and instinctively a Spanish camerera as any in a hotel of Madrid or Seville. In the atmosphere of insularity the few Spanish guests were scarcely distinguishable from Anglo-Saxons, though a group of magnificent girls at a middle table, quelled by the duenna-like correctness of their mother, looked with ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... according to the degree of fineness or coarseness from coarse cotton to fine silk, are felt with movements correspondingly decisive or delicate. The child whose hand is already practised finds the greatest pleasure in feeling the stuffs, and, almost instinctively, in order to enhance his appreciation of the tactile sensation he closes his eyes. Then, to spare himself the exertion, he blindfolds himself with a clean handkerchief, and as he feels the stuffs, he arranges the similar pieces in ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori

... in safety, and to outfly their rivals. The French school centralized the control in a single lever with a universal joint attachment at the lower end. The movements of this lever in any direction produced the effects that would instinctively be expected; a backward or forward movement turned the machine upwards or downwards, a sideways movement raised one wing or the other so as to bank the machine or to bring it to a level position again. The vertical rudder was controlled either by a wheel attached to this central lever, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... a middle-aged man, one of those medical men in whose judgment one instinctively relies. From the brief description of the "hemorrhage" which the Clutching Hand had cleverly made over the wire, he knew that a life was at stake. Quickly he dressed and went out to his garage, back of the house to get his ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... little carved squares and oblongs, having no relation to anything that, in an ordinary way, is carved. To carve the humblest real thing, were it but a real toy for a child, would be better than the production of these panels, or of the artificial trivialities which our minds instinctively associate with bazaars. ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... of all that is appalling at sea, the danger each one instinctively dreads, but no one mentions. One ran one way and one another. The doctor (a real canny Scot, who sings "My Nannie's awa'" like Wilson) was over the rail and down the hold in a moment. I ran to Captain Meyer's ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... May 30, between three and four o'clock, we were awakened by the sharp stroke of the engine-bell, a deep grinding sound, and the sudden stopping of the vessel. We knew that we had not arrived at our port of destination, and felt instinctively that something extraordinary had happened. For a moment all was silence; then inquiries arose from all sides, as to what was the matter. The engine seemed to be in a great state of commotion; and the vessel began to writhe with a heavy, laborious ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... been my own mistress for five years, with my own habits, rules, privacies. I had never seen anyone before lunch. And to-morrow, of all days, I should have so much to do and to arrange. Was this man to come like an invader and disturb my morning? So felt the celibate in me, instinctively, thoughtlessly. That deep-seated objection to the intrusion of even the most loved male at certain times is common, I think, to all women. Women are capable of putting love aside, like a rich dress, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... father and son, were silent, patient, and submissive to the will of God, like folk whose wont it is to fall in instinctively with the ways of Nature like cattle. At the one end of the boat stood riches, pride, learning, debauchery, and crime—human society, such as art and thought and education and worldly interests and laws have made it; and at this end there was terror and wailing, innumerable different ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac

... the dog lay whining at his young master's heels. He knew instinctively that there was sport on foot, and could ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... Moriarty, growing pale, and instinctively withdrawing his chair as far as he could from the padre beside ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... there—glad to be alone— and overwhelmed as I was by the consciousness that the memories of my soul had been too strong for me to resist, I was thankful that I had had the courage to express my invincible opposition to one who had, as I seemed instinctively to realise, been guilty of ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... click inside the laboratory—in a place where no one should be. Instinctively he whirled and crouched—and an orange ray streaked over his head with its wicked spit of death. At once his own ray-gun was up and answering to the spot where the other bolt had started, and then he was flat on the floor and ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore

... instinctively he hurled himself forward. As he scrambled over the upturned chairs he heard a sound that struck terror to his soul: it was the unmistakable hiss of tearing linen. The hastily made garments of G. Lung Fat had proved unequal to the strain put upon them. Percival lost his head completely ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice

... Dudley retained his Winchester in his grasp he would have been lost. It would not have been alone the weight of the weapon, but its interference with the free use of his hands. As it was, the latter were untrammeled, and, though his feet missed a firm hold, he instinctively clutched the craggy projections, and, with a supreme effort, drew himself over the margin and beyond all danger of falling back ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... itself to a blind instinct of conflict. It seemed, therefore, as if the old moral precept that men should control their more violent impulses by reflection had been founded upon a mistake. Unreflecting instinct was, after all, the best guide, and nations who acted instinctively towards their neighbours might justify themselves like the Parisian ruffians of ten years ago, ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... such a sympathetic way of getting at people's hearts, that instinctively she understood ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte

... in the flurry of the plunge the third officer forgot for an instant the right upward slant of the palms, and went a great way deeper than he had intended. By the time he rose to the surface the liner had slid by, and for a moment or two he saw nothing; for instinctively he came up facing aft, towards the spot where Mr Markham had fallen, and the long sea running after yesterday's gale threw up a ridge that seemed to take minutes—though in fact it took but a few seconds—to sink and heave up the trough beyond. By-and-by a life-belt swam up into sight; ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... man. Phyllis, I thought, would probably judge my entire character from this exhibition. A man, she would reflect, who could be so feeble and miserable a failure at tennis, could not be good for much in any department of life. She would compare me instinctively with my opponent, and contrast his dash and brilliance with my own inefficiency. Somehow the massacre was beginning to have a bad effect on my character. All my self-respect was ebbing. A little more of this, and I should become crushed,—a mere human jelly. It was my turn to serve. Service is ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... Instinctively Mart took a step forward, but Bob caught his arm and held him back with a muttered word. Before Birch could move, a shadow fell across the deck and old Jerry Smith came padding along in his bare feet, his white hair flying ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney

... overwhelmed, afraid. A piece of her world was breaking off. As long as she could remember anything she had known this woman. She had never received any kindness from her; of late she had been malignant in her hate, but—she wished she was not going. Instinctively she had felt that her presence was some slight protection. Keeping close in the shadow of this creature's frowzy skirts, she had not so feared and dreaded those light eyes of Bough's, and the padding, following ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... which the child draws its subsistence, and on which it pillows its weary head; that smile which throws a sunshine around its existence, and all those acts of kindness administered by the hand of love, draw the child instinctively to the parent's heart, and blend in sweetest union its ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips



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