instinct

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die

Is it a fact - or have I dreamt it - that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence!

Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art. It requires instinct and taste rather than exact measurements.

Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it.

If you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, then your life will be safe, expedient and thin.

The mathematician requires tact and good taste at every step of his work, and he has to learn to trust to his own instinct to distinguish between what is really worthy of his efforts and what is not.

Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five barred gate. A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide, But man we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature; Who, when she loudly cries-Forbear! With obstinacy fixes there; And where the genius least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs.

A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.

So long as a man remains a gregarious and sociable being, he cannot cut himself off from the gratification of the instinct of imparting what he is learning, of propagating through others the ideas and impressions seething in his own brain, without stunting and atrophying his moral nature and drying up the surest sources of his future intellectual replenishment.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey "people." People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. . . . Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest. . . .