Instinct Quotes - page 24

For property is robbery, but then, we are all robbers or would-be robbers together, and have found it essential to organise our thieving, as we have found it necessary to organise our lust and our revenge. Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who tampers with the banks while the flood is flowing. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
Because her instinct has told her, or because she has been reliably informed, the faded virgin knows that the supreme joys are not for her she knows by a process of the intellect but she can feel her deprivation no more than the young mother can feel the hardship of the virgin's lot. View quote
Arnold Bennett
You don't have to preach honesty to men with creative purpose. Let a human being throw the engines of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of his honesty. View quote
Walter Lippmann
None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning. View quote
Peter Ackroyd
Supposing you knew - not by sight or by instinct, but by sheer intellectual knowledge, as I know the truth of a mathematical proposition - that what we call empty space was full, crammed. View quote
John Buchan
As I look back on that time, I think that there were mistakes that I made... I also think that my initial instinct that I was not the best person to put themselves forward as a potential prime minister, well most of my colleagues agreed. View quote
Michael Gove
Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create. View quote
David Byrne
Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love. View quote
Bertrand Russell
By self-interest, Man has become gregarious, but in instinct he has remained to a great extent solitary hence the need of religion and morality to reinforce self-interest. View quote
Bertrand Russell
I have no maternal instinct whatsoever. Motherhood holds no interest for me. View quote
Helen Mirren
Sometimes in the ignorance I feel the meaning Invincible invisible wisdom, And I commune with intuitive instinct With the force that made life be And since it made life be It is greater than life And since it let extinction be It is greater than extinction. I commune with feelings more than prayer. (Sun Ra)
The father guards the nest and fans it with his pectoral fins until the children are able to shift for themselves. Then he eats them. [Footnote: He does this because of his altruistic (parental) instinct. The higher one rises in the vertebrate scale the more altruistic one becomes. The higher vertebrates are just one mass of altruism. ]. View quote
Will Cuppy
I first became a vegetarian when I was nine, in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change - which lasted a couple of weeks - was based on the very simple instinct that it's wrong to kill animals for food. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
Of course, in politics, just as anywhere else in life, it is impossible and it would not be sensible always to say everything bluntly. Yet that does not mean one has to lie. What is needed here are tact, instinct and good taste. View quote
Václav Havel
When a bee stings, she dies. She cannot sting and live. When men sting, their better selves die. Every sting kills a better instinct. Men must not turn bees and kill themselves in stinging others. View quote
Francis Bacon
My game is based on improvisation. Often a forward does not have the time to think too much. You have a second, rarely more, to decide whether to dribble, shoot or pass to the right or left. It is instinct that gives the orders. View quote
Ronaldinho
One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or of a dog that howls at something a man's eyes cannot see, and men who live primitive lives where instinct does the work of reason are fully conscious of many things that we cannot perceive at all. As life becomes more orderly, more deliberate, the supernatural world sinks farther away. View quote
William Butler Yeats
I write from instinct, from inexplicable sparkle. I don't know why I'm writing what I'm writing. Usually, I sit and I let my hands wander on my guitar. And I sing anything. I play anything. And I wait till I come across a pleasing accident. Then I start to develop it. View quote
Paul Simon
Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred. View quote
Virginia Woolf
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. View quote
Jonathan Swift
Explaining belief has alwayas been difficult. How do you explain a love and a logic at the heart of the universe when the world is so out of whack? Explaining faith is impossible - vision over visibility - instinct over intellect - a songwriter plays a chore with the faith that he will hear the next one in his head. (Edward de Bono)
I get highs, to be totally honest, in second-hand shops. My hunting instinct, I expect, really kicks in. View quote
Björk
Feminists bore me to death. I follow my instinct and if that supports young girls in any way, great. But I'd rather they saw it more as a lesson about following their own instincts rather than imitating somebody. View quote
Björk
My life isn't theories and formulas. It's part instinct, part common sense. Logic is as good a word as any, and I've absorbed what logic I have from everything and everyone ... from my mother, from training as a ballet dancer, from magazine, from the laws of life and health and nature. View quote
Audrey Hepburn
Nothing whatever is to be gained by driving the timorous and weak by lies or compulsion into pain which they will resent and responsibility which they will evade. Everything is to be gained by training a woman in knowledge, courage, and physical strength, and leaving it then to her own instinct and her mind to tell her that to create new human beings is worth the discomfort and the suffering she must necessarily undergo. Those in whom the courage to create survives when choice is free and all the facts are known are those best fitted to bring children into the world, and breed in them eagerness and intrepidity. The others will only pass on fear and distaste for life from which individuals and the community suffer far too much already. View quote
Dora Russell