Instinct Quotes

Instinct. When the house burns one forgets even lunch. Yes, but one eats it later in the ashes.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The active part of man consists of powerful instincts, some of which are gentle and continuous; others violent and short; some baser, some nobler, and all necessary.

Francis W. Newman

Oh darling, don't be bitter. It's the first instinct of the weak.

Sarah Dessen

Instinct of love toward an object demands a mastery to obtain it, and if a person feels they can't control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it.

Sigmund Freud

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species should always be obeyed at the expense of other instincts, whence do we derive this rule of precedence? To listen to that instinct speaking in its own case and deciding in its own favour would be rather simple minded. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. By the very act of listening to one rather than to others we have already prejudged the case. If we did not bring to the examination of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them. And that knowledge cannot itself be instinctive: the judge cannot be one of the parties judged: or, if he is, the decision is worthless and there is no ground for placing preservation of the species above self-preservation or sexual appetite.

C.S. Lewis

There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.

Joseph Addison

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves.

James Russell Lowell

Instinct is the nose of the mind.

Madame de Girardin

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.

Henry David Thoreau

To see life from the perspective of intuition is to have vision. To see life from the perspective of intuition is to see life from the perspective of wholeness. It is to understand that life is basically one and that we are part of life. While the intellect can only see the details, intuition sees the whole. To see life from the perspective of intuition is like looking at life from the summit of the mountain, whereas seeing life only from the perspective of intellect is like looking at life from the foot of the mountain. Through learning to listen to our intuition, we learn to be in contact with the Whole.

Swami Dhyan Giten

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

You must train your intuition -- you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide.

Ingrid Bergman

The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget.

William Osler

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

Don Marquis, The Almost Perfect

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

George Bernard Shaw

Instinct is untaught ability.

Alexander Bain

As the traveler who has lost his way, throws his reins on his horse's neck, and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Instinct is action taken in pursuance of a purpose, but without conscious perception of what the purpose is.

Van Hartmann

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.

Charles Darwin