Instinct

Famous quotes containing the word instinct:

“So I soon made up my mind about the poets too: I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled them to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)

“The years seemed to stretch before her like the land: spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning; the same pulling at the chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)

“Comparing man and woman on the whole, one may say: woman would not possess a genius for ornamentation if she did not also possess an instinct for the secondary role.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)