Instinct Quotes - Page 24

• It [the scene] can be something given to you and you go, "Ah this is a good idea, I can work with this." Sometimes it cuts right across your instinct and that's when I might resist. Even if the director might be insistent, I think it's very important to say, "Look, I'm not feeling this. I'll try to make it work but I got to let you know."

  Ralph Fiennes

  Cutting, Thinking, Ideas

  "Ralph Fiennes Talks the Grand Budapest Hotel, Collaborating With Wes Anderson, if He Will Direct More Shakespeare, and More in Berlin". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. February 10, 2014.

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• Sometimes with a comedy it's just having the instinct of how real you play it and what level you want it.

  Robin Williams

  Real, Play, Levels

  Source: www.today.com

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• Thousands of Americans, Englishmen and Frenchmen have visited Germany during the months after the national revolution and were able to testify as eye-witnesses that there is no country in the world where law and order are better maintained than in present-day Germany.  That there is no country in the world where person and property are held in better respect than in our own, but that there is perhaps also no country in the word where a more rigorous fight is put up against those who believe that they are free to let loose their lower instincts to the detriment of their fellow-beings.

  Adolf Hitler

  Country, Believe, Eye

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• I think the key to success is vision that adjusts on the way, but doesn’t at all falter. It’s about not compromising and following your gut to a certain degree, based on knowledge, instinct, etc. And not listening to the naysayers.... You develop strength through adversity. You have to keep moving towards your goal through huge obstacles.

  Millard Drexler

  Moving, Adversity, Thinking

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• Dont listen to anybody. Nobody knows the magic bullet. If they did, theyd sell it and make a fortune. Follow your gut. Follow your instincts. Every once in a while, take a chance.

  Michael Cudlitz

  Magic, Bullets, Chance

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• The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.

  William James

  Reflection, Pope, Left

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.12, 谷月社

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• Behaviorism proposes to study human behavior according to the methods developed by animal and infant psychology. It seeks to investigate reflexes and instincts, automatisms and unconscious reactions. But it has told us nothing about the reflexes that have built cathedrals, railroads, and fortresses, the instincts that have produced philosophies, poems, and legal systems, the automatisms that have resulted in the growth and decline of empires, the unconscious reactions that are splitting atoms.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Philosophy, Animal, Psychology

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• Religions are not proved, are not demonstrated, are not established, are not overthrown by logic! They are of all the mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most inexplicable; they are of instinct and not of reason.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Mind, Religion, Logic

  Alphonse de Lamartine (1850). “Travels in the East: Including a Journey in the Holy Land”, p.171

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• The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Depth, Blind

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Gage (1980). “Goethe on Art”, p.11, Univ of California Press

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• My soul was always so full of aspirations, that a God was a necessity to me. I was like a bird with an instinct of migration upon me, and a country to migrate to was as essential as it is to the bird

  Hannah Whitall Smith

  Country, Bird, Soul

  Hannah Whitall Smith (1949). “A religious rebel: the letters of "H. W. S." (Mrs. Pearsall Smith)”

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• Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body; which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Passion, Men, Two

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• Music is not a science any more than poetry is. It is a sublime instinct, like genius of all kinds.

  Ouida

  Music, Sublime, Genius

  Ouida (2016). “Wisdom, Wit and Pathos of Ouida”, p.319, Ouida

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• A composition which dazzles at first sight by gaudy epithets, or brilliant turns or expression, or glittering trains of imagery, may fade gradually from the mind, leaving no enduring impression; but words which flow fresh and warm from a full heart, and which are instinct with the life and breath of human feeling, pass into household memories, and partake of the immortality of the affections from which they spring.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Memories, Spring, Heart

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Essays and Reviews”, p.40

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• I have observed, on board a steamer, how men and women easily give way to their instinct for flirtation, because water has the power of washing away our sense of responsibility, and those who on land resemble the oak in their firmness behave like floating seaweed when on the sea.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Responsibility, Men, Sea

  Rabindranath Tagore (2015). “Letters to a Friend”, p.175, Routledge

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• Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life; cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate interests and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understanding; cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Strong, Men, Perfection

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• Passions are no more forgiving than human laws and they reason more justly. Are they not based on a conscience of their own, infallible as an instinct?

  Honore de Balzac

  Passion, Law, Forgiving

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• By dint of making sacrifices, a man grows interested in the person who exacts them. Great ladies, like courtesans, know this truth by instinct.

  Honore de Balzac

  Sacrifice, Men, Grows

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• [Religion is a] primitive insurance against disaster. ... Originally religion was merely a function of the self-preservative instinct. Offer sacrifices to the gods and save your crops. And even Christianity, after all, insures heavily against the flaws in this life by belief in another.

  Rose Macaulay

  Sacrifice, Self, Belief

  Rose Macaulay (2011). “Told by an Idiot”, p.39, A&C Black

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• Justice has nothing to do with expediency. Justice has nothing to do with any temporary standard whatever. It is rooted and grounded in the fundamental instincts of humanity.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Justice, Humanity, Fundamentals

  Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1981). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• A bird sings, a child prattles, but it is the same hymn; hymn indistinct, inarticulate, but full of profound meaning.

  Victor Hugo

  Children, Hymns, Profound

  Victor Hugo, Frank Lee Benedict (1874). “Ninety-three”, p.238, Dawson Bros.

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• Intelligence in the service of poor instinct is really dangerous.

  Gloria Steinem

  Intelligence, Poor, Dangerous

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• The all importance of clothes has sprung up in the intellect of the dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with clothes, a poet of clothes.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Sprung Up, Clothes, Effort

  Thomas Carlyle (1871). “The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.166

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• The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration.

  Leigh Hunt

  Running, Laughter, Drama

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• There must be some great truth underlying the instinct for worship.

  Bill Vaughan

  Worship

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• There is convincing evidence that the search for solitude is not a luxury but a biological need. Just as humans posses a herding instinct that keeps us close to others most of the time, we also have a conflicting drive to seek out solitude. If the distance between ourselves and others becomes too great, we experience isolation and alienation, yet if the proximity to others becomes too close, we feel smothered and trapped.

  Bill Vaughan

  Distance, Convincing Evidence, Luxury

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