Definition of Instinct

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Instinct

Urged or stimulated from within; naturally moved or impelled; imbued; animated; alive; quick; as, birds instinct with life.

Natural inward impulse; unconscious, involuntary, or unreasoning prompting to any mode of action, whether bodily, or mental, without a distinct apprehension of the end or object to be accomplished.

Specif., the natural, unreasoning, impulse by which an animal is guided to the performance of any action, without of improvement in the method.

A natural aptitude or knack; a predilection; as, an instinct for order; to be modest by instinct.

To impress, as an animating power, or instinct.

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Instinct Quotations

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.
C. S. Lewis

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets 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

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.
Pablo Picasso

I don't like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It's just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.
Walt Disney

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love isn't an emotion or an instinct - it's an art.
Mae West

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.
Anais Nin

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.
Sigmund Freud

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.
Blaise Pascal

There is no instinct like that of the heart.
Lord Byron

Instinct Translations

instinct in Dutch is instinct, aandrift
instinct in Finnish is vaisto
instinct in French is instinct
instinct in German is Instinkt
instinct in Norwegian is instinkt
instinct in Portuguese is instinto

Quotes