Instinct Love Quotes & Sayings

Every woman is beautiful. Every woman is amazing because every woman's heart is filled with the motherly instinct of unconditional love. — Debasish Mridha

He didn't see in himself what I saw - a generous soul who wanted so much to belong to something greater than himself. He didn't recognize what a miracle he was. When he didn't know what to do in a given situation, he let instinct and his heart take over. Despite all he'd been through, he had such an amazing capacity to feel and to love. He'd saved me, in so many ways. I was going to do whatever needed to be done to save him, too. — Sylvia Day

I think that perhaps we always fall in love the very first instant we see the man of our dreams, even though, at the time, reason may be telling us otherwise, and we may fight against that instinct, hoping against hope that we won't win, until there comes a point when we allow ourselves to be vanquished by our feelings. — Paulo Coelho

I think people have an instinct for a family. You look until you find a mother, a father, a sister, a brother. They don't have to be blood relatives. They just have to love you. And when you find them, you don't have to look anymore. — Nancy Farmer

It was the uniform of a time and place, of a nearly extinct species - the belligerent middle-American redneck who had fought in Korea, come back with his faith unshaken, and then watched the 1960s unfold the way he might watch his house burn down. There had never been any Summer of Love for Arthur Schuler. He had no interest in Civil Rights, hippies or liberals - or Democrats for that matter. I heard him say once that it might have worked out very well if we had indeed brought all the planes back from Vietnam, just in time to napalm the Woodstock festival. But the man had lived. He had been an orphan of the Great Depression and seen the country and the world. He had made his way, been a barroom fighter and - he hinted - a womanizer at some distant point in the twentieth century, and had come away with an instinct for life, for the things that people do and their base and predictable motivations. We — Matthew Louis

Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone finality They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love. — Philip Larkin

At times, reality is love's great challenge. When our old stories and dreams are shattered, our first instinct may be to resist, deny, or cling to the way things were. But if we loosen our grip, often what fills the space is a tender forgiveness and the potential for a new and different kind of love. — Sharon Salzberg

Love between a man and a woman is founded on the mating instinct and is not free from desire and self-seeking. But to have a friend and to be true under any and all trials is the mark of a man! — Charles Eastman

And I think because of the passion of every English player and every English supporter, and every English journalist for the game, most of the game is played with passion, love for football and instinct, but in football you also have to think. — Jose Mourinho

How could they say that they truly loved each other? They had simply grown up together, been children together, and the proximity of it, the closeness of it, had produced in them love s illusion. And yet
on the other hand
what was love if it wasn't this instinct she felt ... — David Guterson

Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love. — Theodore Roethke

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

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

This was what I came to found. The conquest of loneliness was the missing link that was one day going to make a decent novelist out of me. If you are out here and cannot close off the loves and hates of all that back there in the real world the memories will overtake you and swamp you and wilt your tenacity. Tenacity stamina ... close off to everything and everyone but your writing. That s the bloody price. I don t know maybe it's some kind of ultimate selfishness. Maybe it's part of the killer instinct. Unless you can stash away and bury thoughts of your greatest love you cannot sustain the kind of concentration that breaks most men trying to write a book over a three or four year period. — Leon Uris

What I appear, a sick and poor man, is not the worst of me. I am in a chaos of principles
groping in the dark
acting by instinct and not after example. Eight or nine years ago when I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. — Thomas Hardy

I didn't even think, just went with instinct. Opening my arms, I felt the tiny life placed there. Wrapping him close and tight to my chest, I felt my heart swelling with love. So small, so delicate. Using the tip of my finger, I traced his face, his little lips, his chin and cheeks, his eyes. "You're right, Tea, he is beautiful."

"He has your eyes," she whispered. "We still need to name him."

"Christian Simon Doyle. After your dad and your idiot friend."

Her voice sounded raw when she spoke again. "That's perfect."

"You're perfect. Thank you, Tea, thank you for my son, for our life, thank you for not giving up on me. — L.A. Fiore

Love sees ten million fathoms down, till dazzled by the floor of pearls. The eye is Love's own magic glass, where all things that are not of earth, glide in supernatural light. There are not so many fishes in the sea, as there are sweet images in lovers' eyes. In those miraculous translucencies swim the strange eye-fish with wings, that sometimes leap out, instinct with joy; moist fish-wings wet the lover's cheek. Love's eyes are holy things; therein the mysteries of life are lodged; looking in each other's eyes, lovers see the ultimate secret of the worlds; and with thrills eternally untranslatable, feel that Love is god of all. Man or woman who has never loved, nor once looked deep down into their own lover's eyes, they know not the sweetest and the loftiest religion of this earth. Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies. — Herman Melville

We must keep our heart open in the very moment our instinct tells us to shut it down. When we transcend this critical point, we are finally and truly able to deepen our love and strengthen our bond. — Kate McGahan

Oxytocin is an amino acid peptide. A hormone. They call it the love chemical. "So?" Kelsey gave him a dead-eyed stare. "So when you're further along in your pregnancy, more oxytocin receptors will be created in your uterine muscles. When the baby's big enough, your oxytocin level will rise, triggering labor, and will help your muscles contract so you can give birth." "Gross," said Cory. "No," Jack said. "Miraculous. Without the oxytocin, your muscles wouldn't be strong enough to push that baby out. But because of that chemical, you are. You'll be superhero strong." He smiled right into Kelsey's eyes. "Then, when you see your baby, that rush of oxytocin will help you bond. That's why they call it the love drug. And if you breast-feed, more oxytocin gets released, strengthening that bond. The maternal instinct is the strongest instinct in the world. Chemistry is definitely part of that. — Kristan Higgins

For fairness and loyalty, however important to the head, were issues that could seldom be squared in the human heart, at the deepest depths of which lay the mystery of affection, of love, which you either felt or you didn't, pure as instinct, which seized you, not the other way around, making a mockery of words like "should" and "ought". The human heart, where compromise could not be struck, not ever. Where transgressions exacted a terrible price. Where tangled black limbs fell. Where the boom got lowered. — Richard Russo

The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure, it's a little like making love, the physical act of love. — Francis Bacon

My first instinct was to come rushing to you. To scream in your face, to shake you out of it... anything to get you to come back to me. But I knew that you needed to take the time on your own. We all have a different journey. — EXO Books

[My choice about scripts] is just a question of what I fall in love with. You have to use some kind of instinct meter about it. I think I'm getting closer to my instincts now. I don't think there needs to be a plan. I think there needs to be love. I think you need to love what you're doing and then the rest is anybody's guess. — Mira Sorvino

That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword - the tenets and principles of which are instinct with incentives to slaughter and which in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men - stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism. The love of plunder, always a characteristic of hill tribes, is fostered by the spectacle of opulence and luxury which, to their eyes, the cities and plains of the south display. A code of honour not less punctilious than that of old Spain is supported by vendettas as implacable as those of Corsica. — Winston S. Churchill

Faith gives us strength.
Grace gives us power.
Hope gives us anchor. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It's the moment when something happens not just deep among the trees but also in the dark interior of the human heart, for the heart, too, has its night and its wild surges, as strong an instinct for the hunt as a wolf or a stag. The human night is filled with the crouching forms of dreams, desires, vanities, self-interest, mad love, envy, and the thirst for revenge, as the desert night conceals the puma, the hawk and the jackal. — Sandor Marai

Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love but to be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct. — Gary Chapman

A process of self-deception to satisfy and summarily persuade yourself of righteousness. What one among us has any excuse but self-love? We do not create or confess a morality that is convenient, that lends itself to growth, and remains simple, that allows transgression without excuse or punishment. It would be wise and commonsense to do so, whatever the state of affairs in your mind. Nature eventually denies that which it affirms: Through permanent association with the same moral code we help desire to transgress. Desire of those things denied, the more you restrict the more you sin, but desire equally desires preservation of moral instinct, so desire is its own conflict (and weakly enough). Have no fear, the Bull of earth has long had nothing to do with your unclean conscience, your stagnant ideas of morality. The microbe alone would seem without fear! — Austin Osman Spare

Horror, terror, fear, panic: these are the emotions which drive wedges between us, split us off from the crowd, and make us alone. It is paradoxical that feelings and emotions we associate with the "mob instinct" should do this, but crowds are lonely places to be, we're told, a fellowship with no love in it. The melodies of the horror tale are simple and repetitive, and they are melodies of disestablishment and disintegration . . . but another paradox is that the ritual outletting of these emotions seems to bring things back to a more stable and constructive state again. — Stephen King

I am the love, the pain, the intensity
I am the remnants of a banished plea;
I am the trivialized doors of a jubilant home
I am the shadows of an abandoned dome;
I am the instinct, the bizarre sound
I am the fate of a trampled mound;
I am the words half-heard when half-said
I am the memories of a longing thread;
I am the anarchist in disdain,
I am the bewilderment of an orphan pain;
I am your hand, I am the bar
I am the bellicosity of our resilient scar;
I am the love, the pain, the intensity
I am the predicament of the silent sea. — Ashfaq Saraf

The marriage tie becomes possessed of a history and takes to itself traditions. This history and these traditions form a great fund, to which changing conditions and growing imagination constantly add. And the traditions, more especially, bear heavily upon the individual, overmastering his natural expression of the love instinct and forcing him to an artificial expression of that love instinct. He loves, not as his savage forbears loved, but as his group loves. — Jack London

You can love her with everything you have and she still wont belong to you. She will run wild with you, beside you with everystep but let me tell you something about women who run with wolves, their fierce hearts dont settle between walls and their instinct is stronger than upbringing. Love her wild or leave her there. — Nikki Rowe

Some enemies are part and parcel of our lives, we cannot destroy them without risking our own survival — Bangambiki Habyarimana

It was simply that I knew, or had known, precisely why he did not love all his children equally. Differentiation, variation, appreciation of the unique: this was part of what he was. His children were not the same, so his feelings toward each were not the same. He loved us all, but differently. And because he did this, because he did not pretend that love was fair or equal, mortals could mate for an afternoon or for the rest of their lives. Mothers could tell their twins or triplets apart. Children could have crushes and outgrow them; elders could remain devoted to their spouses long after beauty had gone. The mortal heart was fickle. Naha made it so. And because of this, they were free to love as they wished, and not solely by the dictates of instinct or power or tradition. — N.K. Jemisin

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

The 'look of love' not only communicates our feeling of love for someone but also reflects our instinct to do whatever it takes to make that person happy. — Willard F. Harley

Money is just one of the forces that blind us to information and issues which we could pay attention to - but don't. It exacerbates and often rewards all the other drivers of willful blindness; our preference for the familiar, our love for individuals and for big ideas, a love of busyness and our dislike of conflict and change, the human instinct to obey and conform and our skill at displacing and diffusing responsibility. All of these operate and collaborate with varying intensities at different moments in our lives. The common denominator is that they all make us protect our sense of self-worth, reducing dissonance and conferring a sense of security, however illusory. In some ways, they all act like money; making us feel good at first, with consequences we don't see. We wouldn't be so blind if our blindness didn't deliver rewards; the benefit of comfort and ease. — Margaret Heffernan

By the law of Christ, every man is bound to love his neighbour as himself; but every servant is a neighbour of every civil lord; therefore every civil lord must love any of his servants as himself; but by natural instinct, every lord abhors slavery; therefore, by the law of charity, he is bound not to impose slavery on any brother in Christ. — John Wycliffe

Nature [has] implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses. — Thomas Jefferson

In art as in love, instinct is enough. — Anatole France

Maybe we should go by tube', he said.
A taxi'll come', she said. 'I'm in no hurry'.
She remembered something a woman in Paris had told her once. A woman in her forties, much married, elegant, a little world-weary. There is nothing easier in this world, this woman had claimed, than getting a man to kiss you. Oh really? Eva had said, so how do you do that? Just stand close to a man, the woman has said, very close, as close as you can without touching - he will kiss you in one minute or two. It's inevitable. For them it's like an instinct - they can't resist. Infaillible.
So Eva stood close to Romer in the doorway of the shop on Frith Street as he shooted and waved at the passing cars moving down the dark street, hoping one of them might be a taxi.
We're out of luck', he said, turning, to find Eva standing very close to him, her face lifted.
I'm in no hurry', she said.
He reached for her and kissed her. — William Boyd

Sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another, makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solicitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty? — George Santayana

At a deep psychological level, convincing young people that they will get the respect, admiration, love that they are looking for through consumerism is a manipulation of a deep human instinct to want to belong. — Helena Norberg-Hodge

I'd love to do a romantic comedy. And perhaps, if the character was right and I had a good gut instinct, a Bollywood movie. And I'd love to direct. One day. I'm learning a lot on the set of 'The Good Wife.' — Archie Panjabi

Love is what it is and love does what it does to survive. It's an instinct. — Elle Casey

Animals understand your love and instinct without any words. Often times, humans understand neither you nor your love. — Debasish Mridha

Your words don't match your vibe,
& im trusting my gut this time. — Nikki Rowe

The central tenet of Christianity as it has come down to us is that we are to reach out when our instinct is to pull inward; to give when we want to take; to love when we are inclined to hate; to include when are tempted to exclude. — Jon Meacham

I love the process of working with people and having things going on, all the time, and just trying to trust your instincts. — Jon M. Chu

Love is written in our instincts, yet erased by our actions. — Gayle D. Erwin

Above all, trust your instincts. If she's the right one, you'll know. If she's not, let her go and be thankful that she was an almost. — Rich Marcello

You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed. — Hector Hugh Munro

You ought to find the joy, hope and love of existence. — Lailah Gifty Akita

One of the things that I love about writing novels is that it really doesn't matter what next step you take as long as you're pursuing some intuition or instinct. Of course, then, intuitions or instincts don't make for great novels, but they often make for good first drafts. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Making love requires no thought. You move as the fronds of a palm tree move in the breeze. It is all instinct. All wonder. When you love someone, your lips are incomplete until they are oiled by a kiss. You can say 'I love you' a thousand ways but you can say it better with silence and a kiss. — Chloe Thurlow

In placid hours well-pleased we dream Of many a brave unbodied scheme. But form to lend, pulsed life create, What unlike things must meet and mate: A flame to melt
a wind to freeze; Sad patience
joyous energies; Humility
yet pride and scorn; Instinct and study; love and hate; Audacity
reverence. These must mate, And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart, To wrestle with the angel
Art. — Herman Melville

Don't be bitter and mean 'couse you don't fit in, it's a GIFT. Look at you. you've got your individuality, you don't have the herd instinct, you can read Neitzsche and understand it. Only dumb people are happy. — Courtney Love

Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as if we take our family for granted. — Paul Pearsall

[On married love]
This love is above all fully human, a compound of sense and spirit. It is not, then, merely a question of natural instinct or emotional drive. It is also, and above all, an act of the free will, whose trust is such that it is meant not only to survive the joys and sorrows of daily life, but also to grow, so that husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment.
It is a love which is total - that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions and not thinking solely of their own convenience. Whoever really loves his partner loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for the partner's own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself. — Pope Paul VI

The beauty of existence is my joy. — Lailah Gifty Akita

This heart, my own dear mother, bends,
With love's true instinct, back to thee! — Thomas Moore

The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens-and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies. — Arthur Miller

If you believe in the maternal instinct and fail at mother love, you fail as a woman. It is a controlling idea that holds us in an iron grip. — Nancy Friday

Love is the instinct for creation. If there is no love, there is no humanity. — Debasish Mridha

As soon as I kiss him I know that I love him with a blind instinct beyond all reason, with all his defects. — Anais Nin

Dare to conquer your soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It's instinct," he said then. "For centuries, it's been our job to protect our home, our women, and our children. We're emotional cowards. We don't talk about our feelings, we're not comfortable putting our soul into words. So we give of ourselves the only way we know how. We protect. We smother those we love in protection, fight for ways to keep them always safe, even from what we deem as a threat from themselves. It's in our genes, Kira. Right or wrong. Emotions are harder for a man to voice, strength is much easier for us to show. It's not an insult, it's the way men show their emotions for those they love. You can't change it."
"I can protect myself. — Lora Leigh

In some ways our greatest ally in this practice of love is our wish to be happy. This wish functions as a homing instinct for freedom when we can unite it with understanding what actually brings us happiness. But sometimes we may feel that we do not really deserve happiness; we may feel almost ashamed of wanting it. Yet this wish is one of the finest things about us, opening the door to transcending our limited lives. — Sharon Salzberg

so clearly, that even if I should see him again, and if he should remember me and love me still (which, alas! is too little probable, considering how he is situated, and by whom surrounded), and if he should ask me to marry him - I am determined not to consent until I know for certain whether my aunt's opinion of him or mine is nearest the truth; for if mine is altogether wrong, it is not he that I love; it is a creature of my own imagination. But I think it is not wrong - no, no - there is a secret something - an inward instinct that assures me I am right. There is essential goodness in him; - and what delight to unfold it! If he has wandered, what bliss to recall him! If he is now exposed to the baneful influence of corrupting and wicked companions, what glory to deliver him from them! Oh! if I could but believe that Heaven has designed me for this! To-day — Emily Bronte

What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another. They are not often transfigured and translated by love in each other's presence. I do not observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man. — Henry David Thoreau

The instinct of the thief is most strongly marked in the Skua tribe, and I am afraid that the mere love of thieving alone actuates them on many occasions. — George Murray Levick

The people ... they are church-broken, nation-broken
they drink and pray and piss in the one place. Every man has a house-broken heart except the great man. The people love their church and know it, as a dog knows where he was made to conform, and there he returns by his instinct. — Djuna Barnes

My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn't a social construct but an instinct. — Jodi Picoult

If you do believe in God, and your first instinct in all things must be gratitude: for creation, or love, for mercy. — Jonathan V. Last

Management is like making love. There's heat from both sides. You have an instinct to get there. You have no idea what you're really in for, but you do it anyway. — Bernie Brillstein

Patriotism, or the peculiar relation of an individual to his country, is like the family instinct. In the child it is a blind devotion; in the man in intelligent love. The patriot perceives the claim made upon his country by the circumstances and time of her growth and power, and how God is to be served by using those opportunities of helping mankind. Therefore his country's honor is dear to him as his own, and he would as soon lie and steal himself as assist or excuse his country in a crime. — George William Curtis

It was the feel of it, the love of it, not the thought: it was instinct and reflex and knowing the wind, and Maris was the wind. — Lisa Tuttle

By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than his indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by, because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity (at least in me) was distateful to him. I was so fully aware that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I fell under a freezing spell. When he said 'go', I went; 'come', I came; 'do this', I dit it. But I did not love my servitude [ ... ]. — Charlotte Bronte

As you grow into a fine young woman, try not to make excuses. If you know the bottom's safe - jump. If you know it's returned - love. If you really want it - fairly take it. If you run, do it 'til your lungs burn. Laugh until your cheeks ache. And forgive, as you'll always want to be forgiven. I didn't say forget, and certainly your spirit won't allow you to be a doormat, but forgive. Ask yourself always, if they die tonight.. was I really that mad? The answer will almost always be no. So act accordingly. — S.E. Hall

Despite our instinct to polarize ourselves in the name of survival, an indescribable connection - call it love or compassion - pervades and dissolves our apparent separation. This oneness transcends physical and emotional relationships; it's a deep connection that surfaces only when the ego-laden barriers are lifted. — Rajeev Kurapati

It's amazing how sudden the effect is - it must be the result of a deep atavistic mating urge buried inside us. A glance and you think: 'Yes, this is the one, this one is right for me.' Every instinct in your body seems to sing in unison. — William Boyd

Why We Tell Stories
I
Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug,
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground
and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers
and because before we had lungs
we knew how far it was to the bottom
as we floated open-eyed
like painted scarves through the scenery
of dreams, and because we awakened
and learned to speak — Lisel Mueller

There was no instinct to pretend - there was only the wish to protect the girl I knew I would love forever. — Jay Crownover

Fear is a basic human instinct and an indicator of the gravity of a situation. It becomes an asset if it is effectively controlled. It becomes a weakness for a man if he lets it prevail over him. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Perhaps the best function of parenthood is to teach the young creature to love with safety, so that it may be able to venture unafraid when later emotion comes; the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is insulted when it is repressed. To disapprove, to condemn the human soul shrivels under barren righteousness. — Freya Stark

But my quarrel with the concept of maternal instinct isn't why I never had kids myself. I was never particularly opposed to the idea of having kids - let no one say that I don't love kids! It always seemed like an interesting future possibility, the same way that joining the Peace Corps someday seemed like an interesting future possibility. — Laura Kipnis

As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love. — Desmond Tutu

The stillest thing in the world is the corpse of someone you loved. A hunk of cold granite seems more alive than a dead human being. You don't expect a stone to move. A person robbed of all motion and cold to the touch is the most alien object in the world. Natural instinct drives us away from the decaying body, and quickly. Yet love compels us forward, to kiss the empty vessel of the soul departed. ...Lesson two: there are many fates worse than death. The most common is surviving the death of a loved one. For the dead, all questions have been answered or made irrelevant. For the survivor, some questions have been rendered unanswerable. — Greg Iles

The nobility of Teresa Leo's poems is that they are not disposed to hide from the dark-rather, they display a mind that tends toward obsession and brooding, that works against fatality like fingers at a knot. The firm, attentive mind on display and the lucid unfolding of the poems are the life instinct seeking and finding its way through again and again. Love and beauty are the argument, but they don't win easily. Bloom in Reverse works through elegy toward survival with moving persistence, both driven and compelling. — Tony Hoagland

Divine self exist in love, in faith and in purity. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations ... A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive
and nowhere else!
and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.
We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race ...
The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. — Robert A. Heinlein

Maybe we choose to stay in a constant state of ignorance as a protective instinct - maybe I was just in denial. I just don't get how you can be completely in love with someone one day, and then all of a sudden you just aren't. I will never forget that day ... the day where I became numb. — Piper Caleb

Love whom you will but marry your own kind was a dictum amounting to instinct within her. — Harper Lee

The life of God within you will make your actions instinct with holiness, and its end shall be everlasting life. Your faith in Christ clearly evinces you to be a new creature, for it kills your old confidences and makes you build upon a new foundation: your love for Christ also shows your newness, for it has killed your old desires, and captured your heart only for Jesus: and your hope, which is also a gift from the blessed Spirit, is set upon new things altogether, while your old hopes are things of which you are now ashamed. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Instinct and study, love and hate;
Audacity-reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's heart,
To wrestle with the angel
Art. — Herman Melville

She asked herself a thousand times why she had hungered so desperately to belong body and soul to Joaquin Andieta when truth she had never been totally happy in his arms, and could explain it only in terms of first love. She had been ready to fall in love when he came to the house to unload some cargo; the rest was instinct. She had merely obeyed the most powerful and ancient of calls, but it had happened an eternity ago and seven thousand miles away. Who she was then and what she had seen in him she could not say, only that now her heart was far away from there. Not only was she tired of looking for him but deep down she did not want to find him; at the same time, though, she could not go on riddled with doubt. She needed an ending for that phase in order to begin a new love with a clean slate — Isabel Allende

It dawned on him that he had never loved a woman wholeheartedly and that he had always been the loved one. This must have been the reason why he knew so little about love and women. In other words, emotionally he hadn't grown up. His instinct and ability to love passionately had withered away before they had had an opportunity to blossom. If only he had fallen in love soulfully just once in his life, even though it might have broken his heart, paralyzed his mind, made him live in a daze, bathed his face in tears, and frowned him in despair! — Ha Jin

In tears I tossed my coin from Trevi's edge. A coin unsordid as a bond of love
And, with the instinct of the homing dove, I gave to Rome my rendezvous and pledge. And when imperious Death Has quenched my flame of breath, Oh, let me join the faithful shades that throng that fount above. — Robert Underwood Johnson

I try to forget you more often than not but somehow my mind wanders to places my heart feels are oh so very true. — Nikki Rowe

It's the irony of woman's life in that she tends to turn her assets to her own detriment in that while her psyche seeks to see her man strong; her instinct tries to weaken him. — BS Murthy