Quotes About Instinct

A trademark of something that works well, the cat body has hardly changed since its inception. Like with today's cats, their digestive systems could handle only flesh. The lesson of the cat is that if you are to become a full-fledged carnivore, you have to commit everything to it. A house cat fed vegetarian food will shrivel and die.

Mountain lions are psychological animals, preying on the mind with secret eyes. They know that they still dominate, that they cannot be cornered without ripping their way out. They know that they are still the heart of firceness. Being pack animals ourselves, we humans have some alliance with other pack animals, like wolves or coyotes. When I see a free wolf, I feel as if we could sit down and talk, given that the details have been worked out. Not so with the cat. The cat speaks in symbols.

We guard our bodies until they are old and tasteless, when we could have fed ourselves to claw and fur, been literally reincarnated in the cells of a lion sleeping in the sun, the wall of muscle that is a bear crashing through a rotten log in search of ant eggs. Why not return again and again, glistening, gilded every time?

The old cowboy Hershel, "You know what they say about a horse bein' only afraid of two things?" Walt, "What's that?" Hershel, "Things that move and things that don't

Do what you're trained to do and you might get out of this alive. Make the right decisions as if your life depended on them, because it does. Hesitate and you hesitate forever.

Maybe it's the instinct of every immigrant, born of necessity or of longing:

Pitchers, like poets, are born not made.

I knew my sister was dead. I felt it in my body, as if my bones could tell me the truth.

If you don't believe that, try taking away a wolf's mate. See how well that shit works for you.

Anyone had the potential to kill, under the right circumstances.

Are you thinking with your head or your dick?" Izaak demanded. "Asking for a friend. Asking because you're a dumbass and—

Besides, humans aren't prey. They are our natural enemies. They are to be avoided.

Why can't the world be simpler, like it is for guinea pigs? They only have a few rules: Crying will get you attention. If it fits in your mouth, it's food. Scream if you don't get your share.

He knew from the first that this man would know how to hurt him.

A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for the instinctual drives must be satisfied.

Men! The only animal in the world to fear.

I think societal instinct much deeper than sex instinct — and societal repression much more devastating.

He pulled himself together to answer her question. "Life is awfully complicated now," he said, trying to express his thoughts; "you have got to conform to laws that your instinct tells you are false laws—it makes me angry sometimes.

Already she was determined that the house she was going to look at was the right house. Wandlebury was the place she had been looking for—she knew it in her bones.

The tragedy is when you've got sex in the head instead of down where it belongs.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

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

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.

I understood food from a very early age. I understood the combination of ingredients very early.