life instinct
Britishnoun
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Later, Freud formulated his famed "death instinct," into which suicide fitted neatly as death's triumph over the life instinct.
From Time Magazine Archive
In a twinkling I was a child, lonely in the universe, separated from my dim old life, instinct with growth, yet ignorant of my own needs.
From Lazarre by Catherwood, Mary Hartwell
We may postulate a continuous excitement of nerve centers as its basis, and this excitement cognizes other excitement in some mysterious manner, but no more mysterious than life, instinct or intelligence are.
From The Foundations of Personality by Myerson, Abraham
So far as she could judge, the qualities that she deemed necessary in the make-up of a robust life, instinct with purpose and accomplishment, seemed to be entirely lacking in Kennedy Square formulas.
From The Fortunes of Oliver Horn by Smith, Francis Hopkinson
The life instinct in me would not be doomed, but was insistent in its demands and made me flee from insanity and death.
From An Anarchist Woman by Hapgood, Hutchins
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
