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More "Motive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these,—the Romans have no mythology. The beings they worship are not persons but abstractions. They have just enough character to be male or female, but they cannot move about or act independently of their natural basis; they cannot marry, nor breed scandal, nor make war. Nor can there be any motive for identifying with such beings a great man who has died; where there are no true gods, there cannot be any demi-gods or heroes. Only a very limited power can possibly be put forth by such beings; all they can do is to give or to withhold ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the emotions related to romantic love there is a rapid development of the religious side of the nature, of a consciousness of the race as a whole, of a spirit of chivalry and disinterestedness— all emotions that bear a tremendous motive power which needs to be guided into suitable channels. Never before and never again has the individual the endurance and the energy for such self-sacrifice, for such devotion, for such exertion in behalf ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... on a great variety of forms and colours, though it may specialise here and "extravagate" there, yet in the main distinguishes itself from the romance by being first of all subjective—by putting behaviour, passion, temperament, character, motive before incident and action in the commoner sense—which had had few if any representatives in ancient times, had not been disentangled from the romantic envelope in mediaeval, but was to be the chief ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... military training, but no other Roman was actually obliged to serve. The empire was so vast and the total of the standing forces comparatively so small that it was always possible to fill up the legions with those who had some motive or inclination that way. Theoretically the state possessed a claim upon every able-bodied man, but the population of the empire was probably a hundred millions, and to collect a total of some 320,000 soldiers, made up of Roman or romanized "citizens" and of provincial subjects in ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... of the People they certainly mean something more than the whole mass of individuals in a country lumped together. That is the people, a mere varied aggregation of persons, moved by no common motive, a complex interplay. The People, as the believer understands the word, is something more mysterious than that. The People is something that overrides and is added to the individualities that make up the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... it now seems certain that there was no more serious motive in sending emigrants to Hawaii than the endeavor of Japan to find occupation for her ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 55, November 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... unconscious in sleep. I woke early in the morning, and having nothing particular to do, I crept out of my blanket and put all things straight; and then, more out of curiosity than from any other motive, proceeded to the poor Frenchman to ascertain if he was yet living; but his death must have taken place some hours before, as he was ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... recorded. Men of the most splendid talents have often shrunk from entering public life, but I am not aware of any instance of a man who had attained the eminence and the fame of Peel who has withdrawn from the theatre of his glory and power without some stronger motive than any that can be found ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... wandered about, got into other patients' beds. It was on such an occasion that the above incident happened. In August, 1902, she sometimes tried to get out when the door was opened, and we have seen that she tried to get out of the window, but she did not change her placid expression at such times. Her motive was not known. On two occasions towards the end of 1902, when she was taken to a dance and was made to take part, she waltzed with considerable animation but did not speak. This was quite striking ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... much about the danger of sin from some modern pulpits. God forbid that it should be the staple of any; but God forbid that it should be excluded from any! Whilst fear is a low motive, self-preservation is not a low one; and it is to that that I now appeal. Brethren, the danger of every sin is, first, its rapid growth; second, its power of separating from God; third, the certainty of a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... he said. "I don't want to put you out. I am really not a vulgar, greedy doctor pushing myself into a case with which I have no concern, for some self-interested motive. I can assure you that I have more than enough to do with illness in London and should be thankful to escape from it here. I want ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... value? No, I am not trying to find out what it was since you don't wish me to know, but if I knew its value, it might help me to decide who would be the most likely to have a motive for taking it. But my belief is that the article slipped from the ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... regard as a safe asylum against all reverses) the immense treasures he had pillaged and collected m Spain, under pretext of sending the sums necessary to sustain the war, and the conquests he intended to make; and this last project was, perhaps, the motive power of all the rest. The madness of these schemes, and his obstinacy in clinging to them, were not discovered until afterwards. The astonishment then was great indeed, upon discovering the poverty of the resources with which he thought himself capable of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... severe and sanguinary act called the "Black Act," which now comprehends more felonies than any law that ever was framed before. And, therefore, a late Bishop of Winchester, when urged to re-stock Waltham Chase, refused, from a motive worthy of a prelate, replying "that it ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... garrets, and out of the way places, difficult of access, it is just possible that direct efforts in their behalf may be accepted too. One thing is certain, though Graeme did not find it easy for a while to satisfy herself, as to the "moral quality" of the motive which kept her at home, the little Finlays were all the happier and better for the time she conscientiously bestowed ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... received and accredited by this Government. The amicable relations between the two countries, which had been suspended, have been happily restored, and are destined, I trust, to be long preserved. The two Republics, both situated on this continent, and with coterminous territories, have every motive of sympathy and of interest to bind them ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... all his debts and being thus left penniless but honest; and paying his creditors nothing, or, at most, a quarter of their dues, and remaining rich enough to indulge in the luxury of a noble son-in-law, the only motive on whose part for such a marriage being, naturally, the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Strangeways at that time, and he must have known it; yet, he was so much a gentleman that he accepted the risk, and had the decency to turn his back when circumstances compelled him to give a man the lie. Granger wondered whether courtesy was the motive; or whether he was only testing him out of curiosity, to see of what fresh vulgarity of deceit ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... readily understand that I have occupied my mind with this subject, which was, necessarily, so interesting to me, but I have not been able to solve the problem with the appliances now known to mechanical science. We would have to discover a motive power of extraordinary force, and almost impossible lightness of machinery. And, even then, we could not resist atmospheric currents of any considerable strength. Until now, the effort has been rather to direct the car than the balloon, and that ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... that we were not upon the main range; secondly, that this saddle would only lead to the Waimakiriri, the next river above the Rakaia. Of these two points my companion was so convinced, that we did not greatly regret leaving it unexplored. Our object was commercial, and not scientific; our motive was pounds, shillings, and pence: and where this failed us, we lost all excitement and curiosity. I fear that we were yet weak enough to have a little hankering after the view from the top of the pass, but ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... other world sat to hear the Christmas gospel, either heeded it not at all—rapt in his own visions—or listened only as one in whose blood was heresy. He loved the notes of the organ, but, even in his childish mind, distinguished clearly between the music and its local motive. More than that, he could separate the melody of word and of thought from their dogmatic significance, enjoying the one whilst wholly rejecting the other. "On earth peace, good-will to men"—already that line was among the treasures of his intellect, but ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... are too small," said Madame, who had been watching her with black eyes that read every motive. Madame too had her avaricious side, and was glad to get back the slippers. "Very well—very well, I will do that. I will send you some small thing from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, and one of the young men shall bring it. Perhaps ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... for the intervening years there is little to chronicle. In those days it was usual enough for a young nobleman to take up politics when he was barely of age, but Lord Ashley needed some other motive than the custom of the day. It is characteristic of his whole life that he responded to a call when there was a need, but was never in a hurry to put himself forward or to aim at high position. We have a few of ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... rubbing made "not a bit of difference." The nearest thing which they could even twist or twine into "the inimy" was a poor old man with a pair of "arm-oil" crutches. Jimmy having been severely questioned as to the sincerity of his motive in "hevin' t'sowgers aht," the poor old fellow whom they had fallen upon came in for a turn; but the only explanation he could give was that they had been holding a Ranters' camp-meeting, and that he, not being able to get away as rapidly ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... of the Princess Charlotte Bay boys also owes its origin to Nature, but Nature in one of her most unpoetical moods—a mood as typical of Constantinople as of their native shores, for its motive is nothing more than ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... a plain, matter-of-fact piece of business; sublime, not so much because of the character of the work it does, as because of the constraining love that is the motive and the results flowing from it. The beautiful halo and glamour clinging round our vows and prayers and songs during a Meeting, are gratifying to our senses; but real consecration manifests itself in hard, self-denying labour, when no eye but His sees; often, perhaps, when no heart but His appreciates, ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... three minutes to twelve as he walked over to his desk, unfolded the contracts, and one by one affixed his signature. In a dim way he was conscious of how the interpretation of his first motive would be put upon it, how they would call him traitor and coward; but that mattered little. The very fact that the man for whom he was doing it would never see it as it was brought him no pang. And when he had carefully blotted the papers, affixed the seal and put ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... always trustworthy, but he has no conceivable motive for altering facts here; he speaks of contemporary events, in which he himself took an active part, and he characterises the cities in the way familiar to him. For Josephus, Gadara is just as much a Gentile city as Ptolemais; it was reserved ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... as a mark of honour, is said to have declared that he accepted of it with extreme reluctance, and merely to avoid offending his commander the toqui. The torture of an innocent prisoner, upon whatever motive or pretence, is certainly a crime against humanity of the deepest dye, and can never be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... embodiment of selfishness," she said. "You save yourself something—I don't know what—but there is some selfish motive, and in sparing yourself you never consider for a moment what I think, or how I feel your neglect and indifference. I suppose this is what you would call unwomanly; but I have got into a habit of expressing myself. It doesn't matter to me, and ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... compensation is $500 or more, and group B those whose compensation is less than that sum. Different methods are pursued in the selection of the postmasters for group A and group, B. Criticism has been made of this order on the ground that the motive for it was political. Nothing could be further from the truth. The order was made before the election and in the interest of efficient public service. I have several times requested Congress to give me authority to put first-, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... fortune is much larger than my own," she said; "and by preferring me to her he shows that money is not his motive." ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... doctrine with my mother's milk. I have made her history and theology the study of my life. What motive can I have in misleading you? Not temporal reward, since I seek not your money, but your soul, for which Jesus Christ died. I could not hope for an eternal reward by deceiving you, for I would thereby purchase ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... me, with our conflicting opinions. It would only have prolonged my suffering if you had found me and insisted upon dressing the burns, even though your motive was most kind," ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... should be observed, that not one of the authorities quoted by us had any motive "to pervert texts," or "to invent authorities," "in support of slavery." Neither Donnegan, nor Liddell and Scott, nor Stephens, nor Schleusner, nor Robinson, nor Smith, nor Macknight, nor Stuart, could possibly have had any such motive. If they were not all perfectly unbiassed ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... is not as yet in its definite state, but the rolling mill completes what the puddling hall does in the rough. Five hundred and fifty thousand tons of iron, all shaped, are taken from the forge every day. To reach such a result it requires no less than 3,000 workmen and a motive power of 7,000 horses. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... a society or corporate body having for its object the cultivation and promotion of literature, of science and of art, either severally or in combination, undertaken for the pure love of these pursuits, with no interested motive. Modern academies, moreover, have, almost without exception, some form of public recognition; they are either founded or endowed, or subsidized, or at least patronized, by the sovereign of the state. The term "academy'' is very loosely used ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... posterity. That there were, in more primitive and happier times, shops where money was sold,—and that, too, on credit and at a bargain,—I take to be matter of demonstration. For what but a dealer in this article was that AEolus who supplied Ulysses with motive power for his fleet in bags? What that Ericus, king of Sweden, who is said to have kept the winds in his cap? What, in more recent times, those Lapland Nornas who traded in favourable breezes? All which will appear the more clearly ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... wish of the landed interest is a motive, and it is a fair and just one, for taking away a real and large revenue, the desire of the trading interest of England ought to be a just ground for taking away a tax of little better than speculation, which was to be collected by a war, which was to be kept up with the perpetual discontent ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Banangcoro, and that I should go with him; he did depart from Banangcoro, but I staid; he sent me a courier to order me near him. I went to Banangcoro, and lodged with Inche, the King's slave and confident. The motive of the King's journey was to see one of his children. He has six now living: and three he had destroyed. The custom is when a male child of the King's wives is born on a Friday, that the throat should be cut; which is done immediately. ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... One motive in her consultation with him came of the knowledge of his capacity to inflict it and his honesty in the act, and a thirst she had to hear the truth loud-tongued from him; together with a feeling that he was excessive and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... takes into the account QUALITIES USEFUL TO OURSELVES. We praise in individuals the qualities useful to themselves, and are pleased with the happiness flowing to individuals by their own conduct. This can be no selfish motive on our part. For example, DISCRETION, so necessary to the accomplishing of any useful enterprise, is commended; that measured union of enterprise and caution found in great commanders, is a subject of highest admiration; and why? For the usefulness, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... a state of bliss, which reminds those who see it, of intoxication, as soon as they are permitted to enter aristocratic circles, or can be seen in public with barons and counts; and above all, when these treat them in a friendly manner, no matter from what motive, or when they see a prospect of a daughter of theirs driving in a carriage with armorial bearings on the panels, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... be questioned that a genuine desire of doing an act of kindness to his fellow-creatures was a leading motive of Servadac's proposed visit to Gibraltar, it must be owned that another idea, confided to nobody, least of all to Count Timascheff, had been conceived in the brain of the worthy Gascon. Ben Zoof had an inkling that ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... this new motive for his instant departure, though without alluding to either the suspicions of Stevens, or the assurances of Wayland Smith, he took the kindest leave of Sir Hugh and the family at Lidcote Hall, who accompanied him with prayers and blessings, and, attended by Wayland and the Earl of Sussex's domestic, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... to rise and beckon Albert aside, naturally impatient to know what news he had procured, or what scheme of safe escape was now decreed for him. But Dr. Rochecliffe twitched his cloak, as a hint to him to sit still, and not show any extraordinary motive for anxiety, since, in case of a sudden discovery of his real quality, the violence of Sir Henry Lee's feelings might have been likely to attract ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... his estate should clear itself of incumbrances. His friends, for his own sake, were pleased with this resolution, and every body considered this course as the most prudent, that in such circumstances could be taken. But in this the world was deceived, for he went abroad from no such prudent motive, oeconomy being a virtue of which he never had the least notion in any part of his life. His business at Vienna was to execute a private commission, not in favour of the English ministry, nor did he ever shine to greater advantage, as to his personal ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... neither son would leave the neighbourhood of so excellent a father. They overwhelmed him with marks of affection, and vowed that the one had left Lepanto, and the other Berat, only in order to share his danger. Ali was by no means duped by these protestations, of which he divined the motive only too well, and though he had never loved his sons, he suffered cruelly in discovering that he was not ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "You make my blood run cold. What made you come here? What made you come aboard that evening all of a sudden, with your high talk and your money—tempting me? I always wondered what was your motive? You fastened yourself on me to have easy times and grow fat on my life blood, I tell you. Was that it? I believe you are the greatest miser in the world, or else why . ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... me he has spoilt both his story and the effect of it by his extreme sentimentality. He is persistently concerned to raise a lump in my throat. I readily believe that he was actuated by the highest motive in trying to show us how responsive the Canadians were when their spiritual needs were attended to by a man of courage and understanding. But I dislike an excess of emotional spasms, and in these Mr. CONNOR has indulged so freely that his book can only ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... intensely interesting. These craft connect Whampoa and other out-lying towns with Canton, run in and out of rivers, and carry passengers, freight, and sometimes the mails. They are of fairly good lines, but are propelled by huge stern-wheels, and the motive power is contributed by from ten to twenty barebacked and perspiring coolies running up a treadmill that occupies as much room amidships as boiler and engine might. When the taskmaster urges the coolies to do their best, one of these "hot-foot" boats chugs along in calm water at a ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... out, and dwindled to a strain of delicate lightness, sustained by the smallest pipes and developing a new motive; this was twice repeated, and then ran down to a series of chords and bars that prepared for and prefigured some great effect close at hand. There was a short pause, then with the sudden releasing of a tremendous rush of sound, back surged the melody, with redoubled ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... his discovering that Dr. Swinfen had communicated his case, he was so much offended, that he was never afterwards fully reconciled to him. He indeed had good reason to be offended; for though Dr. Swinfen's motive was good, he inconsiderately betrayed a matter deeply interesting and of great delicacy, which had been entrusted to him in confidence; and exposed a complaint of his young friend and patient, which, in the superficial opinion of the generality ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... one above another, with their limbs grotesquely doubled and folded. Some of the most imposing were said to commemorate some event of an historical character. But a telling display of family pride seemed to have been the prevailing motive. All the figures were more or less rude, and some were broadly grotesque, but there was never any feebleness or obscurity in the expression. On the contrary, every feature showed grave force and decision; while the childish audacity ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... Smith"—has resigned his brigadiership. But he is a candidate for a major-generalship, until inauguration day, 1st January. He has had an interview with the President, and proposes to take command of the troops defending the city—that Gen. Elzey may take the field. Smith would undoubtedly have a strong motive in defending the capital—but then he knows nothing of military affairs, yet I think he will ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... and arrangement, may be made to support the views of a party, and history becomes a political pamphlet indefinitely prolonged. Here point is the one thing needful,—to be attained at all hazards, whether by the turn of a sentence or the twisting of a motive. Macaulay is preeminent in this kind, and woe to the party or the man that comes between him and his epigrammatic necessity! Again, there is the new light, or perhaps, more properly, the forlorn-hope method, where the author accepts a brief against ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... faith in my honesty of purpose, and hold to my belief that, in spite of my limitations, I have a message to deliver that will be helpful. Yes, I must deliver this message. God will not allow so sincere a motive to fail. Perhaps the reason for all my sufferings and mistakes, the reason for my existence was that I should deliver ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... Collier, a fierce and implacable nonjuror, knew that an attack upon the theatre would never make him suspected for a puritan; he, therefore, 1698, published a short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, I believe with no other motive than religious zeal and honest indignation. He was formed for a controvertist; with sufficient learning; with diction vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and incorrect; with unconquerable pertinacity; with wit, in the highest degree, keen and sarcastick; and with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... keep the dust out, and to pull down the shades to keep the sun from fading the carpets. She thought, too, that neighbors were less likely to drop in if the house was closed up. She was one of those people who are stingy without motive or reason, even when they can gain nothing by it. She must have known that skimping the doctor in heat and food made him more extravagant than he would have been had she made him comfortable. He never came home for lunch, because she gave him such miserable scraps and shreds of food. No matter ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... out of a disastrous speculation," replied Carrados, answering the question. "If there was another motive—or at least an incentive—which I suspect, doubtless we shall hear ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... submitted, she yielded, with varying degrees of grace or reluctance. As she increased in years, her thoughts, as we have seen, were verging more and more on the border of rebellion. But the habit of obedience and submission still had its influence. Moreover, there had been no strong motive and little opportunity for independent action. Hoping not even for tolerance, much less for sympathy, she kept her thoughts to herself, except as she occasionally relieved her mind to her old mammy, ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... alone, ought to convince us, that the prediction is of no small importance to mankind, since the author of it appears not to have been influenced by any other motive, than that noble and exalted philanthropy, which is above the narrow views of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... up—and hesitated. A counteracting, inhibiting wave passed through me. I hardened. I began to walk up and down, a prey to conflicting impulses. Something whispered, "go to her"; another voice added, "for your own peace of mind, at any rate." I rejected the intrusion of this motive as unworthy, turned out the light and groped my way upstairs. The big clock in the hall ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the son of a rabbi of Tudela, a town in Navarre, and he was called Benjamin of Tudela. It seems probable that the object of his voyage was to make a census of his brother Jews scattered over the surface of the Globe, but whatever may have been his motive, he spent thirteen years, from 1160-1173, exploring nearly all the known world, and his narrative was considered the great authority on this subject up to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... I was no less than a minister from the British court. The "Avignon Gazette" brought us one day information that the English were going to establish Un Bureau de Commerce in Corsica. "O Sir," said he, "the secret is out. I see now the motive of your destination to these parts. It is you who are to establish this ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... see, in fact, old London rise From smokeless ashes, like a Phoenix, To moral planes where Beauty lies And Electricity supplies The motive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... of civilization. They are not consciously evil. They simply do not bother to act otherwise than as rational animals. The rest of humanity has to defend itself with police, with laws, and sometimes with revolts, though those like Johnny Simms have no motive beyond the indulgence of immediate inclinations. But for that indulgence Johnny would risk any injury ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... edifices rose at the same time, and from the same motive. William the Conqueror, by his marriage with Matilda, daughter of Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, had contracted an alliance proscribed by the degrees of consanguinity. The clergy inveighed against the union; and they ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... man, I have a motive to desire emancipation which proslavery men do not have but even they have strong enough reason to thus place themselves again under the shield of the Union, and to thus perpetually hedge against the recurrence of the scenes through ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... of sentiment has doubtless led her here, as in her romances, to give very free expression to truths usually better left unspoken. But her silence on many points about which her readers, whether from mere curiosity or some more honorable motive, would gladly have been informed, was then inevitable. It could not have been broken without wounding the susceptibilities of living persons, which she did right in respecting, at the cost of disappointment ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... showed by very carefully conducted experiments that the metallic sulphides are not only better conductors of electricity than has hitherto been supposed, but that when paired they were capable of exhibiting strong electro-motive power. Thus, if galena and zinc blende in acid solutions be connected in the usual manner by a voltaic pair, sulphuretted hydrogen is evolved from the surface of the former, and a current generated which is sufficient to reduce gold, silver or copper from ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... know nothing. He may have had a motive for murdering the man or he may not. The point is that he doesn't seem to have had the opportunity. Even if we suppose that he managed to conceal the body temporarily, still there was the final disposal of it. He couldn't have buried it in the garden with the servants about; neither could he ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... myself what is to become of him when I am dead, and if he turns from the Lord and seeks the pleasures of the world, my heart sickens. I meant it for the best when I brought him with me up to the Holy Mountain, but that was not the only motive—it seemed to me too hard to part altogether from the child. My God! the young of brutes are secure of their mother's faithful love, and his never asked for him when she fled from my house with her seducer. I thought he should at least not lose his father, and that if ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... knew that his publisher would demur. For his fame had raised him altogether out of Bragdon's class. But it was the only tangible way of putting out that helping hand the artist so obviously needed just then. Bragdon had hesitated, as if he knew the motive prompting the offer, then accepted, and the two had motored out of the city together that evening. Even then the artist had a ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... afterwards dug up and appropriated by the survivors. If the deceased was the householder himself or his wife, the house is almost always deserted, however solidly it may be built. The reason for thus abandoning so valuable a piece of property is not mentioned; but we may assume that the motive is a fear of the ghost, who is supposed to haunt his old home. A temporary hut is built on the grave, and in it the family of the deceased take up their abode for six weeks or more; here they cook, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... you confessed," answered the detective quietly, "I knew that you were doing it to shield someone. You could have had no possible motive for shielding either of the other two men under suspicion. I knew that it must be your brother. He had motive enough—he knew that you were in love with Mr. Warren—engaged to him. He knew that Warren was about to elope ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... people: the women came out spinning, or sewing and plaiting the Leghorn hats; the children threw flowers into our barouche, the men grinned and gaped, but there was no vociferous begging, no disgusting display of physical evils, filth, and wretchedness. The motive was merely that idle curiosity for which the Florentines in all ages have been remarked. I remember an amusing instance which occurred when I was here in December last. I was standing one evening in the Piazza del Gran Duca, looking at the group of the Rape ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... "The motive," she answered, "is the difficult thing, and that is found. I suppose the police are good for something. They should be able to ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his speech, (not in act). This your feat is not suited to the order to which ye profess to belong. Tell us therefore, the end ye have in view. Arrived here by such an improper way, why accept ye not the worship I offer? What is your motive for coming to me?' Thus addressed by the king, the high-souled Krishna, well-skilled in speech, thus replied unto the monarch in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... inroad beyond the Tigris, Abu Taher advanced to the gates of the capital with no more than five hundred horse. By the special order of Moctader, the bridges had been broken down, and the person or head of the rebel was expected every hour by the commander of the faithful. His lieutenant, from a motive of fear or pity, apprised Abu Taher of his danger, and recommended a speedy escape. "Your master," said the intrepid Carmathian to the messenger, "is at the head of thirty thousand soldiers: three such men as these are wanting in his host:" at the same instant, turning to three ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the nature of the subterranean movements in progress, would have been hazardous. But now, viewing the appended map, it may, I think, be considered as almost established, that volcanoes are often (not necessarily always) present in those areas where the subterranean motive power has lately forced, or is now forcing outwards, the crust of the earth, but that they are invariably absent in those, where the surface has lately subsided or is still subsiding. (We may infer from this rule, that in any old deposit, which contains interstratified beds of erupted ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... least two millions a year, at a time when means were wanting to pay the national creditor. The consequences were obvious. The State, having undertaken to remunerate the inferior clergy out of a falling revenue, had a powerful motive to appropriate what remained of the Church property when the tithes were lost. That resource was abundant for the purpose. But it was concentrated in the hands of the higher clergy and of religious orders—both under the ban of opinion, as nobles or as corporations. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... dated after you left Craterville, of course. And—I can't stand imagining that you could be so low. Only, who else would have a motive?" ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... class preferred a stronger rule. The arguments also in favour of a union of the kingdom and the duchy, which had led to the rebellion against William, would now, since that attempt had failed, be equally strong against Robert. For William no motive need be sought but that of ambition, nor have we much right to say that in such an age the ambition was improper. The temptation which the Norman duchy presented to a Norman king of England was natural and irresistible, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... competent commission to make a thorough investigation of the subject. Its members have shown their public spirit by accepting their trust without pledge of compensation, but I trust that Congress will see in the national and international bearings of the matter a sufficient motive for providing at least for reimbursement of such expenses ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... incursions or "creaghs"[3] as they are called in the Highlands and described by Scott in Waverley and The Fair Maid of Perth, but also from the "cattle-drives" which have been resorted to in our own day in Ireland, though these latter had a different motive than plunder. As has been observed by Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Lord Macaulay was mistaken in ascribing this custom to "some native vice of Irish character," for, as every student of ancient Ireland may perceive, it is rather to be regarded ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... perhaps the most radical, was its motive power, which was produced by what he called a vacuo-turbine—a device that sucked in the water at the snout of the craft and expelled it at the tail, at the time purifying a certain amount for drinking ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... smaller man we might have deemed the change a mark of weakness, a sign of childish delight in gewgaws, titles, and trappings. Such could hardly have been the motive in the man who, when he deemed that his work was done, could cast away both the form and the substance of power, and could so steadily withstand all temptations to take them up again. It was simply that the change was fully wrought; that the chief magistrate of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... Overman who shall rule the world. With her immense biologic mission, seemingly at war with her individual career, and destructive apparently of that emancipation which is the present dream of her champions, what a type, what a motive this for fiction, and in what a manifold and stimulating way is the Novel awakening to its high privilege to deal with such material. In this view, having these wider implications in mind, the role of woman in fiction, so far from waning, is but ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... us conscious at times of the effort one puts forth to simply sustain the life of his ideals, the charm and sweetness of those secret hopes which feed the soul. What must it be to live among those who are quick to recognise nobility of motive, to conspire with aspiration, to believe in the best and highest in each other? It was to taste such a life as this, to feel the consoling power of mutual faith and the inspiration of a common devotion to the ideals that were dearest to us, that our thoughts turned so often and with such longing ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... command had evidently affected the equilibrium of his intellects. He mistook his position, as also the character of his superior. His conduct was so manifestly unjustifiable that no one took his part, or defended him in the slightest degree. What his real motive was, whether to escape from danger when danger was likely to commence, or to obtain the leadership of the expedition himself, is difficult to determine. He had been sowing dissension in the camp from an early period. ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... Malatesta, seeing that Bill and Gus were both exceedingly friendly with Tony, seemed to take especial pleasure in making contemptuous remarks concerning all three, or in making offensive, insulting gestures that they could not help seeing. At first this was altogether puzzling because the motive was not apparent. It became more ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... of the body came evidence medical and otherwise that seemed to show beyond doubt the time and manner of his death and the possible motive of the murderer. The base of the skull was smashed in, evidently by some violent blow dealt from behind with a blunt heavy instrument of some sort, and death had probably been instantaneous. In one of the pockets was a first edition ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... large, it was not more than sufficient for the service on board. To work the jangada along the windings of the river and between the hundreds of islands and islets which lay in its course required fully as many as were taken, for if the current furnished the motive power, it had nothing to do with the steering, and the hundred and sixty arms were no more than were necessary to work the long boathooks by which the giant raft was to be kept ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... The motive of his visit to the cemetery remained undefined save as a final effort of escape from his wife's inexpressive acceptance of his shame. It seemed to him that as long as he could keep himself alive to that shame he would not wholly have succumbed ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... led, in writing about ships of the navy, to refer to steam, we turn aside at this point to treat of that tremendous motive-power. ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... imprisonment, if the gubernative, judicial, and administrative authorities, etc., are rigorous. The Indians covet it with a desire that is astonishing, and avail themselves of all possible means in order to obtain it. The secret of the motive that impels them lies in their fondness for prominence, and in the fact that nearly all of them succeed in becoming rich, or in attaining independent means, after the two years of their office. For the polistas, or individuals who are obliged to labor on the public works of the state, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... Washington refused to perform, alleging as a reason that the northern department had always been considered a separate command, and that he had never done more than advise. These reasons do not look very weighty or very strong, and it is not quite clear what the underlying motive was. Washington never shrank from responsibility, and he knew very well that he could pick out the best man more unerringly than Congress. But he also saw that Congress favored Gates, whom he would not have chosen, and he therefore ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... to her affection for Shady Dell Farm, she has an objection to St. Bridget's Well, and thus is strengthened by a double motive, I do not know. She may consider it a relic of popish superstition; she may be a Protestant donkey; she is a Dissenter,—there's ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to read at the fourth or fifth page instead of the first, a matter by no means of trivial consequence to persons who read books with no other view than to say they have read them, a more general motive to reading than is commonly imagined; and from which not only law books, and good books, but the pages of Homer and Virgil, of Swift and Cervantes, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... one of the blockading squadron to patrol the coast and watch for just such vessels as the Hattie was, and although he had steam up all the while, he used his twenty-four muffled oars, twelve on a side, as his motive power; and this enabled him to slip along the coast without making the least sound to betray his presence. As luck would have it, he had not discovered Crooked Inlet. If he had, he would have lifted the buoys, and it might ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... the reader tremendously.... It is the drama of a human soul the reader watches ... the finest study of human motive that has appeared for many ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... quite involuntary. "In the weeks during which we have been kept from speaking together I have turned all these events over in my mind till I longed for any respite, even that of the grave. But in all my thinking I never attributed this motive to your visit here. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... of the United Kingdom in commerce and naval power, and its practical monopoly of political influence in the outer world. Sheltered by an invincible navy, far removed from the sound of international conflict, the Colonies had no practical motive for concerning themselves with foreign affairs, or with any but purely local measures of defence. Even when, as in 1854, they were technically involved by the United Kingdom in war with a great Power, they were not so much as inconvenienced. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, incurred no ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... enigmas with which the books of the Jews are filled, have besides fancied they must add to them a great many incomprehensible mysteries, for which they have the most profound veneration. Their impenetrable obscurity appears to be a sufficient motive among them for adding these. Their priests, encouraged by their credulity, which nothing can outdo, seem to be studious to multiply the articles of their faith, and the number of inconceivable objects which they have said must be ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... are they filled with the nature of things which are generated and corrupted. More venerable, however, than these, and essentially transcending them, is the immortality of divine souls, which are primarily self-motive, and contain the fountains and principles of the life which is attributed about bodies, and through which bodies participate of renewed immortality. And prior to all these is the immortality of the gods: for Diotima in the Banquet does not ascribe an immortality ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... there cannot be any contact (sa@myoga) or inherence (samavaya) of dharma and adharma with God that he might supervise them; he cannot have any tools or body wherewith to fashion the world like the carpenter. Moreover he could have no motive to create the world either as a merciful or as a cruel act. For when in the beginning there were no beings towards whom should he be actuated with a feeling of mercy? Moreover he would himself require a creator ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... briefly speaking, the motive power of necessity that lay behind the struggle of the town corporations and craft-gilds to be free, a struggle which, though it was to result in the breaking up of the mediaeval hierarchy, began by an appearance of strengthening it ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... have been with no other object than that the History and the other works of Tacitus should be copied into the oldest characters that could be obtained by Bracciolini; with this further and more important motive in view, to add to the acknowledged works of Tacitus the new portion that had just been forged, all uniformly transcribed in the same equally old letters in order to deceive the world as to the very great antiquity, and, consequently, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... be a different motive, which will a little distinguish the offenders. For though one should have a vanity in ruining another's reputation, yet the other may only have an ambition to advance his own. And I beg leave, my lord, that I may plead the latter, ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... she was as disinclined for social amusements as he was himself, but the same motive that prompted her urged him also. Each went with reluctance, ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... with a prisoner in Exeter gaol, which added still more mystery and interest to the state of Mr Austin. Many were the calls and cards left at the Hall, and if we were to inquire whether curiosity or condolence was the motive of those who went there, we are afraid that the cause would, in most cases, have proved to have been the former. Among others, O'Donahue and McShane did not fail to send every day, waiting for the time when they could ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... we have kept to the South—to the area where the evil is distinctly and recognisably religious. Others elsewhere have told their own story; ours, though in touch with theirs (in that its whole motive is to save the little children), is yet different in manner, in that it is avowedly Christian. India is a land where generalisations are deceptive. So we have kept to ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... crusaders, equally noble and courageous, planted it on the spot where now stands the foremost city of the Dominion. The settlement of the large and fertile island at the confluence of the Ottawa and the St Lawrence had a motive all its own. Quebec was founded primarily for trade; and so with practically all other settlements which have grown into great centres of population. But Montreal was originally intended solely for a mission station. Its founders had no thought of trade; indeed, they were prohibited ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... received so little attention from the world is not due to the unimportance of the subject of which it treats, but rather to lack of an adequate motive for speculating upon it, and to the small success of the occasional efforts to deal with it. Absolute curiosity, and love of comprehension for its own sake, are not passions we have much leisure to indulge: they require not only freedom from affairs but, what ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... becomes absolutely incumbent on those, who look on the whole body of the Upanishads as revealed truth, to demonstrate that their teaching forms a consistent whole free from all contradictions. In addition there supervened the external motive that, while the karmaka/nd/a of the Veda concerned only the higher castes of brahmanically constituted society, on which it enjoins certain sacrificial performances connected with certain rewards, the j/n/anaka/nd/a, as propounding a certain theory of the world, towards which any reflecting ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... several like days had passed it seemed from the interest and friendliness of these women that he might have lived long among them. He was possessed of wit and eloquence and information, which he freely gave, and not with selfish motive. He liked these women; he liked to see the somber shade pass from their faces, to see them brighten. He had met the girl Mary at the spring and along the path, but he had not yet seen her face. He was always looking for her, hoping to meet her, and confessed to ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... including Victoire herself, who was the most severe of them all, agreed she had justly deserved her reward. Maurice obtained his wish; and Victoire's temper never relapsed into its former bad habits—so powerful is the effect of a well-chosen motive!—Perhaps the historian may be blamed for dwelling on such trivial anecdotes; yet a lady, who was accustomed to the conversation of deep philosophers and polished courtiers, listened without disdain to these simple annals. Nothing appeared to her a trifle that could tend to form ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... follow that, because they have a power to do this in one instance, they ought to have it in every other. There are cases in which the pernicious tendency of such a power may be far more decisive, without any motive equally cogent with that which must have regulated the conduct of the convention in respect to the formation of the Senate, to recommend their admission into the system. So far as that construction may ...
— The Federalist Papers
... that Chang Hsun is actuated by a patriotic motive? Surely despotism is no longer tolerated in this stage of modern civilization. Such a scheme can only provoke universal opposition. Five years have already passed since the friendly Powers accorded their recognition of the Chinese Republic and if we think ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... of myself, my inexorable, attentive eye could not help detecting the stamp of theatrical solemnity, of conscious grandeur in her gesture. Even though devoted and chaste, without any ulterior motive, her sacrifice had a self-glorifying pride, which I ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... off a girl with some money, and procured her death by drowning. He was arrested at his mother's house and a terrible scene took place, terribly rendered in the book. Griffin, of course, changes the motive; the girl is carried off not for money but for love, and she is sacrificed to make way for a stronger passion. Eily O'Connor, the victim, is a pretty and pathetic figure; the hero-villain Hardress Cregan, and the mother who indirectly causes the crime, are effective though melodramatic; ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... if their early faults had grown into confirmed vices, would later have led a life of crime, and become inhabitants of dungeons and emissaries of evil, now grew into men of great eminence. The germ of evil propensities was destroyed, the exuberant motive power of their nature regulated and turned to good, by means which ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... was a traitor in the pay of France and incidentally the father of the heroine Sheila; though she knew nothing of this and would have been badly worried if the hazards of a defended murder case had brought it to light. Do you call the motive sufficient? No more do I. However, Dyck goes to prison, emerging just in time to join the fleet and became a successful rebel under the Naval soviets established by RICHARD PARKER. Subsequently he takes his ship into action on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... model fly the length of the room before he stopped the clockwork and cut off the motive power, allowing it to sink gently to the floor. Then came the reaction. He looked steadfastly at his handiwork for several moments in silence, and then he turned and threw himself on to a shabby little bed that stood in one corner of the room and ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... occurred to me that a pseudonym might have a permament serviceability. So far from these anticipations proving justified, I am now moved to abandon the pseudonym in the only instance I have had occasion to use it. Writers have sometimes been charged with seeking to capitalize their own good fortune. My motive, in authorizing the republication of this story over my name, is not that. The fact is only that experience has taught me not to like pseudonymity: my feeling being that those who take an interest ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... reaching its close. Now as for the host of the Vandals, let no one of you consider them. For not by numbers of men nor by measure of body, but by valour of soul, is war wont to be decided. And let the strongest motive which actuates men come to your minds, namely, pride in past achievement. For it is a shame, for those at least who have reason, to fall short of one's own self and to be found inferior to one's own standard of valour. ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... been my servant I would naturally have kicked him off the train for a fraction of such impudence. I didn't exactly know what to do. There is a thoughtful motive behind every apparently random absurdity that Jeremy gets off, but I was uncomfortably conscious of the fact that my wits don't work fast enough to follow such volatile manoeuvres. Perhaps it's the Scotian blood in me. I can follow ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... the commanders of a retreating army lose their heads the rank and file will inevitably become demoralized and panic-stricken. The retreat became a rout, and the possibility of making a stand, and to some extent retrieving the lost fortune of war, was extremely remote. A deeper motive than the mere reconquering of Galicia lay behind Von Mackensen's plan—he aimed at nothing less than the complete overthrow and destruction of the Russian armies. It was a gigantic effort of the Germanic powers to eliminate at ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... mysterious," Godfrey explained, "is the apparent lack of motive. As soon as one learns the motive for a crime, one learns also who committed it. But where the motive can't be discovered, it is mighty ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... question. It is the making up of the mind to do a thing with certain aspirations, emotions, and desires towards this thing. Thousands of people do it every day, especially in religious matters. It needs an adequate motive or a great ideal to carry it out. Such a motive here, might be the realisation of the uselessness and the positive harm of worry. Actually realise this, then affirm your determination to avoid worry and you ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... openly advocated by Philip, King of Spain, against all European Protestants, rich or poor, who came within the clutches of the savages that administered the cruelties of the Inquisition. The canting crowd shrieked against the monstrous impiety of such notions, but their efforts to prove purity of motive were unavailing. ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... the effects of poison?" he gasped, incredulously. "Great Heaven! how can I believe such an uncanny tale? Miss Staples has not an enemy in the whole world, I am sure. No one could have a motive in attempting to put her out ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... that now troubled her—though certainly, as Europe was the great American sedative, the failure was to some extent to be noted: it was the suspected presence of something behind it—which, however, could scarcely have taken its place there since their departure. What any fresh motive of unrest could suddenly have sprung from was, in short, not to be divined. It was but half an explanation to say that excitement, for each of them, had naturally dropped, and that what they had left behind, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... is the science of conduct. It is founded, primarily, upon philosophical postulates without which no code or system of morals could be formulated. Briefly, these postulates are, (a), every activity of man has as its deepest motive the end termed Happiness, (b) the Happiness of the individual is indissolubly bound up with the Happiness of all Creation. The truth of (a) will be evident to every person of normal intelligence: all arts and systems aim consciously, or unconsciously, at some good, ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... wretchedness, get to a place where you do not believe in anybody. Some people seem to cultivate this disposition as if it were an asset. It is not an asset. It is the worst possible liability. If you want to make a hell for yourself in the here and now, cultivate the habit of seeing a selfish motive back of every seemingly unselfish act. School yourself to believe that all men and all women have their price. Say not in haste, but deliberately, that "All men ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome. He spoke upon this subject with great archness and candour: of course as a City man he would be glad to do a profitable business anywhere, and the B. B. C.'s business was profitable. But the interested motive which he admitted frankly as a man of the world, did not prevent other sentiments more agreeable. "My dear Colonel," says Barnes, "I am happy, most happy, to think that our house and our name should have been useful, as I know they have been, in the establishment ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I cannot say half a dozen German words; but you see I have not had your motive for acquiring it, and cannot very well get promotion. And again, it would not do for me to speak better German than the King of Prussia; who, beyond a few words necessary for animating his troops on occasion, knows very little German ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... are an effective means of establishing a bond of sympathy between the child and nature. The child who takes care of a plant or animal because it is his own, does so at first from a purely personal motive, which is perfectly natural to childhood; but while he studies its needs and observes its movements and changes, gradually and unconsciously this interest will be transferred to the plant or animal for its own sake. The nature of the child is ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... biographers seem inclined to shrink. They are unwilling that Milton should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but, since it cannot be denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another, that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to excuse an act which no wise man will consider as in itself disgraceful. His father was alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... better nor worse than you or I; they get over their professional horrors, and into their proper work; and in them pity, as an EMOTION, ending in itself or at best in tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens,—while pity, as a MOTIVE, is quickened, and gains power and purpose. It is well for poor human ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... work, but the motive, the spirit that actuates the work; whether embroidering stoles, sawing wood, washing dishes, or acting, if it is done honestly, for the glory of the holy name, why may one not ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... above all, to compromise political opponents. From the words of Admiral Dartige: "The revelations of the Venizelist Press concerning the revictualling of German submarines in Greece are a tissue of absurd legends," [15] we learn the main source of these myths and also the principal motive. For if M. Venizelos and his party had, by their voluntary abstention, deprived themselves of a voice inside the Chamber, they more than made amends by their agitation out of doors. The coercion of Greece came ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... intention of swelling the tide of exhilaration, or other expansive emotions, incident upon the exodus of the old and the inauguration of the new year. We have said that their ostensible intention was such, because there is another motive for these productions, locked up (as the popular author deems) in his own breast, but which betrays itself, in the quality of the work, as his principal incentive. Oh! that any muse should be set upon a high stool to cast ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Shovelin, with a look of calm consideration; "somebody did it, undoubtedly; and that makes the difficulty of the whole affair. 'Cui bono,' as the lawyers say. Two persons only could have had any motive, so far as wealth and fortune go. The first and most prominent, your father, who, of course, would come into every thing (which made the suspicion so hot and strong); and the other, a very nice gentleman, whom it is ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... dealing with a Government so imbecile, and so ignorant of our resources. The places are too far from the capital, and the war party may succeed in persuading the King that in this demonstration we put forth all our strength. I can appreciate your motive—the wish to avoid, if possible, a war of annexation, which a war upon any scale must be. We should have to make use of a vast number of suffering people, whom we could not abandon to the mercy ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... thought was to share it with Angel. Little soul, how her face would flame, how her body would tremble with the wonder of it! In the minutiae, the technicalities of appreciation, Angel, like Henry himself, might be lacking; but in the motive fervour of appreciation, who was like her! It was almost painful to see the joy which certain simple wonders gave her. Anything intense or prodigal in nature, any splendidly fluent outpouring of the elements,—the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... the smaller rivers boats are being improvised by adding wheels and motive power to ordinary scows. In a half-dozen years, at the furthest, we will, doubtless, see the rivers of the Southern States traversed by as many steamers as before the war. On the Mississippi and its tributaries the destruction of steamboat property was very great, but the loss is rapidly ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... sitting there over a book, when the maid—her name was Hopkins, I had discovered—came in on the pretext of inquiring if I had everything I needed. One of the innumerable servants had already turned down my bed, so when Hopkins appeared at the door, I suspected at once that there was a hidden motive underlying her ostensible purpose. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... right of private judgment, religious liberty, call it what you will; a great inspiration which in after times was destined to march triumphantly over battlefields, and give dignity and power to the people, and lead to the reception of great truths obscured by priests for one thousand years; the motive of an irresistible popular progress, planting England with Puritans, and Scotland with heroes, and France with martyrs, and North America with colonists; yea, kindling a fervid religious life; creating such men as Knox and Latimer and Taylor and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... you understand my motive in coming here?' he asked. 'Now do you see that the last hope I had to cling to was the hope that your memory of the night's events might prove my memory to be wrong? Now do you know why I won't help Allan? ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... professionally, the sufferings of those who were certain to be wounded during the war. I also experienced much curiosity to know something more of the power and influence of modern war-engines. Perhaps some people will think this latter an unworthy motive. It may have been so; I cannot tell. All I can say is that it was a very secondary one, and would not, of itself, have been sufficient to induce me to remain for an hour to witness the horrors and carnage of battle-fields. ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... sarcastic. "Without going into the question of motive," says he, "that suggestion may be worth considering. ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... months, apparent in his lean face and shrunken figure. And after all could any dinner be worth the pain of dressing for it? When at the last moment he discovered a loose button on his trousers, he felt that there was no motive, no power on earth that could urge him to the task of securing it. And when it broke from its thread and fell, and hid itself under the skirting board in a sort of malignant frenzy, he took its behaviour as a sign ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... get into a state of bliss, which reminds those who see it, of intoxication, as soon as they are permitted to enter aristocratic circles, or can be seen in public with barons and counts; and above all, when these treat them in a friendly manner, no matter from what motive, or when they see a prospect of a daughter of theirs driving in a carriage with armorial bearings on the panels, as ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... work miracles,' explained the indignant Tinkler, when reproached with this result, 'and somehow the case has got out of hand. The motive for the shooting can't be got at; the pistol used ain't to be picked up, search how you may; and as for the murdering villain who fired it, if he ain't down below where he ought to be, I'll take my oath as ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... life is the strongest bulwark of his religion. As long as the human heart is capable of being touched by tales of heroic self-sacrifice, accompanied by purity and celestial benevolence of motive, it will cherish his memory. Why should I go into the particulars of that noble life? You will remember that he was the son of the king of Kapilavastu—a mighty sovereign whose opulence enabled him to give the heir of his house every luxury that a voluptuous imagination could ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... suddenly upon our vision, if we could view life as we view the spreading country beneath us, when we stand on the summit of a tower! All our senses, being equally affected, would impart to our will a motive force which is, on the contrary, dissipated by the ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... incessant as to-day; and though in the nature of things Christ had not many rich followers, it is not unnatural to suppose that He had some. And a Joseph of Arimathea may easily have been a Roman citizen with a yacht that could visit Britain. The same fallacy is employed with the same partisan motive in the case of the Gospel of St. John; which critics say could not have been written by one of the first few Christians because of its Greek transcendentalism and its Platonic tone. I am no judge of the philology, but every human being is a divinely appointed ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... authentic tales of jealousy, intrigue, and treachery. He had seen Jacobites take office under William, join zealously in the scramble for his favours, and enter into negotiations with the emissaries of James either upon some fancied slight, or from no other motive than a desire to be safe, if by any chance the sceptre should again change hands. Under Anne he had seen Whig turn Tory and Tory turn Whig, and had seen statesmen of the highest rank hold out one hand to Hanover and ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... seemingly about to draw America and England into closer co-operation. Canning, for Britain, proposed to America a joint declaration against French intervention in the Americas. His argument was against the principle of intervention; his immediate motive was a fear of French colonial expansion; but his ultimate object was inheritance by Britain of Spain's dying influence and position in the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... supposing one to be true and the other false, no one ever knowingly, and for its own sake, chooses the false: whatever he may do in after life, for some selfish purpose, he cannot do so in childhood, where there is no such motive, without violence to his nature. And here we are supposing the understanding, with its triumphant pride and subtilty, out of the question, and the child making his choice under the spontaneous sense of the true ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... by no means satisfied myself, by my secret experiment, that it was not sinful to carry a burden on the Sabbath day. If God did not punish me on the spot, perhaps it was because of my youth or perhaps it was because of my motive. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Ireland to the City of Baltimore when he was about twenty years of age, on account of religious troubles, the motive which sent so many emigrants to the new country. He then moved over to this thriving seaport, married and settled, leaving his wife a very young widow with three sons. One of them, John, went far from home to live, and his mother's letters ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... been a great sinner, her life in many respects questionable; but seeing that victory was with the Israelites, she cast her lot with them. From the text and what we know of humanity in general, it is difficult to decide Rahab's real motive, whether to serve the Lord by helping Joshua to take the land of Canaan, or to save her own life and that of her kinsmen. It is interesting to see mat in all national emergencies, leading men are quite willing to avail themselves of the craft and ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... I take it, will soon forget him. Dreiser is at his best, indeed, when he deals with old men. In their tragic helplessness they stand as symbols of that unfathomable cosmic cruelty which he sees as the motive power of life itself. More, even, than his women, he makes them poignant, vivid, memorable. The picture of old Gerhardt is full of a subtle brightness, though he is always in the background, as cautious and penny-wise as an ancient ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... my faith," cried the Cook, as he rattled the pottle against the sideboard, "I like that same song hugely, and eke the motive of it, which lieth like a sweet kernel in ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... readers, therefore, have good reason to thank Mrs. Botta, that, after having met a great educational need in her own experience, she has benevolently set about supplying the same need in the experience of others. The same motive which has led her to do this has also made her work, from the peculiar manner in which it is conducted, an important contribution toward a more perfect educational system than generally prevails; though we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... formed of slabs of slate sculptured with an exquisite pattern of rosettes and spirals, which shows very distinct traces of Egyptian artistic influence (unless, as Mr. H. R. Hall has now come to believe, we are to trace the origin of the spiral as a decorative motive, not to Egypt, but to the Minoans of Crete). At Tiryns, Schliemann began in 1884 another series of excavations which laid bare the whole ground-plan of the citadel palace of that ancient fortress town with its halls and separate apartments for men and women, and the ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... presence of so strange an affair, without the slightest clue to guide them. Of course, there was the fact itself, as evidenced by the bodies of the three victims; but the authorities were quite ignorant of the circumstances that had attended and of the motive that had inspired the crime. Certainly, they might hope with the powerful means of investigation at their disposal to finally arrive at the truth in the course of time, and after repeated efforts. But, in the mean ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... for those whose reading is monotonous, because of lack of melodic variety, the best drills are those which teach them to make a careful analysis of the sentences, and those which awaken them to the necessity of impressing the thought upon others. We have learned that when a pupil has the proper motive in mind and is desirous of conveying his intention to another, a certain melody will always manifest that intention. The melody, then, is the criterion of the pupil's purpose. The moment a pupil loses sight of a phrase and ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... her terror of heart she telegraphed one day to her mother to come at once to Paris and stay with her for a time. Don Pablo had taken the message to the office, and talked about it afterward downstairs. Auguste hurried to retail the news to Wilhelm, who had no difficulty in understanding the motive. In the first moment he thought he was glad of the approaching arrival of the Marquise de Henares. For, distasteful as the idea might be that the mother should become a witness of the daughter's questionable relations, he hoped that her presence would ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... place in her heart, and she had never ceased to cherish the belief that if they two could live together she would be perfectly happy. The discovery of this deeply irritated her grandmother, who at length was provoked to intimate to the girl something of the real motive for insisting on this separation—namely, that her mother's antecedents were such as, in the eyes of Aurore's well-wishers, rendered it desirable to establish the daughter's existence apart from that of her parent. Sooner or later such a revelation must have been made; but made as ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... going to mass or returning. After having performed my morning devotions and breakfasted, I went down to the kitchen. The fine girl Geronima was seated by the fire. I asked if she had heard mass; she replied, 'No,' and that she did not intend to hear it. Upon my inquiring her motive for absenting herself, she replied that, since the friars had been expelled from their churches and convents, she had ceased to attend mass or to confess herself, for that the Government priests had no spiritual power, and consequently she never troubled them. She said the friars were holy men ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... anxiety appeared to have produced any lasting effect was dear little Fanny, and she continued to look much more pale and thin than I liked to see her. Her spirits, also, seemed less gay and buoyant than usual, and when Sir John and Harry left us, and she had no longer any motive for exertion, a kind of languor came over her, producing a listless distaste for all her former employments; and she would sit for hours poring over one of the Italian poets, without exchanging a word with any one. In order, if possible, to rouse her ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... thought,' adds M'Leod, 'that the design of forcing the people to build such houses was to provide for their comfort and accommodation, but there seems to have been quite a different object,—which, I believe, was the true motive,—and that was to hide the misery that prevailed. There had been a great sensation created in the public mind by the cruelties exercised in these districts; and it was thought that a number of neat white houses, ranged ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Day before yesterday Stephane, in crossing a vestibule in front of the great hall, impelled by some odd motive, gave vent to a loud burst of laughter. The Count started from his chair and his face became livid. To-day Soliman was sold. A horse dealer is coming directly to take him away. Ivan, whom I just met, had great tears in his eyes. Poor Stephane, what ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... then, no doubt, from the contents of the letter she had written to her on her first coming to Hampstead; that I dared not to stand the event of such a letter; and was glad of an opportunity, by Lady Betty's and my cousin's means (though they knew not my motive) to get her back to town; far, at the time, from intending the outrage which my despair, and her want of confidence in me, put me ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... high standing in the commercial world will be thereby induced to offer themselves as candidates for civic offices? Have they themselves offered any suggestion to this effect, or asked for any such motive to do their duty as free-born citizens? Nothing of the kind. It is pure assumption to assert that when the honour is more difficult of attainment it will become an object of ambition to the mighty men on 'Change. The witnesses who gave evidence ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... fond of eating. This covetousness of food had grown on her as her years had increased. The thought of foods of various kinds filled many hours of her day, and the desire for pleasant things to eat was the motive of many of her most deliberate actions. She cherished warmly and secretly this little lust of hers. None of the family was aware of the grip that the desire had upon her nor of the speed with which the desire was growing. She did not ask directly for the things that she liked, but manoeuvred ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... being in a fit state to receive any body," proceeded Lady Lundie. "But I had a motive for wishing to speak to you when you next came to my house. I failed to treat a proposal you made to me, a short time since, in a friendly and neighborly way. I beg you to understand that I regret having forgotten ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... in a thousand others, 'truth lies at the bottom of the well;' and if she be not now found and consulted, to the exclusion of every prejudice, and the disregard of every petty little interest and sinister motive, it will be ill ten years hence with the Free Church of Scotland in her character as an educator. Her safety rests, in the present crisis, in the just and the true, and in the just and the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... more than sufficient for the service on board. To work the jangada along the windings of the river and between the hundreds of islands and islets which lay in its course required fully as many as were taken, for if the current furnished the motive power, it had nothing to do with the steering, and the hundred and sixty arms were no more than were necessary to work the long boathooks by which the giant raft was to be ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... pray you to ask yourselves the question, if it be true that Christ died because He would, why was it that He would die? If because He chose, what was it that determined His choice? And there are but two answers, which two are one. The divine motive that ruled His life is doubly expressed: 'I must do the will of My Father,' and 'I must ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... unhappy Italian campaign of 1799: at all events he had done enough to crown his own name with unrivalled splendour, and to show that the French troops were once more what they had used to be—when he was in the field to command them. He had another motive for closing with the propositions of General Melas. It was of urgent importance to regain Genoa, ere an English army, which he knew was on its voyage to that port, could reach ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... achieved unity and quality of tone, a value in itself, which I referred to at the beginning of these remarks. What I mean by this is that the interest created, and the expression of that interest, are things kept, as to kind, genuine and true to themselves. The appeal, the fidelity to the prime motive, is, with no little art, strained clear (even as silver is polished) in a degree answering—at least by intention—to the air of beauty. There is an awkwardness again in having thus belatedly to point such features out; but in that wrought appearance of animation and harmony, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Liberty which he frankly allows to others, of rejecting his Opinion, he is fully persuaded, that he is free from all Pride; But tho' he acts in this Circumstance without over-bearing, it has already appear'd, not to be the Effect of his Humility, but of a different Motive; a Pleasure which he takes in observing the Extravagancies of others, rather than their Discretion. But to demonstrate his Pride, besides the peremptory Manner in which he delivers his Opinion, and conducts ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... it is permitted all patriotic love of country, and substitutes in its place selfish greed and grasping avarice. Devotion to American citizenship for its own sake and for what it should accomplish as a motive to our nation's advancement and the happiness of all our people is displaced by the assumption that the Government, instead of being the embodiment of equality, is but an instrumentality through which especial and individual advantages are ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... at all; that all law was a convention based on no objective truth; and that the only valid right was the natural right of the strong to rule. It was into this chaos of sceptical opinion that Plato was born; and it was the desire to meet and subdue it that was the motive of his philosophy. Like Aristophanes, he traced the root of the evil to the decay of religious belief; and though no one, as we have seen, was more trenchant than he in his criticism of the popular faith, no one, on the other hand, was more convinced of the necessity of some form of religion ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... it as the most likely mode of averting destruction, as men have often been known, under the influence of fear, to confess crimes of which it was afterward proved they could not have been guilty. If this was his motive, it was of no avail. The four persons accused, after a very informal trial, in which nothing was really proved against them, were condemned, apparently to please the king, and were ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... to mean Antonio Tiexera than any other woman on earth, for within Baylor's sacred precincts she had been reduced to that condition to which, when a woman arrives, men call her a Magdalene. If this was the motive that prompted his slayer, I ask why he did not appeal to the unwritten law sooner; he who appeals to it must do so at the first information has been conveyed to him that the wrong has been done and he cannot wait for months and then use it as a defense, and ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... urgent case, she went on to other cases, training herself, learning to take his place wherever she could. She thought to come closer to him in this way, but she suspected that he understood her motive, that her work did not seem quite sincere to him. She was looking ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... stores in order to stop her charities, with instant Irish quickness and generosity, she sells her soul for a great price to the demons, in order to save her people here and hereafter. Such a tremendous sacrifice, however, is not permitted. Because of the purity of her motive, armed angels save her soul in the last impressive act. Supernatural powers, both pagan and Christian, participate in the play. Spirits haunt the woods, enter the peasants' cottages, and cast spells on the inhabitants. The ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the face and brought a firm fist resolutely down upon the table before him. Robespierre paused a while ere he replied; he was eying the other man keenly, trying to read if behind that earnest, frowning brow there did not lurk some selfish, ulterior motive along with that demand ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... densely crowded spheres, the systems beyond systems, clusters beyond clusters, and universes beyond universes, all brilliantly glittering with various coloured light, all wheeling and swaying, floating and circling round some distant, unknown, motive, centre-point, in the pauseless measures of a perpetual dance of joy, keeping time and tune with most ecstatic harmony, and producing upon the enthralled mind the not imaginary ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... I said; "and I could not quite understand the motive of your question. It is certain now that we have got ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... worthy the mantle of an illustrious father, was also retained. There was something about the case that inspired me to the utmost of which I was capable. There was no circumstantial evidence against the prisoner. He had frankly owned to shooting the man. The issue rested upon his motive for the deed. What was the provocation? True, Belt may have threatened his life; but Belt was a drunkard, and who attached any importance ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... cause of gravity be true. Indeed, Professor Poynting is now engaged in searching for such a crystal, which, if discovered, will upset the second law of thermo-dynamics. I merely mention this to show that science is on the track of concealed motive powers derived from the ether, and we cannot now tell what the engines of the future will be like. For ought we know, the time is coming when there will be a regular mail service between the earth and Mars or Venus, cheap trips ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... undulating velvet lawns are abhorrence to me; but I am not thinking of myself at all when I say that I think it would be well for us to return to our rooms in town. I wish to do so for quite another motive. In the first place, I have got to take care of you, mother; you must ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... a spring in the bosom of every Christian, which throws a joy into his heart whenever he meets a fellow-christian during his pilgrimage here below. I found the old negro to be an eminent Christian, and we were soon acquainted. I inquired what motive induced him, at that hour of the day, to visit these tombs. Instead of answering my question directly he gave me the following account of himself, in ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... opened, and the rooms lighted up for the reception of company. I won considerably; and night after night found me at the table—for avarice is insatiable; but my good luck left me: and then the same motive induced me to return, with the hope of winning ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... radicalism of my honorable friend. Now, sir, what is the sincerity of this proposition? What is the motive of my honorable friend in introducing it? Is it to perfect this bill? Is it to vindicate a principle in which he believes? Not a bit of it. It is the old device of the enemy—if you want to defeat a measure, make it as hateful and odious and absurd as possible and you have done it. That is the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... care for that. I want to know who's got 'em. And I tell you what we want—what we all here want, Mr. Bucket. We want more painstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If George the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice, and was set on. You know what I mean as well ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... me the longing tear." Then Lakshman, with his soul on fire, Spake breathing fast these words of ire: "Say, for what sin, for what offence Was royal Rama banished thence? He is the cause, the king: poor slave To the light charge Kaikeyi gave. Let right or wrong the motive be, The author of our woe is he. Whether the exile were decreed Through foolish faith or guilty greed, For promises or empire, still The king has wrought a grievous ill. Grant that the Lord of all saw fit To prompt the deed and ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Boer is of the opinion that both the Norse and the German versions have forgotten the original connection between the two stories, and that this connection was nothing more nor less than the common motive of the treasure. The same treasure, which causes Hagen to murder Siegfried, causes his own death in turn through the greed of Attila. There was originally, according to Boer, no question of revenge, except ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... think it, my child; but it is no harm to have your attention directed to the question. In all such matters, keep your action pure; let every thing be done for Christ, and then it will be all right. For instance, Matilda, when the real motive is self, or when there is no higher at work, one is easily tempted to do too much in a given case; to indulge one's self with great effects and astonishing liberality; when, if it were simply for Christ, one would be moderate and simple and prudent, ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... our port after the ladies had left the table, I began to wonder why the grey-eyed master-crook, whom not a soul suspected, was so eager to ingratiate himself with Edward Blumenfeld. The motive was, however, not far to seek. Most men who are personal friends of millionaires manage to extract some little point of knowledge which, if used in the right way and with discretion, will often result in considerable ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... eyes is always a shock, even to the most sophisticated sitter. To Paul it was uncanny. He had often seen his own reflection and was familiar with his own appearance, but this was the first time that he had looked at himself impersonally. The sketch was vivid, the likeness excellent; the motive, the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... an examination of the more subtle and plausible case for psychological determinism. A very large number of our actions are due to some motive. There you have it, says the psychological determinist. Your so-called Freedom of the Will is a fiction; in reality it is merely the strongest motive which prevails and you imagine that you "freely willed it." But then we must ask him to ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... Don Pedro obstinately, while the Professor muttered his approval, "but we cannot be certain on that point. No one—I agree with the Professor in this—would have risked his neck to steal a mere mummy, therefore the motive for the committal of the crime must have been the emeralds. Only Vasa knew of their existence outside myself and my dead father. He, therefore, must be the assassin. I shall hunt for him, and, when I find him, ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... securities), and also a general assignment by which he became the owner of Rice's entire estate. Thus upon Rice's death Patrick had every possible variety of document necessary to possess himself of the property. Jones took nothing under any of these fraudulent instruments. Hence Patrick's motive in desiring the death of Rice is the foundation stone of the case against him. But that Patrick desired and would profit by Rice's death in no way tends to establish that Rice did not die a natural death. ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... idea that the chief motive of her acceptance had been the hope that she might find him among the company. He did what he could to soothe her, and having made a promise to call upon her, he bade her good-by, happily ignorant of the interpretation which she who had suddenly sprung uppermost in his ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... replying, for Constance's increasing feverishness put him on his guard, and impelled him to seek the motive of such a strange application on the part of one who was as a rule so proud and so discreet. What could be happening? Why did she strive to provoke confidential revelations which might have far-reaching effects? Then, as ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... or two superposed surfaces of the biplane, these slats being fixed in a steel frame so that the whole machine rather resembled a Venetian blind. A steam engine giving about 9 horse-power provided the motive power for the six-foot diameter propeller which drove the machine. As it was not possible to put a passenger in control as pilot, the machine was attached to a central post by wire guys and run round ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... Liberty street, as far as Nassau. On reaching the corner they saw their unconscious victim at his usual place. It was rather a public place for an assault, and both boys would have hesitated had they not been incited by a double motive—the desire of gain ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... gone to the end of the world to bring you here, for I know you. You are a gallant gentleman; you were one of the first to enter Denain, and you took Albemarle. You were fortunate enough not to leave half your jaw there, as I did in Italy. You were right, for it would have been a further motive for taking away your regiment, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... poor Roese was discovered and arrested. He had been seized at the Belgian frontier. A court-martial was quickly summoned, and during the trial it became apparent that the motive which alone had driven him to desertion had been the brutal maltreatment to which his master, Borgert, had subjected him. The court regarded that, however, as a mitigating circumstance of such slight value that ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... till he had lain a month in prison; and that has furnished the motive of the person who advised you to conceal yourself! A month in prison! Good heavens! Agricola, think of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... "Is it a religious motive? Do your principles revolt from the amusements which are now before you? Tell me candidly, Ellen. You know nothing displeases me so much as mystery? I can forgive everything else, for then I know our relative positions, and am satisfied you are not going far wrong; but when ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... Neither have I a plea that the insults of man have driven me hence: and let this be your consoling reflection—that I have not fled to offer more daring insults to them by a proffered prostitution of that virtue which I have always been taught to preserve and revere. The motive is truly important; and when I divulge it my sole ambition and delight shall be to make an expiatory sacrifice for ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... prejudiced against him. What did he want there? It was surely some sinister motive impelled him. He was probably watching for an opportunity to gobble up the goldfish. We took his part, however, and strenuously defended his moral character, and patronized him in all ways. We gave ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... proportions almost superhuman, and to cast upon their faces a gravity that hardly belongs to this world; and it may, perhaps, help us to bring them and their work somewhat nearer to the plane of natural human life and motive, and into a light that is as the light of reality, if, turning to the daily memoranda made at the time by one of their number, we can see how merrily, after all, nay, with what flowing feasts, with what convivial communings, passed those days and nights of preparation for the difficult ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... not, however, probable, that the umpires, anxious to do right, and having no motive to do wrong, would have sanctioned, without qualification, the claims of ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... of Rome' in three volumes, and other works, but his greatest celebrity has been given him by the enthusiastic love which his manly Christian character inspired in his pupils and acquaintances, furnishing as it did the master motive of 'Tom Brown at Rugby,' a book which is likely to hold the place it has taken next to 'Robinson Crusoe' among English classics for ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... morning, to shut all the doors and windows to keep the dust out, and to pull down the shades to keep the sun from fading the carpets. She thought, too, that neighbors were less likely to drop in if the house was closed up. She was one of those people who are stingy without motive or reason, even when they can gain nothing by it. She must have known that skimping the doctor in heat and food made him more extravagant than he would have been had she made him comfortable. He ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... indulging in these uncomfortable reflections, suddenly the little door in the wall, previously referred to, slid open, and revealed the old man who had first supplied him with food. To explain the motive of his present visit, it will be remembered that he was under a misapprehension in regard to the cause of Jack's confinement. He naturally supposed that our hero was acquainted with the unlawful practises of the gang of coiners with which ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... rights is also desired from the fear of oppression; a very important motive in the eighteenth century, when the great still had the power to be very oppressive at times. We have seen the treatment which Voltaire received at the hands of a member of one of the great families. Outrages still more flagrant appear to have been not uncommon in the reign of ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... hit upon the spring which set the whole thing going. Possibly the mechanism had got so rusty that it had refused to act at once. It had hung fire, and only after some hours had something or other set the imprisoned motive power free. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... which shows itself indeed in our good fortune, but still does not for ever desert us in our ill fortune. Nay, indeed, your fighting is to be on greater motives than those of the Jews; for although they run the hazard of war for liberty, and for their country, yet what can be a greater motive to us than glory? and that it may never be said, that after we have got dominion of the habitable earth, the Jews are able to confront us. We must also reflect upon this, that there is no fear of our suffering any incurable disaster in the present case; for those that ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... had all his life formed the basis of his thinking were to Ike and his fellows not so much unimportant as irrelevant; and as for the great spiritual verities which lay at the root of all Shock's mental and, indeed, physical activities, furnishing motive and determining direction, these to Ike were quite remote from all practical living. What had God to do with rounding up cattle, or broncho-busting, or horse-trading? True, the elemental virtues of justice, truth, charity, and ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... leader of its best thought. Everything he did and said manifested the serious, reverent love of excellence. He was ever grave, earnest, addressing himself only to the reason and conscience of his auditors. You will search his speeches in vain for an appeal to a base motive or an evil passion. He was remarkably independent in forming his judgments and inflexible in adhering to them on all grand and essential questions. His friend and Commander, General Thomas, whose stubborn courage ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... as though by the breaking of a spring. Their watches ticked off a few seconds of mind paralysis in which there was no expectancy or motive power, all action inhibited. Sight was all they used for those seconds. Leff spoke first, the only one among them whose thinking process ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... times and enjoy an intimate knowledge of the actual condition of human polity and intelligence at any given period. Through the long gallery or the thick portfolio thus presented to our eye we may trace the common thread of motive under the varying conditions of time and circumstance. This thread able hands ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... that M. de Lafayette declared to the captain that the ship belonged to him, and that if he offered the slightest resistance, he would take from him the command and give it to the mate. But as he soon discovered that the real motive of the captain's resistance was a cargo belonging to him of 8000 dollars, M. de Lafayette secured to him its full value upon his own private fortune, and thus succeeded in overcoming all his scruples. (Washington's ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... than ever the nature of the men he had to deal with. They were evidently the sort to stop at nothing, and Buck had moments of wondering whether or not he was proceeding in the right way to uncover the mystery of their motive. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... motive he made no attempt to explain even to himself, walked over and touched the chairman ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... had a twofold motive. In the first place, we wished to give to people of Irish birth or descent substantial reason for that pride of race which we know is in them, by placing in their hands an authoritative and unassailable array of facts as telling ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... do so," he informed her promptly. "I assure you this move on my part was not actuated by any mercenary motive, Mrs. Rose." ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... are never severely beaten in school; when quite intractable, notice is given to their parents, and they usually return in a more docile state. It sometimes happens that the boys are taken away by their parents, from one motive or another; but they find their way back again, and are received as ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the motive behind his apparent kindness, and the hopes she had just entertained only deepened the flood of resentment which swept over them. But she answered quietly and without apparent emotion: "That's unfortunate, as I was planning for ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Upanishads mix up ritual with physical and metaphysical theories in the most extraordinary fashion, their main motive deserves sympathy and respect. Their weakness lies in their inability to detach themselves (as the Buddha succeeded in doing) from a ritual which though elaborate was neither edifying nor artistic: they seem unable to see the great problems of existence except ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... pour oprer le bien plus promptement et plus efficacement." In fact Holbach's whole principle of life and action was to increase the store of human well being. And he did this without any religious motive whatsoever. As Julie says of Wolmar in La Nouvelle Helose, "Il fait le bien sans espoir de rcompense, il est plus vertueux, plus dsintress que nous." There are many recorded instances of Holbach's gracious benevolence. As he said to Helvetius, "Vous tes brouill ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... up the white limbs and contours of my models, and this had something to do with it, for hardly any colour shows off white flesh to better advantage, though pale blue in this matter runs it close; but this was not the prompting motive. Rather it was that in England where all is so cold and tame and grey, from morals to colours, I liked to surround myself with this glowing barbaric crimson, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... theory. What you have done, as I understand the matter," he proceeded deliberately, "is to put yourself in the murderer's place and advance a theory not only as to how the murder was actually committed, but as to the motive for that murder. It is, I might say, a remarkable piece of reconstruction," he spoke very deliberately, and swept away John Lexman's astonished interruption with a stern hand, "please wait and do not speak until I am out of hearing," ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... and scatter in all directions, make their way to small, isolated places, change their appearance as much as possible, and each shift for himself. To remain together increases the risk of capture for each and all. There must be some powerful motive to make them take such risks. Such men risk nothing except for money. But there are no banks here to be looted, no strangers to be waylaid in dark alleys, not even a blind beggar ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... may inquire parenthetically as to the motive which urges Mr. Laing to throw himself into the labours of the apostolate and to become such an active propagandist of agnosticism. We are told[27] that the enlightened should be "liberal and tolerant towards traditional ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... he is a pretty good fellow, as men go. But he is not half the man that I was at his age—or, rather, that I might have been, ef I had had sech a motive for bein' ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... courage—blending the bad points of character in the whites and Indians, without the good of either. The cruelty of the Indians had some show of palliating circumstances, in the steady encroachments of the whites upon them. Theirs was gratuitous, coldblooded, and without visible motive, except that they appeared to hate the race more inveterately for having fled from it. Yet Simon Girty, like the Indians among whom he lived, sometimes took the freak of kindness, nobody could divine why, and he once or ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... you do, and you are more than welcome," she replied, thinking, as she looked into the bright, handsome face, "He wants to please me now, but perhaps it will grow into a higher motive." ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... where he can take his choice between paying all his debts and being thus left penniless but honest; and paying his creditors nothing, or, at most, a quarter of their dues, and remaining rich enough to indulge in the luxury of a noble son-in-law, the only motive on whose part for such a marriage being, naturally, the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Evolution and its motive cause were the problems which "haunted" him for the next twenty years. The first step towards a possible solution was the "opening of a notebook for facts in relation to the origin of species" in 1837, two years ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... interrupting Galope-Chopine. "Why do you come here at this time of day? I am scarcely dressed. Let that peasant alone; he does not understand your tricks any more than I understand the motive of them. ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... with my story, friends. I am not telling you all this merely to satisfy your curiosity. I have what you call a motive in ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... attorney, "the thief was never found, and with the more important matter of the murder on our hands little attention was paid to the loss of the money. It was clear from the start that Robert Wood had nothing to do with it, because revenge, not robbery was his motive. But, what does all this mean ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... therefore. But I would not agree to this. The priest's crew of desperadoes—assuming Pavannes' suspicions to be correct—would wait some time, no doubt, to give the master of the house a chance to return, but would certainly attack sooner or later out of greed, if from no other motive. Then the lady's fate would at the best be uncertain. I was anxious myself to rejoin my brothers, and take all future chances, whether of saving our Louis, or escaping ourselves, with them. United we should be four good swords, ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... other man did or could do. He left to others to do what hundreds of others could do well enough. He contributed largely to the Government of his country, in the most trying period of our history, its motive and its direction. That is a pretty practical contribution to the voyage which furnishes to the steamship its engine and its compass. His figure will abide in history like that of St. Michael in art, an emblem of celestial purity, of celestial zeal, of celestial ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... to the average which in England is sentimentality. Compare, for instance, the admirable story "Boule de Suif," perhaps the best story which Maupassant ever wrote, with a story of somewhat similar motive—Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat." Both stories are pathetic; but the pathos of the American (who had formed himself upon Dickens, and in the English tradition) becomes sentimental, and gets its success by being sentimental; while the pathos of the Frenchman (who has formed himself ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of Courland, has a great knowledge of human nature, and hence I dare not contradict him," said Munnich, with a constrained laugh. "Your highness therefore recognizes the service that I, from whatever motive, have rendered you, and hence you will not ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... smoking ruins, and upon the blood, yet hardly dry, that stains the pavements of the Coelian. Julia may be right, though I am unwilling to believe it. Her judgment is entitled to the more weight in this severe decision, that it is ever inclined to the side of a too favorable opinion of character and motive. You know her nature too well, to believe her capable of exaggerating the faults of even the humblest. Yet, though such are her apprehensions, she manifests the same calm and even carriage as on the approach of more serious troubles ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... Charudatta's friend, Maitreya, enters with the gems which Vasantasena had left to buy Charudatta's son a toy cart of gold. These gems fall to the floor during a scuffle between Maitreya and Sansthanaka. In view of Charudatta's poverty, this seems to establish the motive for the crime, and Charudatta ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... hurt, which is in reality the only condition of growth. If we feel our failures, if we see, every now and then, how unjustly, unkindly, perversely we have behaved, we try to be different next time. Perhaps the motive is not a very high one, because it is to avoid similar suffering; but we improve a little ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... knew that he might safely trust them upon the prairies; and, in truth, it was with a feeling of pride, rather than anxiety, that he consented to the expedition. But there was still another motive that influenced him—perhaps the most powerful of all. He was inspired by the pride of the naturalist. He thought of the triumph he would obtain by sending such a rare contribution to the great museum ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... is, where is the possibility of its action (action or work being the direct consequence of desire)? If it is answered that the universe is the Deity's lila (mere sport, as some schools of philosophy assert), then, as every sport is ascribable to some motive of happiness, what can be the happiness of the Deity, who, as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of electro-motive pairs of plates produces results other than those due to the mere difference of their independent actions (1011. 1045.), I devised another form of apparatus, in which the action of acid and alkali might be more directly compared. A cylindrical glass cup, about two inches deep ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... rapidly that a movement for annexation, were it once started in certain districts of Canada, might be irresistible. The harsh and powerful face of the speaker became transfigured; one divined in him some hidden motive which was driving him to contest and belittle the main currents and sympathies about him. He spoke as a prophet, but the faith which envenomed the prophecy lay far out ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... constituted as to labor without motive. With some the motive is high, with others it is low and grovelling. The teacher must be himself elevated, or he cannot elevate others. The pupil may, indeed, advance to a higher sphere than that occupied by the teacher; but it is only because he draws from ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... in which horses constitute the means of communication, the motive power for the farm and the most easily marketable form of property, the stealing of horses was the commonest sort of crime; and where the population was so sparse and unorganized, and unprovided with means of sending news abroad, horse-stealing, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... moment. Certain that his horse had not entered the shed of its own accord, he attributed the event which had taken place to the spite of the brute-tamer; but he sought in vain for the motive of this wretch's animosity, and he reflected with dismay, that his cause, however just, would depend on the good or bad humor of a judge dragged from his slumbers and who might be ready ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... are meant to show that he is heroic. Most of Pip's actions are meant to show that he is not heroic. The study of Sydney Carton is meant to indicate that with all his vices Sydney Carton was a hero. The study of Pip is meant to indicate that with all his virtues Pip was a snob. The motive of the literary explanation is different. Pip and Pendennis are meant to show how circumstances can corrupt men. Sam Weller and Hercules are meant to show how heroes ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... understand the word "economic" if one would read these pages aright. Economic matters are not those of mere money. The word has a greater meaning than has the word finance. It connotes poverty as truly as wealth, and is greater than both. The economic motive animates men in the quest of those vital satisfactions which the individual craves, and the social group requires. Professor John Bates Clark has somewhere described this motive as the desire to preserve the present ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... note in my mind of what I had seen, and I was curious to mark if this change in domestic matters would continue. To my surprise, and, I am ashamed to say, not altogether to my gratification, I found that it did continue. I was suspicious as to the motive and reason for this change, and therefore not satisfied. So I took the improvement in my poor wife's temper and conduct very surlily; the real fact being, I now believe, that I was inwardly vexed by being forced to feel that she was showing by her ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... increased by the disappearance and diminution of all other distinctions. Amongst aristocratic nations money only reaches to a few points on the vast circle of man's desires—in democracies it seems to lead to all. The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, either as a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do: this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness, and soon renders the survey of them exceedingly wearisome. This perpetual recurrence of the same passion is monotonous; the peculiar methods by which this passion seeks ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... turn to shake his head. "Your guess is as good as mine. There are a lot of angles to this case none of us understand. It looks deliberate, but where's the motive?" ...
— The Ultroom Error • Gerald Allan Sohl
... would be more profitable; those who support the objections of the 'Crisis' that Hampton is not a university—all these critics fail to understand the new philosophy of Hampton and its dominant human motive. It would be a great mistake if, as appears to be hinted here, any concessions should be made to the demand of these last critics, whose aims would destroy the whole idea of Hampton, and its value as a world experiment. The author of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... San Francisco is the first, though it will not be the last, to subject its architecture to a definite artistic motive. How this came about it is the object of the present book to tell,—how the Exposition was planned as an appropriate expression of America's joy in the completion of the Canal, and how its structures, commemorating the peaceful meeting of the nations through that great ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... sat by his one companion, the little fire, all that long night, trying to fight back the imaginary horrors that menaced him, one constant thought weighed heaviest upon his feelings, and that was that some uncomprehended motive force was shaping his every action and asserting itself more and more. What evil was in store for him, or what fate was to come, was a greater burden than all the rest. How long that night was no pen can describe, and when the first faint tinge of morning ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... that can assail a human heart, none transcends that of learning the worthlessness of those we love; and to lay this burden, which has crushed and crazed the strongest natures, upon the tender heart of a child, was little less than murderous. Nor can the motive assigned justify an act so cruel; since modern morality increasingly teaches that the means must justify themselves, as well as the end. In spite of these odious revelations, the child felt that her love for her mother was undiminished, and a pitying comprehension of the natural differences ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... seen a vast extension of our empire in Africa. And though the love of gold has been the great motive in our advance into the Dark Continent, our rule is sure to prove a benefit to the native peoples. Vast tracts of land rich in mineral wealth, and well adapted both for pasture and cultivation, have been brought under the sway of Britain. Commerce has been ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... into a wailing melody of passionate despair beneath which I seemed to hear the relentless tramp of countless marching feet with, ever and anon, a far, faint echo of that first grand and stately motive. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... certainly have bad complexions, and not many of them know how to dress their hair. Nine-tenths of them advocate reforms aimed at the alleged lubricity of the male-the single standard, medical certificates for bridegrooms, birth-control, and so on. The motive here, I believe, is mere rage and jealousy. The woman who is not pursued sets up the doctrine that pursuit is offensive to her sex, and wants to make it a felony. No genuinely attractive woman has any such desire. She likes masculine admiration, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... countrymen. As we observed in the foregoing chapter, in the Orient, as in Syria and Egypt, Jews and Mohammedans sometimes allow their children to attend the English schools, and to a large extent from a worldly motive. The Syrian or Arab who can speak English is in demand as a dragoman, an accountant, an office clerk in the bazaar, or a camp-servant or boatman. Indeed a great revolution is now taking place all through the East. Nearly ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... feel a vehement hatred for the clergy, and for our holy religion, which has confounded them with the spirits of darkness—a grand motive, as it appears, of displeasure and offence to them. The sight of a surplice, the sound of bells, scares them away. The popular tales of all Europe would, meanwhile, tend to support the church, in viewing them as maleficent genii. As in Britanny; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... nothing more, therefore, than a (58) splendid establishment had been the object of his pursuit, he had attained to the summit of his wishes. But when we find him persevering in a plan of aggrandizement beyond this period of his fortunes, we can ascribe his conduct to no other motive than that of outrageous ambition. He projected the building of a new Forum at Rome, for the ground only of which he was to pay 800,000 pounds; he raised legions in Gaul at his own charges: he promised such entertainments to the people as had never been known at Rome from the foundation ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... natural, all lost themselves in conjectures. Tadeo gave his particular version, which according to him came from a reliable source: Simoun had been assaulted by some unknown person in the old Plaza Vivac, [55] the motive being revenge, in proof of which was the fact that Simoun himself refused to make the least explanation. From this they proceeded to talk of mysterious revenges, and naturally of monkish pranks, each one relating the exploits of the curate ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the griefs of womanhood, the mother who had influence with, yea, authority over, the divine Son—what place did Friar Laurence find for her in his teaching? The mere imagination of a religion without Mary, was like the thought of chaos. Hitherto she had been the motive-power of all piety to Agnes Stone. A sermon without our Lady! It was shocking even ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... sure, this man might have come to Wroote merely for his money. Yet (as she firmly believed) it was he who had written the letter which in effect had led to her running away. He might have used the debt to-day as a pretext. His motive, she felt certain, was curiosity to learn what ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... me that promises, oaths and engagements have been made, as a motive to draw us to assist in the wars, that Privileges of Parliament and Liberties of Subjects should be preserved, and that all Popery and Episcopacy and Tyranny should be rooted out. And these promises are not performed. Now there is an opportunity to ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... into our purposes and measures must stop. The Holy League of Europe, itself, was formed without inquiring of the United States, whether it would or would not give umbrage to them. The fear of giving umbrage to the Holy League of Europe was urged as a motive for denying to the American nations the acknowledgment of their independence. The Congress and the administration of that day consulted their rights and their duties, not their fears. The United States must still, as ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... but a good motive is no excuse for a bad means. They wanted to get along too quickly. They are pig-headed, exalted, unpractical to a man. I do not mention the women, because when women meddle in politics they make fools of themselves, even in England. These Nihilists would have been all very well if they had been ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... woman, who will endure a trial on Christian principles to far better purpose than many of your rich, your great men!—Your great man is the head of a numerous family, and has great influence in the corner. That, no doubt, is a strong motive for him, if he is a Christian, to be exceeding wary in his choice: if he is so, no doubt his Christian judgment, as far as is consistent with spiritual liberty, is to have its own weight. But while Christ's kingdom is not of this ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... be gained by the inspection. If the cause of the Union really was at stake, the springs of motive were hidden behind the smiling countenance of the Machiavellian WOLMER. The only thing to do, and it is quite foreign to the habits of OLD MORALITY, was to meet guile with guile. WOLMER's question, plain enough as it appeared in print on the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... "Her address? Ah?—well—I wish I could oblige you, monsieur, but I cannot, and I will tell you why; whenever I myself asked her for her address, she always evaded the inquiry. I thought—I may be wrong—but I THOUGHT her motive for doing so, was a natural, though mistaken reluctance to introduce me to some, probably, very poor abode; her means were narrow, her origin obscure; she lives somewhere, doubtless, in the ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... of these mountains, however, were really of importance to the botanical motive of the expedition. Along the side of the Camanti, where the yellow Garote leaked downward in a rocky ravine, the Bolivians were again successful. They brought to Marcoy specimens of half a dozen cinchonas, for him to sketch, analyze and decorate with Latin names. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... the highest rank, family, and for tune" (and here the name and titles of Lothair were accurately given), "like many of the scions of the illustrious and influential families of Britain, was impelled by an irresistible motive to enlist as a volunteer in the service of the pope, when the Holy Father was recently-attacked by the secret societies of atheism. This gallant and gifted youth, after prodigies of valor and devotion, had fallen at Mentana in the sacred cause, and was given up for ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... commit suicide upon his domestic happiness; for nothing so effectually disturbs the tranquillity of a family, as open opposition of religious creeds. Women become religious, in the every-day acceptation of the word, from any motive rather than a conviction of the truth or reasonableness of any particular creed. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to define the motive that carries women into the pale of any particular church. I have heard of an old lady, who was very anxious to be permitted ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... mouth. "Do you remember that afternoon of ours, the very first of them, when you brought home my note-books and found me asleep on the couch in our old back parlor? Do you remember how you told me that one's desires were the only motive power he had? One couldn't ride anywhere, you said, except on the backs of his own passions? Well, it was a funny thing—I got to wondering afterward what my desires were, and it seemed I hadn't any. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... when it was certain that he had not a town which was not some hundred miles distant from the coast. To prevent the disclosure of this fact, which must have taken place, had Clapperton proceeded in that direction, might be an additional motive for refusing his sanction. In short, it was finally announced to Clapperton, that no escort could be found to accompany him on so rash an enterprise, and that he could return to England only ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... I will know the cause of my wretched fate, and will be at rest. My pistols lie loaded by my side—I shall die to-night. To-morrow, twelve awestruck and trembling men will come and look at me. They will ask each other: 'What could have been his motive for the rash act.' Rash! my face will be calmer than theirs, for my struggles in this life will be over; and I shall have gained—perhaps knowledge, perhaps oblivion, but certainly victory. And to-night, as the clock ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he might encourage us in the Pursuit after Knowledge, and engage us to search into the Wonders of his Creation; for every new Idea brings such a Pleasure along with it, as rewards any Pains we have taken in its Acquisition, and consequently serves as a Motive to put ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... what was in reserve for me. I presume he thought, that since he had but a single year in which to complete his work, the sooner he began, the better. Perhaps he thought that by coming to blows at once, we should mutually better understand our relations. But to whatever motive, direct or indirect, the cause may be referred, I had not been in his possession three whole days, before he subjected me to a most brutal chastisement. Under his heavy blows, blood flowed freely, and wales were left on my back ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... daughter Lettice to such risk; while her eldest son, though without him she could not proceed, would be drawn away from his studies at Cambridge and from the career he had chosen; but her children were unanimous in their desire to go to Virginia, and Lettice declared that even without such a motive she ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... nineteenth might safely follow. The population has become too large, employment has become too complicated and fluctuating, to admit of external control; while, in default of control, the relapse upon self-interest as the one motive principle is certain to ensue, and when it ensues is absolute in its operations. But as, even with us, these so-called ordinances of nature in time of war consent to be suspended, and duty to his country becomes with every good citizen a higher motive of action than the advantages which he may gain ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... imagined that Chang Hsun is actuated by a patriotic motive? Surely despotism is no longer tolerated in this stage of modern civilization. Such a scheme can only provoke universal opposition. Five years have already passed since the friendly Powers accorded their recognition of the Chinese Republic and if we think we could afford to amuse ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... possession and of the project are on a par, there is no motive for a change. But in the present case, perhaps, they are not upon a par, and the difference is in favor of the possession. It does not appear to me that the expenses of those whom you are going to expel do in fact take a course so directly ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the dog-boy never does mischief for its own sake. He would as soon do his duty for its own sake. The motive is not sufficient. You shall not find him refusing to do any mischief which tends to his own advantage. I grieve to say it, for I have leanings towards the dog-boy, but there is in him a vein of unsophisticated depravity, which issues from ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... with true Puritan scorn.) That has taught me to set very little store by the goodness that only comes out red hot. What I did last night, I did in cold blood, caring not half so much for your husband, or (ruthlessly) for you (she droops, stricken) as I do for myself. I had no motive and no interest: all I can tell you is that when it came to the point whether I would take my neck out of the noose and put another man's into it, I could not do it. I don't know why not: I see myself as a fool for my pains; ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... ruinous effects of Mississippi, South Sea, and such schemes were not owing to an abuse of paper money or credit, in making it a means for idleness and gaming, instead of a motive and ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... "I have no motive but one in my discourse with you,—friendship." And casting her eyes ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... work, save "The Journal to Stella," the animating motive seems to have been to confound his enemies; and according to the well-known line in that hymn sung wherever the Union Jack flies, we must believe this to be a perfectly justifiable ambition. But occasionally on his pages we find gentle words of wisdom that were meant ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... any motive that the lad Ericson might have in committing this crime? Was there any enmity ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... first is that designated VOLUNTARY: volition, originated in the cerebrum and spontaneous in its acts, extends its influence along the spinal marrow and the motor nerves in a DIRECT LINE to the voluntary muscles. The SECOND is that of RESPIRATION: like volition, the motive influence in respiration passes in a DIRECT LINE from one point of the nervous system to certain muscles; but as voluntary motion seems to originate in the cerebrum, so the respiratory motions originate in the medulla oblongata: like the voluntary motions, the motions of respirations ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... various sculptures illustrated in the work. While one may not agree with the author in his arrangement and may differ from his interpretation, it must be admitted that the book contains interesting information and is a bold step in the right direction. It is a portraiture of freedom as a motive for artistic expression and an effort to symbolize this desire for liberation to animate the citizenry in making. It brings to light numerous facts as to how the thought of the Negro has been dominant ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... that I might have what you thought was my due. You always did that, from girlhood. I might have known no other woman could have done what you have done, no such woman as you, Lyn, without a mighty motive; but you ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... that surprise you? Do you think a young gentleman would come to Font Abbey three nights in a week without a motive?" ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... said Mrs. Dunmore, "will betray to you the motive for any unwonted interest in your precious child; but were it simply a humane act, the thought of having performed one's duty is a sufficient recompense—still, I ask another, and that is, that your little ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... threatened. He had been acidly murderous. He had a motive. He had the opportunity. He knew where Paliser would be. He had been supplied with a seat in that box. The hand was his. It was a clear case. That was obvious, particularly to Jones, who regarded the ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... middle rhyme, can scarcely be of extreme antiquity. Probably, in the original poem, the dead return to rebuke the extreme grief of the Mother, but the poem is perhaps really more affecting in the absence of a didactic motive. Scott obtained it from an old woman in West Lothian. Probably the reading "fashes," (troubles), "in the flood" is correct, not "fishes," or "freshes." The mother desires that the sea may never cease to be troubled till her sons return ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... perhaps than ever before, in the two water-colours "Sidonia von Bork" and "Clara von Bork," painted in 1860. These little masterpieces have a directness of execution rare with the artist. In powerful characterization, combined with a decorative motive, they rival Rossetti at his best. In June of this year Burne-Jones was married to Miss Georgiana Macdonald, two of whose sisters were the wives of Sir E. Poynter and Mr J.L. Kipling, and they settled in Bloomsbury. Five years later he moved to Kensington ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the sum of $306,122; and similar results would follow the comparison between the small and the large States throughout the Union, thus realizing to the small States an advantage which would be doubtless as unacceptable to them as a motive for incorporating the principle in any system which would produce it as it would be inconsistent with the rights and expectations of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of course, quite unofficially, and with no other motive than pure philanthropy, but I may venture to hope that my representations, though only those of a private individual, will carry more than ordinary weight, inasmuch as there is perhaps nobody whose information and experience ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... throbbing violently. This time she was alone; and how acutely she now felt the strength of that support which, from unreflecting fear rather than any reasonable motive, she had thrust aside! She looked around her, almost hoping to see him. But there was no one there ... no one except an old lady in black, standing beside ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... high counsel, etc. Such was the advice given to the Emerson boys by their aunt, Miss. Mary Moody Emerson: "Scorn trifles, lift your aims; do what you are afraid to do; sublimity of character must come from sublimity of motive." Upon her monument are inscribed Emerson's words about her: "She gave high counsels. It was the privilege of certain boys to have this immeasurably high standard indicated to their childhood, a blessing which nothing ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... reserve, behind which he had taken shelter, between himself and the German: it was impossible to resist the impetuous good humor of the man whose eyes were so honest and affectionate and so free from any ulterior motive. Every now and then Christophe managed to squeeze a little confidence out of his neighbor. Elsberger was a queer man, full of courage, yet apathetic, sorrowful, and yet resigned. He had energy enough to bear a life of difficulty with dignity, but not enough ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... have spoke, and as you say, and as I meant, not brilliantly. Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, is a very favourite maxim of mine. Perhaps, as this is one of my great undertakings, it is more owing to you, than to any other motive. I know you will laugh at me, for saying so, but I really believe it. I said a few words, too, upon your Morpeth business, which encouraged me perhaps to do afterwards, what I did with ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... to pretend that it was all done from an evil motive, and you offer me the rewards of guilt. Do you think I'm a murderer that you can offer me the price of blood? Have you any shame? You come here to ask me to marry you, knowing that I am married already—here of all places, in the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... It was exactly to prevent the inevitable consequences of Alice Mellen's knowing the story that he was seeking to extort the promise from Carew. To protect his motive, however, he took ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Before the guests depart the skulls are broken into small pieces and a fragment is presented to each male guest, who carries it home and is thus often reminded of the valor of the takers. [52] A study of Tinguian beliefs furnishes an additional religious motive for the taking of heads, but with the people of Kadalayapan and Kaodanan revenge and the desire for renown ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... subject of remark that tigers, without any motive that we can even guess at, avoid certain parts of the country which, to us, seem to be equally favourable to them. This is remarkably so in my district in Mysore, parts of which, apparently quite as suitable for tigers as other ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... he began with his usual formality, "I asked you to come here from a very selfish motive, I fear. I do not think you need to be assured once more of my feelings; but, as you are leaving so soon, I felt that I could not let you go without asking you to tell me—have I any reason to hope that you will ever come to ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... believed that my visit to Sherm was for the mere purpose of visiting the tomb of the saint. I had assigned this motive to Ayd, who was himself a Mezeine, telling him that I had made a vow to thank the saint for his protection in our encounter with the robbers; Ayd would otherwise have been much astonished at my proceeding to this distance without ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... a motive for helping me," Ambrose insisted. "I thought first of Simon Grampierre. He's under arrest. Then I asked to be allowed to see Germain, his son. The inspector wouldn't have it. I gave up hope after that. But the sight of you makes me want to defend myself still. I thought maybe you would have ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... thing yet to be accomplished!—or I will confess to be no prophet: in these days of electricity, concentrated and accumulative after the fashion of M. Faure, aided perhaps by some lighter gas, some condensed form of tamed dynamite,—these elevating and motive powers being helped by exquisite mechanism either as attached to the human form (if the flier be an athlete) or quickening a vehicle with flapping wings impelled by electricity, in which he might ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a misnomer for the extraordinary establishment, studio and domicile combined, at which we dismounted. It is not a hut, and neither in architectural motive nor the artistic proclivities of its inmates has it aught to do with the centuries when our English tongue was otherwise written or spoken than it is to-day. Ye Hutte is a vast, barn-like building, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... tried to get us into trouble. The little woman in black!" she exclaimed suddenly. "I knew she had a motive in ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... finish. In the Royal Academy tondo the Madonna is seated more to the side of the circle, and is in profile; the Child reclines upon her knee, clinging to her arm, startled but interested by the little bird St. John has brought to show Him (a favourite motive with Italian artists). The head and shoulders of the Madonna and the torso of the Child Jesus are the only parts that are near completion, yet the whole group is so much there that we do not ask ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... What was the motive of these remarks? Ford found himself possessed of a strange curiosity to know. He pressed as closely as he dared to the open door, but for the moment nothing more was said. In the silence that followed he began again to wonder how he could best make his ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... knew nothing. It was you who told me this morning.... Could I have suspected? My poor husband ... and that dear Edmond who loved me ... and whom I loved! Why should I have killed them? Tell me that! Why don't you answer?" she demanded. "People don't commit murder without a motive.... Well?... Well?... Answer me, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... into your ports. It seems to me that it will soon end in your having no religion left at all: God after God will be expatriated in the same manner, and then I suppose you will supply their place by deifying their kidnappers, thus rewarding sacrilege with sacrifice. If this is not your motive in honouring Orestes and Pylades, I shall be glad to know what other service they have rendered you, that you should change your minds about them, and admit them to divine honours. Your ancestors did their best to offer them up to Artemis: you offer up victims ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... conditions fair, equal, arid applicable to all. But in regard to our neighbors our situation is different. It is impossible for the European Governments to interfere in their concerns, especially in those alluded to, which are vital, without affecting us; indeed, the motive which might induce such interference in the present state of the war between the parties, if a war it may be called, would appear to be equally applicable to us. It is gratifying to know that some of the powers with whom we enjoy a very friendly intercourse, and to whom these ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... moral worth. This was the backbone wanting in his character; and for this reason we fail to detect any steady sterling course of action through all the vicissitudes of his life. If he had a ruling motive it was capricious humour; at any rate it swayed him more than anything else. On one day he would laugh at what had annoyed him on the day preceding, or be delighted to-day at what he had greeted yesterday with irony. Nobody knew ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... aspirations of a gang of ignorant miners would differ widely from the desires of an assembly of college students, or of a coterie of metropolitan capitalists. Education, wealth, social standing, politics, religion, race, nationality, every motive that is likely to have weight with the audience should be taken into consideration. Remembering that he has to choose between such diverse emotions as ambition, fear, hatred, love, patriotism, sense of duty, honor, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... facilitated. I am aware that Herodotus states the conclusion of Psammetieus to have been in favor of a dialect of the Phrygian. But, beside the chance that a trial of this importance would hardly be blessed to a Pagan monarch whose only motive was curiosity, we have on the Hebrew side the comparatively recent investigation of James the Fourth of Scotland. I will add to this prefatory remark, that Mr. Sawin, though a native of Jaalam, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a half millions of pounds more than already granted, and proposed a further increase in the taxes. Mr. Disraeli opposed Mr. Gladstone's budget. He devised a scheme to borrow and thus increase the debt. He opposed the imposition of new taxes. Mr. Gladstone said: "Every good motive and every bad motive, combated only by the desire of the approval of honorable men and by conscientious rectitude—every motive of ease, comfort, and of certainty spring forward to induce a Chancellor of the Exchequer ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... his plodding neighbors would seem almost miraculous. He understood that the forces with which he was dealing were wellnigh infinite; and it was his delight to study them, to combine them, and make them his servants. It was his theory that the energy in nature was like a vast motive power, over which man could throw the belt of his skill and knowledge, and so produce results commensurate with the force of which he availed himself. There was, therefore, an unfailing zest in his work, and the majority of his labors ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... individuals of the most different stations and classes. This may be accounted for from wealth not being so all-important as in our social state; its influence in society is less where the majority are merely occupied in living agreeably on what they have, without motive or ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... I might have guessed it,' cried the millionaire. 'His motive is too plain! His wealth did not equal mine by several millions. The ransom which he demanded, and but for Tom here' (he indicated Merton) 'would now possess, exactly reversed our relative positions. Carrying on his father's ambition, he ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... and therefore remain undetected. But as soon as a time of disturbance begins these constraints grow weaker, and the rebel can give a free reign to his instincts. He then becomes the accredited leader of a movement. The motive of the revolution matters little to him; he will give his life indifferently for the red flag or the white, or for the liberation of a country which he has heard ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... application of capital in large quantities to farming, the improvements of the time being largely initiated by rich landowners whom Young praises rightly as public-spirited men who deserved well of their country, though Thorold Rogers attributes a meaner motive for the improvement of their estates, namely, their desire not to be outshone by the wealthy merchants.[367] They were often ably assisted by tenant farmers, many of whom were now men with considerable capital, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... replied; "no one regrets their escape more than I do; but I am almost equally annoyed by the fact that I cannot reach a satisfactory conclusion as to Pattmore's motive in having his wife's body carried off. Of course, if the coroner's men should have found the body gone, every one would suspect Pattmore of having had it removed. However, I propose to solve the mystery in some way. By the way, Mr. Tomlinson, when do ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... had a tendency to elevate me in my own estimation, and was no doubt a motive power to urge me on to success. But under the circumstances of not daring to make my identity known, I was unable to share in the glory that my egotism ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... over that night with his accustomed honesty, Ishmael came to the conclusion that it was the law of cause and effect, and not the law of reactions, which prompted his new stirrings, and he was as nearly right as any man may be about his own motive power. ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... achievements, or of such of them as were wrought in the presence of a thousand witnesses. Being of this sort they have no need of further testimony; the mere recital of them is sufficient, and they at once win credence. But now I will endeavour to reveal the excellence indwelling in his soul, the motive power of his acts, in virtue of which he clung to all things honourable ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... they found a piece of paper—a significant document, for it explained the motive for the crime. Kid Wolf read it and understood. It was written ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... were puzzled by what they saw. In the center of a broad, low room, stood a mass of great cog-wheels, chains and pulleys, all interlocked and seeming to form a huge machine; but there was no engine or other motive power to ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... French have so much reproached us, have been exceedingly pruned! Braddock is defeated and killed, by a handful of Indians and by the baseness of his own troops, who sacrificed him and his gallant officers. Indeed, there is some suspicion that cowardice was not the motive, but resentment at having been draughted from Irish regiments. Were such a desertion universal, could one but commend@it'@ Could one blame men who should refuse to be knocked on the head for sixpence a day, and for ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... surgeon, and knew what he, was about. His task over, he made up the fire, warmed some food, fed the old man, and helped his waning strength with the contents of his flask. 'At least you placed all my property in the dug-out before you set me adrift,' he said; 'may I ask your motive?' ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... a machine to discover the motive power, would you? But that is just what you are doing there with that brain. You are hoping by dissecting it to find the power that made it go, aren't you? And the power that ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... some who denounce ambition as wholly bad and to be avoided by all; but I think we ought to make a distinction between true and false ambition. The desire of superiority is an honorable motive, if it leads to honorable exertion. I will mention Napoleon as an illustration of false ambition, which is selfish in itself, and has brought misery and ruin, to prosperous nations. Again, there are some who are ambitious to dress better than their neighbors, ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... and his unfinished sermon by a long detour which led him over the shoulder of a hill overlooking the valley. He did not choose to examine his motive for avoiding the road along which Fanny Dodge would presently return. But as the path, increasingly rough and stony as it climbed the steep ascent, led him at length to a point from whence he could look down upon a toy village, arranged in stiff rows about a toy church, with its ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... Hugh go to Turriepuffit? His love to Margaret? No. A better motive even than that: — Repentance. Better I mean for Hugh as to the individual occasion; not in itself; for love is deeper than repentance, seeing that without love there can be no repentance. He had repented before; but now that ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Lafargue there argued that economic development is the sole determinant of progress, and pronounces in favor of economic determinism, thus reducing the whole of history and, consequently, the dominating human motives to but one elementary motive. Belfort Bax, the well-known English socialist writer, makes a very clever argument against the determinist position by comparing it with the attempts of the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers to reduce nature to one element. His remarks are so pertinent that a brief abstract of his argument is here ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... jubilations over these triumphs, but is a sober record of facts. It is a precious survival of the historical works compiled by the Jews before their dispersion from Palestine. Such works differ from those of Josephus and the Sibyl in their motive. They were not designed to win foreign admiration for Judaism, but to provide an accurate record for home use and inspire the Jews with hope amid the ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... her errand to our city, we are still satisfied it was out of no good motive, as birds of a feather will ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... in speaking. "Mr. Temple Temple Barholm and the person known as Mr. Strangeways have been searched for so far without result. In the meantime we realize that the more evidence we obtain that Mr. Temple Temple Barholm identified Strangeways and acted from motive, the more solid the foundation upon which Captain Palliser's conviction rests. Up to this point we have only his statement which he is prepared to make on oath. Fortunately, however, he on one occasion overheard something ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... will begin my tale: it is my last task, and I hope I have strength sufficient to fulfill it. I record no crimes; my faults may easily be pardoned; for they proceeded not from evil motive but from want of judgement; and I believe few would say that they could, by a different conduct and superior wisdom, have avoided the misfortunes to which I am the victim. My fate has been governed by necessity, a hideous necessity. It required hands stronger than mine; ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... Some while after I was settled at Selsey, King Ethelwalch and Queen Ebba ordered their people to be baptized. I fear I'm too old to believe that a whole nation can change its heart at the King's command, and I had a shrewd suspicion that their real motive was to get a good harvest. No rain had fallen for two or three years, but as soon as we had finished baptizing, it fell heavily, and they all said it ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... not in the least self-admiring; indeed, it was pretty to see how her imagination adorned her sister Celia with attractions altogether superior to her own, and if any gentleman appeared to come to the Grange from some other motive than that of seeing Mr. Brooke, she concluded that he must be in love with Celia: Sir James Chettam, for example, whom she constantly considered from Celia's point of view, inwardly debating whether it would be good for Celia to accept him. That he should be regarded as a suitor to herself ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... his public conduct. This was the first great step in Bruin's education; a step, alas! merely taught him by his fears. Had it sprung from higher sources, there would have been a chance of its doing permanent good; but what solid benefit can be reckoned on or attained which arises from such a motive? ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... and passing emotion—the ice, and the bank, and the foam of the immortal river—were shivered, and broken, and swallowed up in the awakening of its inward strength; when the call and claim of some divine motive had brought into visible being those latent forces and feelings which the spirit's own volition could not summon, nor its consciousness comprehend; which God only knew, and God only could awaken, the depth and the mystery of its peculiar and separating attributes. And so it is with external Nature: ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... not private individuals, but States, an important political consideration is added to the same motive of equity. The quality of the parties in this case gives a national importance to all their disputes; and the most trifling litigation of the States may be said to involve the peace of the whole ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... take Dad too seriously. He really believes Mr. Orcutt has it in for him, and he sees an ulterior motive in everything he does in a business way. But, really, the Orcutts are all right. There was some business deal, years and years ago, in which Dad fancied Mr. Orcutt tried to get the best of him, and he has never forgotten it. You see, ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... employment in the bringing up of young girls. The Catholic reaction which, aiming at a higher flight of ecstasy than was possible at that time even in Spain, had foolishly built a number of convents, Carmelite, Bernardine, and Capuchin, soon found itself at the end of its motive-powers. The girls of whom people got rid by shutting them up so strictly therein, died off immediately, and their swift decease led to frightful statements of the cruelty shown by their families. They perished, indeed, not by their excessive penances, but rather of heart-sickness ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... fact, was the head of a man of the sea; a youthful swimmer who had come up on her unseen—behind her till she had put about. The lad was swimming rapidly, though with a curious waste of motive power, and was so close that Miss Heth seemed to herself to be staring full into his face. His course was laid dead across her bows; for other reasons, too, his piratical intentions were instantly obvious to the girl ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... not an honest man, but an honest museum—a museum with some originality, and with some definite idea as to its sphere of work. Leaving out, of course, such complete and technical institutions as the Museum of Geology, the Museum of the College of Surgeons, and such institutions which really have a motive in view—steadfastly adhered to—I saw, then as now, that every provincial museum was nothing if left to its own devices, and, if "inspired," was, at the best, but a sorry and servile imitator of the worst ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... our chances of the desert. The first was dismissed as feeble, the second as useless, and the third as idiotic. Therefore the fourth remained, and though it was natural enough for me to wish to win distinction in the world of travel (and I daresay this was the motive that inspired me), surely it speaks well for them indeed, that Breaden and Massie ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... we be discovered? Justice always looks for a motive; how, then could they bring it home to us? They could only find out that a young lady adored by De Breulh had thrown him over ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... do they marry or are given in marriage, nor think that self-murder can help a man. What the end of all this tale may be does not yet appear; still I am certain that yonder Caleb will take no gain in hurrying down to death, unless indeed he did it from a nobler motive than he says, ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... What motive could I assign for my conduct? The truth must not be told. This would be equivalent to supplicating for a new benefit. It would more become me to lessen than increase my obligations. Among all my imaginations on this subject, the possibility of a mutual passion never ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... have been his motive for forsaking his sailors and two of his ablest officers? This is a problem which the most attentive perusal of Peron's ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... city that could never have been of any possible use to himself because he had been a crusty old bachelor who hated to have anyone near him. Gossip had said that he had built it just because he wanted his house to cost more than any other house in the city; unworthy as his motive in building it might have been, he had forever ennobled the place when he had bequeathed it to the boys and girls ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... was while he waited that he lunched one day with Porter Bigelow. The invitation had surprised him, and he had felt vaguely troubled and oppressed by the thought that back of it might be some motive as yet unrevealed. But there had been nothing to do but accept, and at one o'clock he was at ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... have all their meaning sapped by the life back of them. Power through service may be great, and may be touching many spots, yet it is always less than that of a life. Power through money depends wholly upon the motive back of the money. Begrudged money, stained money, soils the treasury. That which comes nearest to omnipotence also comes nearest to impotence. But the power loosened out through prayer is as tremendous, at the least, to say no more just now, is as tremendous as the power of a true fragrant ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... so, there is no motive for me to tarry,' he said. He believed her, and was satisfied; not that he esteemed her worthy of belief, but because it did not seem to him possible that such a matter as a grateful kiss upon a protecting hand could require much explanation. 'I would like well once more ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... carried on on the eastern coast of Scotland, and was killed in a skirmish with the revenue officers; that his correspondents in Holland had a vessel on the coast at the time, part of the crew of which were engaged in the affair, and that they brought me off after it was over, from a motive of compassion, as I was left destitute by my father's death. As I grew older there was much of this story seemed inconsistent with my own recollections, but what could I do? I had no means of ascertaining my doubts, nor a single friend with whom I could communicate ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... by sails in a vertical position like ours, but are indeed the simplest and most ingenious contrivance of its kind I have ever seen. The motive wheel, which revolves in a horizontal position, is encased in high walls on three sides, leaving a slit on the north side, from whence the prevalent winds of Sistan blow. The wind entering with great force by this vertical ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... fair, for once in their lives, Trooper Tom and Marmaduke were without guile when they decided to invite old Piper Lauchie McDonald from Glenoro to come and play at the concert. They were merely actuated by the pure motive of making the entertainment more attractive than the Methodist gathering, with, perhaps, the subconscious thought that it was a question if Old Tory Brown, who was Scotch, even if he were a Methodist, could resist leaving a mere preaching to hear a real Piper. The ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... warning, for no conceivable motive, in his youth, at the threshold of his career he chose to disappear from the world—-which is to say, the little ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... energy. And they had, too, the most abundant opportunities of knowledge in regard to the facts to which they bore witness. They were present in the places, at the times, when and where the events occurred. Every motive would conspire to make them scrutinize the subject and the attendant circumstances. And it seems they did examine; for at first some doubted, but afterwards believed. They had been close companions ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... they were constraind to hold their Session at Cambridge. The present year the Assembly is summond to meet, and is still continued there in a kind of Duress, without any Reason that can be given—any Motive whatever, that is not as great an Insult to them, and Breach of their Privilege, as any of the foregoing.—Are these things consistent with the Freedom of the House; or, could the General Courts tamely submiting to such Usage, be thought to promote ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... Don't let us be hasty, I say; and let us consider, For an assassination there must be a motive, and an all-powerful motive; for, aside from the scaffold which he risks, no man is capable of killing another man solely for the purpose of shedding his blood. Now, in this case, I look in vain for any reason, which could have ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... whatever motive had actuated the originator of the bold plan to possess himself of twenty-five million francs, he had deliberately set to work to employ men of that type to ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... way it was told, and the previous account of his safety only tortured me the more. But it is needless to dwell upon it now; and though I believe she thinks I never forgave her, I now recollect only the motive, which was kind. ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... thoughts. My infatuation, however, persisted, and threatened to take the dangerous form of FRAUD. I could not for the life of me see what else I could do to recover the girl's fair fame, hopelessly compromised by me, than exhibit to the world at large the only conceivable motive of my salute. I knew, immediately I had done it, that I could not love Betty Coy, but I believed that I ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... A beautiful woman, at discord with life, is brought to realize, by her new friends, that she may open the shutters of her soul to the blessed sunlight of joy by casting aside vanity and self love. A delicately humorous work with a lofty motive ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... between two wills; while the creations of the Andalusian brothers vibrate with the intense passion of the human heart. For the same reason, Galds, in remodeling Euripides' Alceste, was unable to clothe the queen with the tenderness of the original, and substituted a rational motive, the desire to preserve Admetus for the good of his kingdom, in the place of personal affection. The neglect of the sex problem in the dramas is indeed striking: in Amor y ciencia, Voluntad and Brbara it enters as a ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... necessitates knowledge of the facts acquired in the course together with an interpretation of the principles and their application to new problems. Memory tests serve to mark off "the sheep from the goats" as regards attention and faithful work; reasoning tests serve to give a motive for disciplinary study and to measure its results. It may perhaps seem easier to test the results of the student's work in memory subjects; but even as to that we know that there are various types of memory and how much less significant are marks obtained by "the cramming process" ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... pride may reject a public advance, while interest listens to a secret suggestion of advantage. The opportunity has been afforded. At a very early period in the diplomacy of humiliation, a gentleman was sent on an errand, of which, from the motive of it, whatever the event might be, we can never be ashamed. Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation. It is its very character to submit to such things. There is a consanguinity between benevolence and humility. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... properly marshalled, made up a dangerous case against the prisoner. Major Swan began by dwelling upon the evidence of motive: there had been a quarrel, or the beginnings of a quarrel, between the deceased and the accused; the deceased had shown himself affronted, and had been heard quite unequivocally to say that the matter could not be ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... and destroys the faith of those who suffer by it in the efficiency of the law as a safe protector. The man in whose breast that faith has been darkened is naturally the subject of dangerous and uncanny suggestions. Those who use unlawful methods, if moved by no higher motive than the selfishness that prompted them, may well stop and inquire what is to be the end ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... study of the degeneracy of a young Greek and of the noble strivings of a great-hearted woman. The pictures of Florence in the time of Savonarola are splendid, but they smell of the lamp. Middlemarch is also worth careful study for its fine analysis of character and motive. In all George Eliot's books her characters develop before our eyes, and this is especially true in this elaborate study of the pathos and the tragedy ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... they would be seen to come out of the ground, and either re-act the quarrel and the murder, or in some other manner so annoy and disturb their visitors that they could not sleep. Curiosity was in part my motive, and I wished to be able to tell the Indians that I not only stopped, but slept quietly at a place which they shunned with so much fear and caution. The sun was going down as I arrived; and I pushed my little canoe in to the shore, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... of the coast where they took away the shipwrecked sailors. The Captain also described to Zebedee the appearance of the coast; and, in short, Zebedee contrived to get all the information about the place the Captain could give him, without letting it appear that he had any other motive in asking questions ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch
... done two things for many years foreign to his experience: He had gone to meet another man instead of making the man come to him, and he had waited the other man's pleasure in an outer office. That he had done so implied a strong motive. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... the circumstances—consciousness, unconsciousness, or false consciousness regarding them. Hence with regard to each action we have to consider (1) the act itself, (2) the circumstances, (3) the intentionality, (4) the attendant consciousness, and also (5) the motive, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... make wax on bird, beast, and fish: the pretence that the spoil is sought for the table cannot be made with justice, as the sportsman cares little for the game he has obtained, when once it is consigned to his pouch. The motive for his eager pursuit of bird or beast must be sought elsewhere; it will be found in the natural craving to extinguish life, which exists in his soul. Why does a child impulsively strike at a butterfly as it flits past him? He cares nothing ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... instead of on his heels. "You know almost as much about men as a child knows, Miss Grayle," he said, "if you think I'm one of the sort—if there is such a sort—who would tie himself to a woman for gratitude. I've just one motive in wanting you to marry me. I love you and need you. I couldn't feel more if I'd known you ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Our guards had long been acquainted with the enterprise. But instead of taking any measures to prevent it, they had permitted us to go on with our labor, keeping a vigilant watch for the moment of our projected escape, in order to gratify their bloodthirsty wishes. No other motive than this could have prompted them to the course which they pursued. A boat was in waiting under the ship's quarter, manned with rowers and a party of the guards. They maintained a profound silence after hearing ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... candidating business, modestly states the (avail) abilities which qualify him for high political station, has no principles, a peace-man, unpledged, has no objections to owning peculiar property, but would not like to monopolize the truth, his account with glory, a selfish motive hinted in, sails for Eldorado, shipwrecked on a metaphorical promontory, parallel between, and Rev. Mr. Wilbur (not Plutarchian), conjectured to have bathed in river Selemnus, loves plough wisely, but not too well, a foreign mission probably expected ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... to observe that I have been for some years in China, am quite a stranger at home, and have no personal motive or interest in the inquiry I am ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... this mischief were said to be the Uhlans. It appeared that these formidable horsemen, after the fall of Liege, had spread in small parties all over the Ardennes and had carried terror and destruction wherever they went. Their principal motive was, no doubt, to gather information of the enemy's whereabouts, but, while doing so, they seemed to throw themselves heart and soul into another task—that of making their name known and dreaded throughout the ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... been disappointed of a king's commission, he wouldn't now be leader of the king's enemies." I knew I had no warrant the slightest for attributing Mr. Washington's patriotism to such a petty motive as a long-cherished resentment of royal neglect; and years afterward, in London, I was to chastise an equally reckless speaker for a similar slander; but I was young and partisan, and being nettled by the reminder of my ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... much to require that people shall always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of society. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of morals, and to confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... herself was concerned. This attitude of mind was not unbecoming in her for the simple reason that it destroyed none of her graciousness as regards other human relations besides that of love. That men should seek her in matrimony from a selfish motive was as much to be expected as that flies should seek the sugar bowl. She accepted the fact as one of nature's laws, annoying enough but inevitable; a thing to guard against, but not one of sufficient moment ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... cruel, unjust, wholly devoid of foundation in fact. I can declare no more; except that I have not acted for my own profit or my own pleasure. I have not in this proceeding considered myself. Once again, I think my heart is broken. If I have unwittingly done any wrong with a righteous motive, that is some ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... between them: right or wrong, in every case they gave him as much trouble as they possibly could. And in the present case, which was supposed to be an arrest for some participation in the smuggler's affair of the funeral, they had one motive more than was needed to sharpen the spirit of ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... Whately then, an acute man, perhaps saw around me the signs of an incipient party of which I was not conscious myself. And thus we discern the first elements of that movement afterward called Tractarian. The true and primary author of it, however, as is usual with great motive powers, was out of sight. Having carried off, as a mere boy, the highest honors of the University, he had turned from the admiration which haunted his steps, and sought for a better and holier satisfaction in pastoral work in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... the fulfilment of its simple wants. For at base his species are surely the most simple of human creatures. In spite of their complex physical structure they are one-celled organisms driven through life with only a passionate hunger as their motive power, and with no complexities of thought or emotion to hamper their loud progressions. None but those of their own kind can suffer from their ravages, and, even so, they fly the contact of each other ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... but demand drastic anti-lobby law. Any person interesting himself in legislation will not, if his motive and cause be just, object to registering his name, residence and the matters he is espousing, with the secretary of state, or some other authority designated by your body. If his activities be of such nature that he does not care to reveal ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... and adroitness must unite and become confident skill. Strength, carried to its extreme produces the athlete; adroitness, to its extreme, the acrobat. Pedagogics must avoid both. All immense force, fit only for display, must be held as far away as the idea of teaching Gymnastics with the motive of utility; e.g. that by swimming one may save his life when he falls into the water, &c. Among other things, this may also be a consequence; but the principle in general must always remain: the necessity of the spirit ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... consider the motive of this singular crime. To get at this I endeavoured first of all to solve the reason of the original burglary at Mr. Acton's. I understood from something which the Colonel told us that a law-suit, had been ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... abandon the love idea and the love motive, and if you stand apart, and never bully, never force from the conscious will. That's where Nietzsche was wrong. His was the conscious and benevolent will, in fact, the love-will. But the deep power-urge is not conscious of its aims: and it is certainly not consciously ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... many aboard the big raft that would not have cared to continue the chase any further, had it merely been to avenge the death of their late leader. With them, as with the others, there was a different motive for doing so,—a far more powerful incentive,—and that was the thirst which tortured all, and the belief that the escaping craft carried the ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... "Miss Fairclough warned me of one thing. I put it on one side. It did not seem to be possible. Now I must ask you a question. You have some other motive, have you not, for choosing to come away with me? It is not only because you love me better than any one else in the world, as I do you, and therefore that we belong to one another and it is right and good that we should spend our lives in one another's company? ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whenever we went out after dinner we were never without dramatic excitement, even if it was not adequately supplied by the show. The London taste in shows seems to sheer away from the war. In the autumn last past but two shows had a war motive: One "General Post," a story of the fall of caste from English life during the war, telling how a tailor became a general; the other "The Better 'Ole," a farce comedy, with a few musical skits in it, staged entirely "at the front." "The Better 'Ole" could be put on in any American town ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... weeks among its scenes. My dogs I take with me more for companionship than for game. This dress, too, gives me an ostensible business, and procures me that respect from the people, which would, perhaps, be refused to a lonely stranger, who had no visible motive for coming among them.' ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... the desire to abolish slavery, but the bitterness aroused by the political considerations of the advantage given to one party or the other by the establishment or non-establishment of slavery in a new territory. The motive which impelled the United States to make war on Spain was not, as most Europeans believe, any desire for an extension of territory, any more than it was, as some Americans would say, a yearning to avenge the blowing up of the Maine; it ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... very simple, "such as"—Lingard would say—"such as might have happened to anybody." He went ashore with the intention to look for some stream where he could conveniently replenish his water casks, this being really the motive which had induced ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... readers to bear in mind that the friendship of these people for an almost unknown white man was inspired by no unworthy motive. Kusis and his people, as well as the King and Queen, knew that when the brig was lost I had saved nothing whatever from the wreck. Such little clothing as I had with me had been given to me by the ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... being brought against him by one or more of his elder sons, of having become childish from age, and of being incapable of managing his own affairs. An alleged partiality for a grandson by a second wife is said to have been the motive of the charge. In his defence he contented himself with reading to his judges his Oedipus at Colonos, which he had then just composed (or, according to others, only the magnificent chorus in it, wherein he sings the praises ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... distinguished diplomat, the Comte de Laroche-sur-Loiret, at the station at Malines with Lady Georgina. It is true, at his politest moments, I often caught the undercurrent of a wicked twinkle in his eye, and felt sure he was doing it all with some profound motive. But his external demeanour was everything that one could desire from a well-trained man-servant; I could hardly believe it was the same man who had growled to me at Florence, 'I shall be even with you yet,' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... sole motive which could have kept him at that time in that certain locality, was to speak alone with Miss Lady. Even thus favored by circumstances, he found this purpose difficult to accomplish. Now it was Colonel Blount who passed moodily across the ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... market-men. The private cook is a volcano in a house, slumbering at times, but always ready to burst forth into destructive eruption. True repose is out of the question, and we are told that "the motive for foreign travel of perhaps one-half of Americans is rest from household cares and the enjoyment of good attendance, freed from any responsibility in its organization ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... supreme delight! Early in the morning, he sat up in bed, awaiting my usual gift. It is much easier to buy doves and game-cocks than it is to buy a pacer, as you know, and aside from that, I was also afraid that so valuable a present might render my motive subject to suspicion, so, after strolling around for some hours, I returned to the house, and gave the lad nothing at all except a kiss. He looked all around, threw his arms about my neck. 'Tell me, master,' he cried, 'where's the pacer?' ('The difficulty ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... that the U.S. agreed to release them reached England on January 8, 1862.) And what a wretched thing it will be if we fight on the side of slavery. No doubt it will be said that we fight to get cotton; but I fully believe that this has not entered into the motive in the least. Well, thank Heaven, we private individuals have nothing to do with so awful a responsibility. Again, how curious it is that you seem to think that you can conquer the South; and I never meet a soul, even those who would most wish it, who thinks ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... contrast to that of Poleon and the trader, both of whom had fallen silent and gloomy, and in whom the hours wrought no change. The latter had tacitly acknowledged his treachery towards Stark on the previous night, but beyond that he would not go, offering no motive, excuse, or explanation, choosing to stand in the eyes of his friend as an intended murderer, notwithstanding which Poleon let the matter drop—for was not his friend a good man? Had he not been tried in a hundred ways? The young Frenchman knew there ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... never be made to say anything else. Nothing more as to his motive was ever known. All the same, the scandal was a terrible one. The regiment was inclined to believe that Melanie, incensed by the captain's defection, had contrived to entrap the major, telling him some abominable stories and prevailing upon ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... be frank, it was not. My motive in addressing you, without the right to take such a freedom, was egotistical. I came here to clear myself; I—I was afraid you must think me a humbug, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... twin generalizations upon which the edifice of modern Socialism rests. Like the first, and like the practical side of all sound religious teaching, it is a specific application of one general rule of conduct, and that is the subordination of the individual motive to the happiness and welfare of ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... him, and the flooded Oise bereft him of his canoe. "On my tomb, if ever I have one," he wrote, "I mean to get these words inscribed, HE CLUNG TO HIS PADDLE." The paddle he chose was his pen. It was the motive power which forwarded him along the river of life, through shoals and rapids. When but a wee toddling bairn, he drew his nurse aside and commanded her to write, as he had a story to tell. He dictated to his mother, too, when a boy of six, an essay on Moses. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... a noisy waltz of Strauss, opening with such a loud and rapid trill that Gedeonovsky was quite startled. In the very middle of the waltz she suddenly passed into a pathetic motive, and finished up with an air from "Lucia" Fra poco... She reflected that lively music was not in keeping with her position. The air from "Lucia," with emphasis on the sentimental passages, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the subject with which the present work deals cannot well be over-estimated. Our age may properly be called the Era of Woman, because everything which affects her receives consideration quite unknown in past centuries. This is well. The motive is twofold: First, woman is valued as never before; and, second, it is perceived that the welfare of the other half of the human race depends more largely upon the position enjoyed by ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... a sweetener of toil is love! love to a dear earthly parent, and still more love to Christ: there is no drudgery in the most menial employment where that is the motive power. ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... 1914, three days after war had been declared, I sailed from Quebec for England on the first ship that put out from Canada. The trip had been long planned—it was not undertaken from any patriotic motive. My family, which included my father, mother, sister and brother, had been living in America for eight years and had never returned to England together. It was the accomplishing of a dream long cherished, which favourable circumstances and a sudden influx of ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... gentleman! How incredible it seems that such awful crimes can be committed in our quiet neighborhood? who could have been so guilty; and what motive could have prompted such ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... William? To suppose that there could be such inconsistency without dishonesty would be not charity but weakness. Those who were determined to comply with the Act of Parliament would do better to speak out, and to say, what every body knew, that they complied simply to save their benefices. The motive was no doubt strong. That a clergyman who was a husband and a father should look forward with dread to the first of August and the first of February was natural. But he would do well to remember that, however terrible might be the day of suspension and the day of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... loved him and wanted to please him. There was no wrong in keeping secret what concerned themselves so closely, till he was ready to make it public. Her own dear mother, from whom she had kept nothing in her life, would be the first to understand and appreciate her motive, as she was the most sympathetic woman in the world, and wanted nothing so much as ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... perform, alleging as a reason that the northern department had always been considered a separate command, and that he had never done more than advise. These reasons do not look very weighty or very strong, and it is not quite clear what the underlying motive was. Washington never shrank from responsibility, and he knew very well that he could pick out the best man more unerringly than Congress. But he also saw that Congress favored Gates, whom he would not have chosen, and he therefore probably felt that it was more important to have some one whom ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... was absurd. Then she thought of mentioning, in an off-hand way, that she would like to put some money out at interest, and thus, perhaps, induce Miss Barbara to propose a business transaction. But this would not do. Even Miss Barbara would suspect some concealed motive. Idea after idea came to her, but she could think of no satisfactory plan of getting that ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... as he was descending the St. Lawrence in sight of Montreal, and he lost them with the rest of his effects. What increases the value of the present discovery is, that the original narrative goes much more into detail than the one published by Thevenot. The motive which prompted and the preparations which were made for the expedition are fully described, and no difficulty is found in tracing its route. There is also among the papers an autograph journal by Marquette, of his last voyage from ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... whether he dared seek to make her his own. He was fully as loath as Donald Keith to appear in the role of fortune-hunter. Would Mr. Dinsmore and his daughter, so noble themselves, be ready to impute so unworthy a motive to him? He hoped not, he believed they would judge him by themselves. And they who so fully knew and appreciated all that Violet was must see and believe that no man whose affections were not already engaged could be thrown into intimate association with her day after day, as he had been ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... Destiny, and of the grey girl the silhouette of whose hand was imprisoned beneath the brass bowl on his study desk. For by now he was quite satisfied that she and none other had trespassed upon the privacy of his rooms, obtaining access to them in his absence by means as unguessable as her motive. Momentarily he considered taking Bannerman into his confidence; but he questioned the advisability of this: Bannerman was so severely practical in his outlook upon life, while this adventure had been so madly whimsical, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... a look of calm consideration; "somebody did it, undoubtedly; and that makes the difficulty of the whole affair. 'Cui bono,' as the lawyers say. Two persons only could have had any motive, so far as wealth and fortune go. The first and most prominent, your father, who, of course, would come into every thing (which made the suspicion so hot and strong); and the other, a very nice gentleman, whom it is ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... precipitate, and we endeavoured to invest it with a semblance of hypocrisy not usually thought necessary in warfare; but it was in no sense dignified, and only a child, too young to differentiate between right and wrong, could have failed to recognize the true motive which prompted our withdrawal. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... of Palla's tongue to say something; and she remained silent—lest this man misinterpret her motive—and, perhaps, lest her own conscience ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... slightest clue to guide them. Of course, there was the fact itself, as evidenced by the bodies of the three victims; but the authorities were quite ignorant of the circumstances that had attended and of the motive that had inspired the crime. Certainly, they might hope with the powerful means of investigation at their disposal to finally arrive at the truth in the course of time, and after repeated efforts. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... different are the conditions between the still air of a room and those of the open sky. His insight into the difficulties of the problem cannot have been less than that of his successor, Coxwell, who, as the result of his own equally wide experience, states positively, "I could never imagine a motive power of sufficient force to direct and guide a balloon, much less to enable a man or a machine to fly." Even when modern invention had produced a motive power undreamed of in the days we are now considering, Coxwell declares his conviction ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... Don Quixote, of Till Eulenspiegel, of Hero's Life, and Elektra. But it may be confessed without much fear of contradiction that for him Wagner is his model—even in Salome, where the head of John the Baptist is chanted to the tune of Donner's motive from Rheingold. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... if he persist in living he will have to brave many winters in that passage, for he is not an old man. What instinct compels him to bear his dark life? Is he afraid to kill himself? Does this fear spring from physical or from religious motives? Fear of hell? Surely no other motive would enable him ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... publish any unfortunate internal episode that would redound to its discredit. So shocked was he at the assassination of the ruler of Ts'i by an usurping family in 481, that, even at his venerable age, he unsuccessfully counselled instant war against Ts'i. His motive was perhaps doubtful, for the next year we find a pupil of his, then in office, going as a member of the mission to the same usurper in order to try and obtain a cession of territory improperly held. This pupil ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... perceived his reasons for it. I have often amused myself in calculating what his motives were for such and such things, and I generally found them very cogent ones. But Hector had a droll stupidity about him, and took up forms and rules of his own, for which I could never perceive any motive that was not even farther out of the way than the action itself. He had one uniform practice, and a very bad one it was; during the time of family worship, and just three or four seconds before the conclusion of the prayer, he started to his ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... class of the people; and, instead of setting a good example to their men, are leading them into every kind of mischief, one species of which is plundering the inhabitants, under the pretence of their being Tories." To this political motive he himself would not yield, and a sample of his appointments was given when a man was named "because he stands unconnected with either of these Governments; or with this, or that or tother man; for between you and me there is more ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... was already a received doctrine that, when two objects impinge upon one another, the momentum lost by the one is equal to that gained by the other. This proposition it was deemed necessary to preserve, not from the motive (which operates in many other cases) that it was firmly fixed in popular belief; for the proposition in question had never been heard of by any but the scientifically instructed. But it was felt to contain a truth; even ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... died, tell you his intention to do this?" pressed Marie, feeling less interest in the Dutch embalmer's method than in the sinuous motive of a man who could ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... leave to the Public, but now, at all events, you know, kind Reader, that to me, the "Imperatorskoye" appears a noble woman, because she was absolutely faithful to the man she had selected as her mate, through the one motive which makes a ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... perplexed," said Kettle, "seeing that ye know not my motive. The truth is, that I had a plan in my head, which was to enter Harald's service, that I might act the spy on him, and so do my best for one who, all the time I have been in thraldom, has been as kind to me as if he had ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... must face the question of the Colonel's motive in leaving this legacy to his niece, for my aunt's sake. Bear in mind how Lady Verinder treated her brother from the time when he returned to England, to the time when he told you he should remember his niece's birthday. And ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... found himself, to feel the full effects of its danger. The republican sergeant sat immediately in front of him, and each kept his eye fixed on the other's face; not that either of them had any object in doing so, any particular motive for watching the other's countenance, but soon after day-break the gaze of each had become fixed, and it seemed as though neither of them were able ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... the roadbed, and other real estate, rolling stock, and all other personal property whatsoever (except its franchise and the non taxable shares of stock issued by other corporations) in this State, of each railway corporation, whatever its motive power, now or hereafter liable for taxation upon such property, the canal bed and other real estate, the boats and all other personal property whatsoever (except its franchise and the non taxable ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... European Protestants, rich or poor, who came within the clutches of the savages that administered the cruelties of the Inquisition. The canting crowd shrieked against the monstrous impiety of such notions, but their efforts to prove purity of motive were unavailing. ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... men who did not agree with him, he never failed to do what he thought was right. His wisdom and justice were so great that, in all these years, the wisest men have found little in the actions of Washington they would change. Jefferson said of him that no motive of interest or friendship or hatred could influence him; "he was in every sense of the word a wise, a good and a ...
— George Washington • Calista McCabe Courtenay
... in red to throw up the white limbs and contours of my models, and this had something to do with it, for hardly any colour shows off white flesh to better advantage, though pale blue in this matter runs it close; but this was not the prompting motive. Rather it was that in England where all is so cold and tame and grey, from morals to colours, I liked to surround myself with this glowing barbaric crimson, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... that the pecuniary motive was really the motive at the bottom of Anne's journey south. Remembering that Geoffrey's trainers had removed him to the neighborhood of London, he was inclined to doubt whether some serious quarrel had not ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... antenna for the broadcaster, and the rat's tail is the pickup antenna. As long as the rat is crawling right on the rail, only a microscopic amount of power is needed for control, not enough for the Nipe to pick up with his instruments. Each rat carries its own battery for motive power, and there are old copper power cables down there that we can send direct current through to recharge the batteries. And, when we need them, the copper cables can be used as antennas. It took us quite a while to work ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... despite opposition. As he looked through the break of the trees, he saw the masts of a brig lying at anchor off the extremity of the point on which the house was built, and understood that the cottage commanded communication by water as well as by land. Could there be a special motive in choosing such a situation, or was it mere chance? He was uneasy, but ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Parliament, and they were to move him a vote of thanks, he cried out: 'Fathers and brethren, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and you do not know it. For I had a deep, malicious, revengeful motive in my heart behind all my fine and patriotic speeches in Parliament. I hated Montrose more than I loved the freedom of the Kirk. Spare me, therefore, the sentence of putting that act of shame on your books!' It was discoveries like this that accumulated in John Livingstone's ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... be able to show, that a motive of this kind must have operated in the case of these round towers, otherwise "all the antiquarians" could not have been so sadly puzzled about what to the rest of the world appears ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... Constance should not behave in this very natural manner if she chose to, Marian was about to defend Constance warmly by denying all motive to her return, when that event took place and stopped the discussion. Marian and Nelly spent a considerable part of their lives in bandying their likes and dislikes under the impression that they were arguing important ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... however, were by no means the chief motive of the Jesuits in founding their journal, and the controversial character began soon to preponderate in their articles. Protestant writers received but little mercy in the pages of the "Journal de Trevoux," and the battle was soon raging in every country of Europe between ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... some work as nurse. Beginning casually to help on an urgent case, she went on to other cases, training herself, learning to take his place wherever she could. She thought to come closer to him in this way, but she suspected that he understood her motive, that her work did not seem quite sincere to him. She was looking ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... flung Upon the homage Sanpeur rendered her Unworthy jest and spiteful words, for well He hated him with grudge despiteous. Full oft his wrath was roused to such a point He could not hold his peace; even to the King He jeered one day at visionary knights. The keen-eyed King, with intuition, knew The motive of his speech,—"Our knight, Sanpeur, But contradicts your verdict, Torm, and proves That which the great King Arthur taught,—the man Is strongest who can claim a strength divine From whence to draw his own." Sir Torm had grown More wrathful in his heart at this, and kept Sanpeur ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... Home Rule to an infatuation such as that suggested above, would certainly have the air of implying that the writer thought the Home Rule doctrine a peculiar or untenable one. Similarly, Browning's choice of a motive for Strafford has very much the air of an assumption that there was nothing to be said on public grounds for Strafford's political ideal. Now this is certainly not the case. The Puritans in the great struggles of the reign of Charles I. may have possessed ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... the exact repetition, at the foot of Eva's bed, of the shape pendulous at the foot of his was hardly enough to account for the fixity with which he envisaged it, and for which he was to find, some years later, a motive in the (as it turned out) hardly generous fear that Eva had already made the great investigation "on her own." Her very regular breathing presently reassured him that, if she had peeped into "her" stocking, she must have done so in sleep. Whether he should wake her now, or wait for their nurse ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... Mlle. Percillie, Auguste's mistress, that statements to this effect had been made in her presence by both Auguste Ballet and himself, he said that it was not true; that he had never been to her house. "What motive," he was asked, "could Mlle. Percillie have for accusing you?" "She hated me," was the reply, "because I had tried to separate Auguste from her." Castaing denied that he had driven with Auguste to Lebret's office on October 8. Asked to explain his sudden possession of 100,000 ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... conceive, why, in this primitive state, one man should have more occasion for the assistance of another, than one monkey, or one wolf for that of another animal of the same species; or supposing that he had, what motive could induce another to assist him; or even, in this last case, how he, who wanted assistance, and he from whom it was wanted, could agree among themselves upon the conditions. Authors, I know, are ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... during the last four years of his power was not without some influence on my prompt submission to the Government which succeeded his. I, however, declare that this consideration was not the sole nor the most powerful motive of my conduct. Only those who were in Paris at the period of the capitulation can form an idea of the violence of party feeling which prevailed there both for and against Napoleon, but without the name of the Bourbons ever ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... world remained to be discovered, Peter felt that it must be in the North Pacific. When it is recalled that Spain was supposed to have found in Peru temples lined with gold, floors paved with silver, and pearls readily exchanged in bucketfuls for glass beads, it can be realized that the motive for discovery was not merely scientific. It was one that actuated princes and merchants alike. And Peter the Great had an additional motive—the development of his country's merchant shipping. It was this that had induced him ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... mark if this change in domestic matters would continue. To my surprise, and, I am ashamed to say, not altogether to my gratification, I found that it did continue. I was suspicious as to the motive and reason for this change, and therefore not satisfied. So I took the improvement in my poor wife's temper and conduct very surlily; the real fact being, I now believe, that I was inwardly vexed by being forced to feel that she was showing ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... body of the French nobility and the middle class of citizens were reduced to a servile attendance on the court, as the only means of advancement and reward. Every species of industry and merit in these classes was sedulously discouraged; and the motive of honorable competition for honorable things, being withdrawn, no pursuit or occupation was left them but the frivolous duties, or the degrading pleasures ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... but unhappily they had forgotten wine; this forgetfulness was by no means astonishing to girls who seldom drank any, but I was sorry for the omission, as I had reckoned on its help, thinking it might add to my confidence. They were sorry likewise, and perhaps from the same motive; though I have no reason to say this, for their lively and charming gayety was innocence itself; besides, there were two of them, what could they expect from me? they went everywhere about the neighborhood ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... from the spurious productions ascribed to the same age, plead strongly in their favour as trustworthy witnesses. The writer makes no lofty pretensions as a Roman bishop; he speaks of himself simply as at the head of an humble presbytery; and it would be difficult to divine the motive which could have tempted an impostor to fabricate such unpretending compositions. Though given as the veritable Epistles of Pius by the highest literary authorities of Borne, they are certainly ill calculated to prop up ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... know, further, that the same methods continued to be followed by the Romans until they passed beyond the confines of Italy, and began to reduce foreign kingdoms and States to provinces: as plainly appears in the fact that Capua was the first city to which they sent a praetor, and him from no motive of ambition, but at the request of the Capuans themselves who, living at variance with one another, thought it necessary to have a Roman citizen in their town who might restore unity and good order among them. Influenced by this example, and urged by ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... beginning of the second third of the nineteenth century, the issue as to American slavery was distinctly drawn, and the leading parties to it had taken their positions. Let us try to understand the motive and ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... helix, and the paddle-wheel constitute at present the means of propulsion that are exclusively employed when one has recourse to a motive power for effecting the propulsion of a boat. The sail constitutes an entirely different mode, and should not figure in our enumeration, considering the essentially variable character of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... The blind not only seek for partners in life, but are sometimes sought by seeing persons; and numerous instances have occurred within my knowledge. It is true, that despair of success in any other quarter, or an equally unworthy motive, may induce some to seek for partners among the blind, or the blind to unite with the blind; but still, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... ignition of internal-combustion engines (p. 101) to the induction coil. This is a device for increasing the voltage, or pressure, of a current. The two-cell accumulator carried in a motor car gives a voltage (otherwise called electro-motive force E.M.F.) of 4.4 volts. If you attach a wire to one terminal of the accumulator and brush the loose end rapidly across the other terminal, you will notice that a bright spark passes between the wire and the terminal. In reality ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... partly inclosed by screen-work, or annexed to a church, a transept, or an additional chapel, endowed as a chantry, in order that remembrance might be specially and continually made of them in the offices of the church, according to the then prevailing usage; which chantries having been abolished, one motive for church-building ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... spectator to be truly prophetic, as the later peace movement showed, in seeking a motive for the U-53's proceedings. It considered that Germany sought to force the United States to propose peace terms, regardless of whether the Entente Allies were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... often defended the lives and fortunes of his fellow-citizens, was rewarded with legacies to the amount of a hundred and seventy thousand pounds; [108] nor do the friends of the younger Pliny seem to have been less generous to that amiable orator. [109] Whatever was the motive of the testator, the treasury claimed, without distinction, the twentieth part of his estate: and in the course of two or three generations, the whole property of the subject must have gradually passed through ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... house. It was now that he was induced to make his will, and this by an agency so singular as to deserve being mentioned. The Rev. Mr. Whittle broached the subject one day, not with any interested motive of course, but simply because the "meeting-house" wanted some material repairs, and there was a debt on the congregation that it might be a pleasure to one who had long stood in the relation to it that Deacon Pratt filled, to pay off, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... he exclaimed. "I don't know jest what the motive of that swab is, but I know he was lying from first to last." Ruth was sobbing, and could not speak, but her little hand stole into the young man's, and ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... was drawing her gently toward him. Then he bent his head until it was close to hers, and his breath was upon her cheek as it had been that other night—and the longing to know that it was hers, a caress, pure in its motive, hers, snatched out of all that had gone before that sought to rob her of the right to ever know it, fascinated her, held her spellbound, possessed her. Closer his lips came to hers, closer, until they touched her—and then, with a cry, she sprang ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... were not likely to come along during the storm. Jennie slept while Duane watched. The saving of this girl meant more to him than any task he had ever assumed. First it had been partly from a human feeling to succor an unfortunate woman, and partly a motive to establish clearly to himself that he was no outlaw. Lately, however, had come a different sense, a strange one, with something personal and ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... will tell you, as briefly as I can, the whole of what I have to say; but you'll excuse me also in a previous question, for what curiosity is not my motive; but it is necessary to be answered before I can proceed; as you will judge when you ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... "What possible motive!"—he said. "For it is evident that the shot was fired of intent, and evident that you yourself think so. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... child from poverty and nameless degradation, ignorance, and a sordid life hopeless of better fortune, and opening to him the whole realm of mighty possibilities in an American life—did not imply any love for the little individual whom he thus benefited. It had some other motive. ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the field, the dooryard, and the home interior, and range from the happiest to the most sombre subjects. They show also considerable variety in artistic motive and composition, and taken together fairly represent the scope ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... satisfied with such a conclusion. It offers him none of that aspect of personality which his yearnings demand. This infinite, and eternal, and universal is no intellect at all. It is passionless, without motive, without design. It does not answer to those lineaments of which he catches a glimpse when he considers the attributes of his own soul. He shudderingly turns from Pantheism, this final result of human philosophy, and, voluntarily retracing his steps, subordinates his ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... man replied; "and let me tell you further that this match is not one subservient to the ends of utility or profit; for, were such the motive, the very end would be defeated. Dorothy must love the man she marries, with all her heart and soul; and you can readily understand, ostracized as we are, how difficult it has been to find such ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... have need of it to save herself, for the stragglers in her wake were now impelled by a more dangerous motive than mere curiosity or mischief. The cry of "Witch" had awakened cruel depths in their breasts, and they pressed forward in close ranks with less noise ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... himself to the safe with all the pain which walking caused him, the wounded man must have been impelled by some strong and unusual motive. It couldn't be that he had suspected Wilson and Jo of theft, because, in the first place, he must have seen at a glance that the safe was undisturbed; and in the second, that they had not taken advantage of their opportunity for ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... half-mile that lay between the station and her house on her own brisk feet, and sent on her maid and her luggage in the fly that her husband had ordered to meet her. After those four hours in the train a short walk would be pleasant, but, though she veiled it from her conscious mind, another motive, sub-consciously engineered, prompted her action. It would, of course, be universally known to all her friends in Riseholme that she was arriving today by the 12.26, and at that hour the village street would be sure to be full of them. They would see the fly ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... and Margaret Rodgers are instances of a singular providence; for they did confess, the same morning that the court did last sit, of their own proper motive, their being neither ministers nor judges beside them ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... to lay hands upon her. At first she thought that they wished to tear her to pieces in revenge for her having slain two of their fellows, but presently she realized that they were prompted more by curiosity than by any sinister motive. ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... case with the word motive, in speaking of human volitions. A motive power in mechanics is one that produces motion; and hence the application of the word to the occasion or reason of any particular act of choice, with the all but inevitable fallacy of confounding the idea of a mechanical force with that of an influence upon the mind. That there is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... her domestics and friends, despatched a messenger to her husband, to request that a servant might be sent to her with one of the asses, for the purpose of going to pay a visit to the man of God. As she had not told him the motive of this sudden determination, he remonstrated, because it was "neither new moon nor sabbath," that is, neither the usual time of secular or sacred journeys. [47] He was, however, easily satisfied when she intimated that she had a good ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... than by voluntary contribution, or in the hands of paid public officials, can never have the spirit of charity nor be correctly called a charity. Boston's public charitable institutions, so called, are not charities at all; the motive is not sympathy, but necessity. The money for the support of paupers is not paid with benevolent intentions by the tax-payers, nor do the inmates of almshouses so receive it. I have been engaged in gathering statistics, and have found sixty-three per cent of all persons who applied for assistance ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... Her motive was to gain time, and if possible to obtain the opportunity of shifting the money from the place where she had first put it into another and safer one. "I want to be able," she thought, "of swearing that I have no money with me in this house. If I can only get it ...
— Midnight In Beauchamp Row - 1895 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... incensed. He is the more keenly hurt when his most sacred feelings are suddenly outraged. Finish off his equipment with a hot, passionate temper, and his resentment is likely to strike as blindly and as effectively as a bolt from a surcharged thunder-cloud. It is the motive that either palliates or makes the crime. A moment's previous reflection often stays the hand from a deed which a lifetime of after regret can ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... have therefore an eternal and unchangeable being; they are on the extremest verge of the universe, and corresponding to them at the centre is another fiery sphere, which, itself unmoved, is the cause of all motion and generation in the mixed region between. The motive and procreative power, sometimes called Love, is at other times called by Parmenides Necessity, Bearer of the Keys, Justice, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... of his estate. Nor was Daniel Granger slow to take advantage of his urbane humour. For some reason or other, that gentleman was keenly desirous of acquiring Mr. Lovel's friendship. It might be the commoner's slavish worship of ancient race, it might be some deeper motive, that influenced him, but about the fact itself there could be no doubt. The master of Arden was eager to place his coverts, his park, his library, his hot-houses, his picture-gallery—everything that he possessed—at the feet of his ruined neighbour. Yet ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... envied songster. Ambitious of song, practising and rehearsing in private, she yet seems the least sincere and genuine of the sylvan minstrels, as if she had taken up music only to be in the fashion, or not to be outdone by the Robins and Thrushes. In other words, she seems to sing from some outward motive, and not from inward joyousness. She is a good versifier, but not a great poet. Vigorous, rapid, copious, not without fine touches, but destitute of any high, serene melody, her performance, like that of Thoreau's squirrel, always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... his house, and learn how he made such perfect imitations, eh? Was that your motive, instead of having ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... give it up at the moment it can be of the most use to us?" and she threw a glance at her daughters that would have discovered her motive to Mrs Wilson, which was lost on her son; he, poor soul, thinking she found it convenient to support the interest he had been making for the place held by his father one of more emolument than service, or even honor. The contending parties were so equally matched, that this situation was ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... as few women would have dared to take—deliberately setting an example of new liberty—her position in the eyes of all who knew her remained one of proud independence. Rhoda's character was specially exposed to the temptation of such a motive. For months this argument had been in her mind, again and again she decided that the sensational step was preferable to a commonplace renunciation of all she had so vehemently preached. And now that the moment of actual choice had come she felt able to dare everything—as far as the danger ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... solidly, upon itself. These men are deaf to the symphony of the Silences; blind to the horizonless areas of the Unknown; unresponsive to the touch of the Impalpable; oblivious to the machinery of the Moral Universe—in a word, indifferent to the mysterious Motive of Nature's all-pervading Soul. In such mental organisms, opinion, once deflected tangentially from the central Truth, acquires an independent and stubborn orbit of its own. But the Absolute Truth is so large, and human opinion ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the class of persons who seem to be capable, and who really are, except where their own personal safety or comfort is concerned. They always have a reason and an answer, simply because others do not take the trouble to fathom the motive for this sacrifice. Dorothy had determined to find Tavia, and whatever her excuses, they were all subservient ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... error, I find my burden a heavy one; and notwithstanding the quiet of conscience I gain, if it weren't for the salary, I'd quit to-morrow, Al, danged if I wouldn't. It makes me tired to have even you sort of hint that I'm actuated by some selfish motive, when, in truth and in fact, I live but to gather widows and orphans under my wing, so to speak, and give second husbands a good start, by means of policies written on the only true plan, combining participation in profits with pure ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... not myself find such charges excessive. From a very different motive, Nemours put me as much out of temper as it had done my great predecessor a hundred years before. Will it be believed that a town memorialized by the great, perhaps the greatest, French novelist, could not produce its title of honour, in other words a copy ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... ingenious as brazen. As a matter of fact, Macpherson had found only an insignificant portion of his extensive work in popular ballads; and what little he had found he had expanded and changed out of all semblance to genuine ancient legend. Both the guiding motive of his prose-poem (it is his as truly as King Lear is Shakespeare's), and the furore of welcome which greeted it, may be understood by recalling the position of the sentimental school on the eve of its appearance. The sentimentalists ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... mirror. "I'm sunburnt enough to look like a Sikh." And a feeling of bitter resentment was growing against him now, stronger than I had felt before, knowing as I did that in spite of his kindness, and the friendly feeling he professed, he was moved by the strong motive of making me his most ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... they escape? Separate as soon as possible, and scatter in all directions, make their way to small, isolated places, change their appearance as much as possible, and each shift for himself. To remain together increases the risk of capture for each and all. There must be some powerful motive to make them take such risks. Such men risk nothing except for money. But there are no banks here to be looted, no strangers to be waylaid in dark alleys, not even a blind ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... tother for one. When Noah cust Ham he laid the foundashens uv Dimocrisy. Ham wuz turned into a nigger because Noah got intoxicated. His misfortune originated with wine; and whisky, wich is the modern substitoot therefor, bein the motive power uv Dimocrisy, hez bin persekutin him ever sence. I attriboot the decline uv the Dimocrisy to the bleachin out uv the Afrikin, and that's why I oppose amalgamashen. Yoo can't hate a mulatter only half ez much ez yoo kin ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... reliance; and when he addressed a few words to them, before they closed with the enemy, he knew how to suggest the most effectual encouragement in a situation so new to them all. To the miners, he appealed by their honour and spirit as Cornishmen; a motive which the feelings of his own bosom told him would, above all things, animate theirs. Probably there is no place where local pride prevails so strongly as in the west of Cornwall. The lower classes, employed for the most part in pursuits which require the constant ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... from North America are generally posthumous, and we can prove nothing as to their origin. Were they marks of honor made in some religious rite? Were they openings to allow the spirit of the departed to revisit the body it had abandoned? or, to suggest a far more worldly and revolting motive, were they merely holes through which to pick out the brains of the dead. A missionary, in a letter dated from Fort Pitt (Canada) in 1880, describes the mode of scalping practised by the Redskins, and says that they often take a round piece of skull as well ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... world's redemption rests upon the relationship which the Christian is able to create between himself and his oppressor. This course has nothing in common with resistance; it is the opposite of surrender, for its whole purpose and motive is the triumphing over evil by acceptance of all that it brings.... The resistance of evil, whether by way of violence or 'non-violence' is the way of this world. Resignation to evil is the way of weak surrender, and yields only a powerless resentment; ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... be right, though I am unwilling to believe it. Her judgment is entitled to the more weight in this severe decision, that it is ever inclined to the side of a too favorable opinion of character and motive. You know her nature too well, to believe her capable of exaggerating the faults of even the humblest. Yet, though such are her apprehensions, she manifests the same calm and even carriage as on the approach of more ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the States where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... came from God, who had chosen her for His prophetess, and when Joshua, in passionate excitement, owned that the longing for her was his principal motive for toiling for the people, who were as unknown to him as they were dear to her, her heart suddenly seemed to stop beating and, in her mortal agony, she could not help ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... domestic life. The woman, therefore, as well as the man in a corresponding class of life, would be under the necessity of performing certain duties at certain times according to circumstances. This may be a motive for not giving her the preference in an election, but it cannot be a reason for legal exclusion. Gallantry would doubtless lose by the change, but domestic customs would be improved by equality in this ...
— The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women • Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet
... will be surprised at receiving a letter from the frontier, my motive for writing is this. I am a mountaineer—that is a trapper a good many years ago I met with your father Horace Greely on the plains, and greatly admired the old gentleman. The way I came to make ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... him when I am dead, and if he turns from the Lord and seeks the pleasures of the world, my heart sickens. I meant it for the best when I brought him with me up to the Holy Mountain, but that was not the only motive—it seemed to me too hard to part altogether from the child. My God! the young of brutes are secure of their mother's faithful love, and his never asked for him when she fled from my house with her seducer. I thought he should at least not lose his father, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... than one, who truly estimates the importance of her station. A man, who feels that the destinies of a nation are turning on the judgement and skill with which he plans and executes, has a pressure of motive, and an elevation of feeling, which are great safeguards from all that is low, trivial, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... to reconcile all the improbabilities of its being so: the substitution of another, after the real shell had been burnt in the castle-court, may do credit to those who cherish the hero's name; always provided no less generous motive induced the act; but the tale told to prove its identity is, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... soul, but he was not content with this. On the receipt of my letter, he had taken a new house only to give up the best part of it to me. No doubt he calculated on not losing in the long run, as after I had left he would probably have no difficulty in letting the apartment, but his chief motive was to oblige me. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... simplicity, in unwise goodness of heart? If Don Ippolito were altogether self-deceived, and nothing but her unknowing pity had given him grounds of hope? He himself had suggested this to the priest, and how with a different motive he looked at it in his own behalf. A great load began slowly to lift itself from Ferris's heart, which could ache now for this most unhappy priest. But if his conjecture were just, his duty would be different. He must not coldly acquiesce ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... avoidance of chaos: he cultivates habits by the clock, he forms committees, governments, hierarchies, laws, constitutions, by which (as he hopes) a system of society will work in tune. But these are childish imitations, underplay on the great motive: ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Ashburnhams wanted especially to go there and I didn't especially want to go there myself. But, you understand, there was no objection. It was part of the cure to make an excursion three or four times a week. So that we were all quite unanimous in being grateful to Florence for providing the motive power. Florence, of course, had a motive of her own. She was at that time engaged in educating Captain Ashburnham—oh, of course, quite pour le bon motif! She used to say to Leonora: "I simply can't understand how you can let him live by your side and be so ignorant!" Leonora ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... the Place de la Concorde, and up the Champs Elysees as far as the Arc de Triomphe; this is the route I take in going. Arrived at the arch, I cross over, and come back by the same roads, but on the other side of the way. I have a motive in this. There is a certain second-hand book-shop on the opposite side of the Boulevard des Italiens, which draws me by a wholly irresistible attraction. Had I started on that side, I should have gone no further. I should have looked, lingered, purchased, and gone home to read. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... one of the desperate design, the other of the exhausted body; while in the knit brow, and the iron lines, and even in the settled ferocity of expression, there was yet something above the stamp of the vulgar ruffian,—something eloquent of the motive no less than the deed, and significant of that not ignoble perversity of mind which diminished the guilt, yet increased the dreadness of the meditated crime, by mocking it ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... welcome, unless the husband is particularly anxious to get into hot water, and commit suicide upon his domestic happiness; for nothing so effectually disturbs the tranquillity of a family, as open opposition of religious creeds. Women become religious, in the every-day acceptation of the word, from any motive rather than a conviction of the truth or reasonableness of any particular creed. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to define the motive that carries women into the pale of any particular church. I have heard of an old lady, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... expectation of thee! Without doubt, we may all go there under the pretext of supervising our cattle stations, for, O monarch, it is proper that kings should frequently repair to their cattle stations. If this be the motive put forth, thy father, O prince, will certainly grant thee permission!' And while Duryodhana and Karna were thus conversing laughingly, Sakuni addressed them and said, 'This plan, free from difficulties, was what I also saw for going ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was what happened in Orbajosa, for in those days there were no glorious deeds to celebrate, nor was there any motive for weaving wreaths or tracing triumphal inscriptions, or even for making mention of the exploits of our brave soldiers, for which reason all was fear and suspicion in the episcopal city, which, although poor, did not lack treasures in ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... some of the readers of the Journal are unfamiliar with the idea of the home library. In a few words, this is its motive and its plan: To help the children of the poor in developing and ennobling their lives by giving them books and ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... occurred, but he said little; he could not agree in any praise of Mr Slope, and it was not his practice to say much evil of any one. He did not, however, like the visit, and simple-minded as he was, he felt sure that Mr Slope had some deeper motive than the mere pleasure of making soft speeches ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of my experience both in city and country, I feel—yes, I know—that the real motive power of this democracy lies back in the little country neighbourhoods like ours where men gather in dim schoolhouses and practice the invisible patriotism of ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... guess it's a case of the pot and the kettle. I'm not blaming your girl overmuch; although a bad woman is always worse than a bad man. In this case, Elizabeth acted from hate, and Blair from love; the result is the same, of course, but one motive is worse than the other. But never mind that—Blair has got her, and he will be faithful to her; for a while, anyhow. And Elizabeth will get used to him—that's Nature, and Nature is bigger than a girl's first fancy. So if David doesn't interfere—you think he won't? you don't know ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... for the most part without any ennobling conception of their calling. They were much given to gluttony and drinking; and there was an unthinkable amount of scandal and backbiting and jealousy. But it was only by degrees that he realized this, for he had one great motive in common with them—they were all possessed with a sense of the greatness of the Lockmans, and none of them wanted anything better than to talk for hours about the family and its wealth and power, and the habits and tastes of ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... said. "I don't want to put you out. I am really not a vulgar, greedy doctor pushing myself into a case with which I have no concern, for some self-interested motive. I can assure you that I have more than enough to do with illness in London and should be thankful to escape from it here. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... continued their depredations, heedless of the orders communicated to them by the English commissioners. They carried their raids up to the walls of Sarlat, even at the time of vintage, although this season was much respected in the Middle Ages by violent men, from a motive that was perhaps not disinterested. They seized the bullocks that were harnessed to the waggons, and bore them off to their strongholds. It is but fair to add, however, that the Sarladais did not formally submit to ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... manners should not be shallow and superficial. Lord Chesterfield says that the motive that makes one wish to be polite is a desire to shine among his fellows and to raise one's self into a society supposed to be better than his own. It is unnecessary to state that Lord Chesterfield's good manners, fine as they appear, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... tempers!" thought Jeanne, impatiently. Her plans seemed to be thwarted when she least expected it. For a few moments she was silent, revolving in her mind the wisdom of taking Victorine into her counsels, and confiding to her the motive she had for wishing her to be seen by Willan Blaycke. But she dreaded lest this might defeat her object by making the girl self-conscious. Jeanne was perplexed; and in her perplexity her face took on an expression as if she were grieved. Victorine, ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... situate about half a mile from the old hall, now in ruins; but covered all over, within and without, with emblems of the Trinity. This lodge is known to have been built by Sir Thomas Tresham; but his precise motive for selecting this mode of illustrating his favourite doctrine was unknown until it appeared from a letter written by himself about the year 1584, and discovered in a bundle of books and papers inclosed, since 1605, in a wall in the old mansion, and brought to light about twenty ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... have said, neither miraculous nor difficult of comprehension. In the first place, the sudden change in the direction of the vital energy (which, whatever view we take of it and its origin, is acknowledged by all schools of philosophy as most recondite, and as the motive power) must produce results of some kind. In the second, Theosophy shows, as we said before, that a man consists of several men pervading each other, and on this view (although it is very difficult ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... flaw in its construction. He imagined a perpetual circulation of combustible materials, alternately surrendering and regaining chemical energy, the round being kept going by the motive force of the sun's rotation.[1160] This, however, was merely to perch the globe upon a tortoise, while leaving the tortoise in the air. The sun's rotation contains a certain definite amount of mechanical power—enough, according to Lord Kelvin, if directly converted into heat, to ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... but long to thank the Superior and Sister Constance, and to obtain Dr. Lee's advice as to future management. Her coming was great joy to Cherry, who had dreaded the meeting almost with a sense of guilt, though still hoping Felix had been silent on her motive; and Wilmet did not betray him, but only treated her sister with a mixture of almost shy tenderness and reverence. Nor did Cherry dare to ask a question as to Wilmet's own affairs, nor even about Ferdinand Travis, lest she ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and girls of to-day are the newspaper writers and readers of the future, and the habits which young writers form cling to them afterwards. Of course many of the faults which the worse kind of journalists commit in writing would not occur to boys and girls; but one fault leads to another. The motive at the root of most poor and showy writing is the desire to "shine." The faults which seem so detestable to the critical reader seem very ingenious and brilliant to the writer of poor taste. To the journalist, as ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... CHESTERTON'S fancy, is not a fellow of panther-like physique. For him no sudden pouncing on the frayed carpet-edge, or the broken collar-stud dyed with gore. He carries no lens and no revolver. Flashes of psychological insight are more to him than a meticulous examination of the window-sill. When the motive is instantly transparent, why bother about the murderer's boots? In the circumstances it is perhaps fortunate for the reverend sleuth that he nearly always happens to be in either at the death or immediately after it, instead of being summoned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... be one of his family, travelling alone for accomplishment of a vow, or left behind by some accident, to whom, therefore, it would be but right and prudent to use every civility in his power, especially as she seemed unacquainted with the Lowland tongue. Such at least was the only motive the Sacristan was ever known to assign for his courtesy; if there was any other, I once more refer it to his ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... King of Sicily. She was taken prisoner in the battle of Tewkesbury, and immediately committed, to the Tower, from which she was ransomed by Louis the Eleventh, of France. This King, however, who was never known to forget himself, and act otherwise than selfishly, had a very different motive than humanity for this apparent generosity: having gained possession of the person of Margaret, he immediately rendered her his own prisoner, and caused her father to be informed that if he wished to ransom her, he must give up all his hereditary ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... that the greatest characters are those who flatter themselves the most in the comparisons they draw between themselves and others, between others and themselves. It may perhaps be asked what was Madame's motive for an attack so skillfully conceived and executed. Why was there such a display of forces, if it were not seriously her intention to dislodge the king from a heart that had never been occupied before, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... more descriptive of the manner and matter of the Poems—I might indeed have called the majority of them Sonnets—but they do not possess that oneness of thought which I deem indispensible (sic) in a Sonnet—and (not a very honorable motive perhaps) I was fearful that the title "Sonnet" might have reminded my reader of the Poems of the Rev. W. L. Bowles—a comparison with whom would have sunk me below that mediocrity, on the surface of which I am ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... might be paying for the privilege of hunting in another man's territory. A less experienced man would have been strongly tempted to the more direct question. But Sam knew that the faintest hint of ulterior motive would not be lost on the Indian's sharp perceptions. An inquiry, carelessly and indirectly made, might do no harm. But then again it might. And it was better to lose two years of time in the search than a single grain of confidence ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... it was to be a trading community pure and simple, with its object frankly to make money. Second, it was to be composed of men without families and familiar with hardship. And third, there was no religious motive or bond. That such an unidealistic enterprise should not flourish on American soil is worth noting. The disorderly, thriftless rabble, picked up from the London streets, soon got into trouble with the ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... causes or beginnings. The Soul is the centre of your being,—the compass of your life-journey,—the pivot round which, whether you will or not, you shape your actions in this world for the next. If you lose that mainspring of motive, you lose all. Your conduct, your speech, your expression in every movement and feature all show the ungoverned and ungovernable condition in which you are. God is not mocked,—and in many cases,—taking the grand majority of the human ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... enterprise of the kind in which the State concerns itself. It would have been a perfectly proper aspiration on the part of French statesmen to seek for opportunities of development in a region as yet scarcely touched by European energy. But there is no more reason for attributing this motive to Bonaparte in 1800, than to the Ministers of Louis XV and Louis XVI, or to the Government of France during the Revolution: and that ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... Jehovah,' and in yet another aspect is expressed in saying 'God is love,' viz. the thought which sounds familiar, but which has in it depths of strength and illumination and joy, if we rightly ponder it, that, to use human words, the motive of the divine action is all found ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... weeded out the over privileged and we have not effectively lifted up the underprivileged. Both of these manifestations of injustice have retarded happiness. No wise man has any intention of destroying what is known as the profit motive; because by the profit motive we mean the right by work to earn a decent livelihood for ourselves and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... gentlemen, or to gain your silence, by practising upon your feelings. Be silent. I am not the less ruined, not the less disgraced, not the less utterly undone. Be silent; my honour, all the same, in four-and-twenty hours, has gone for ever. I have no motive, then, to deceive you. You must believe what I speak; even what I speak, the most degraded of men. I say again, never, never, never, never, never was my honour before sullied, though guilty of a thousand follies. You see before you, gentlemen, the unhappy victim of circumstances; of circumstances ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... wanting in what, in some ways, is the most characteristic verse of our time, especially that of our secondary poets. In your own pieces, particularly in your MS. 'A Revenge,' I find Rossetti's requirement fulfilled, and should anticipate great things from one who has the talent of conceiving his motive with so much firmness and tangibility—with that close logic, if I may say so, which is an element in any genuinely imaginative process. It is clear to me that you aim at this, and it is what gives your verses, to my mind, great interest. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... on the right shoulders. I seek to make it plain how the country was bamboozled and betrayed by Party machinations such as have not had their parallel in any other period of Irish history. I state nothing in malice or for any ulterior motive, since I have none. But I think it just and right that the chief events of the past twenty years should be set forth in their true character so that impartial inquirers may know to what causes can be traced the overwhelming tragedies ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... up new horizons to the little fellow's suspicions. Suddenly he grasped the prime motive force of our existence, hitherto only conjectured and enveloped in mystery. His godfather had relations with a woman; he was enamored like the heroes of the novels! And the boy recalled many of his Valencian poems, all rhapsodizing a lady—sometimes singing of her great ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... things, and we by him." They make great account of the doctrine of God's paternal character and government, and continually set it forward as the richest source of consolation, and the most powerful motive to repentance ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... that, I have your word; and, in view of the fact, perhaps this analysis of motive, of character, however interesting on general ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... it, the service had a motive somewhat similar to his own, and he was glad to "bow his pride," because he believed that he would have ample chance to raise it up again. As he went about his work singing and whistling softly to himself, he cast many a glance up ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Cons dismissed? This is a more difficult question than is imagined: so difficult that most people set out without waiting for the answer: they travel first and leave to providential contingencies the chance that, on a review of the tour in its course, some adequate motive may suggest itself. Certainly it may be said, that the word Greece already in itself contains an adequate motive; and we do not deny that a young man, full of animal ardor and high classical recollections, may, without blame, give way to the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... large, worked all night by the aid of arc-lights—would seem to suggest that even if practical considerations brought about Mrs. Eddy's change of residence, her extreme impatience may have resulted from a more personal motive. It is, indeed, very probable that Mrs. Eddy left Concord for the same reason that she left Boston years ago: because she felt that malicious animal magnetism was becoming too strong for her there. The action brought ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... his work consists of gossip about people. This growing interest in the individual was leading up to the great eighteenth century novel. It seems to arise out of a growing sense of identity, a stronger interest in oneself; there is a common motive at the root of our observation of other people, of the interest attaching to ordinary actions presented on the stage, and of the fascination of a reflection or a portrait of ourselves; by these means we are enabled to some extent to become detached, and to take an external and ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... position to view it from the outside. After all, he was excusable in seeking to maintain the dignity of his office, but he had departed from one of the fundamental rules of the race, namely: "Let no material gain be the motive or reward of public duty." He had wounded the ideals of his people beyond forgiveness, and he suffered the penalty; yet his courage was not diminished by the mistakes of his past. Like the Sioux chief Little Crow, he was called "the betrayer ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... phrase should end with the breath unexhausted. When the flow of text and music forbid the taking of a full breath, half-breaths must be quietly taken at convenient points. Instead of letting the whole reservoir of motive power exhaust itself and then completely refill it, we should, by taking these half-breaths, maintain a reserve. A notable advocate of the use of the half-breath in singing is that past mistress of sustained and smooth ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... evidence of one prejudiced witness of shady antecedents is quite sufficient to convict the most stainless and irreproachable gentleman of crimes for the committal of which he could have had no possible motive. ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... temporary office, the other rogue incites the man to apply for it, and together they manage to secure his absence every morning in the week. From the time that I heard of the assistant having come for half wages, it was obvious to me that he had some strong motive for ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... his mind when he first sat down to the work; but if so, it was put aside, consciously or unconsciously, after the completion of the first few chapters, in favour of more complex characterisation. Bob Calverley, the young squatter, really holds a third or fourth place in relation to the main motive of the story, and is used rather as a foil than as an exemplar of anything typically Australian. He does not bear any active part in the drama of passion and intrigue; he is not even permitted to be a passive spectator ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the "Fate" motive in Beethoven's fifth symphony undoubtedly lies in the succession of the four notes at equal intervals of time. Beethoven himself marked it So pocht das Schicksal an ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... bourgeois idealists also agree—should be a union that two persons enter into only out of mutual love, in order to accomplish their natural mission. This motive is, however, only rarely present in all its purity. With the large majority of women, matrimony is looked upon as a species of institution for support, which they must enter into at any price. Conversely, a large portion of the men look upon marriage from a ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... bungalow at night on a salary of seven rupees a month, and soon became general. It was the business of the Ramosi watchman to prevent other Ramosis from robbing the house. Apparently this was the common motive for the custom, prevalent up to recent years, of paying a man solely for the purpose of watching the house at night, and it originated, as in Poona, as a form of insurance and an application of the proverb of setting a thief to catch a thief. The selection of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... if he is sovereignly rational, he is bound to make reason reign; that is to say, it is his duty to make all those who are under his authority revere and obey reason religiously. Love is the most potent motive for obedience; and it is impossible that subjects should not love their prince if they know that reason is the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... the arbiters of fashion in dress for the costliness, splendour, or novelty of their toilet. Henry VIII. and George IV. surrounded themselves with the men most distinguished for wit and talent, with a remarkable coincidence of motive, as ministering to their vanity or pleasures; but as soon as they became troublesome or useless, both cast them off with the same careless indifference. Henry VIII., it is true, sacrificed to his own caprices, or to court intrigue, the lives of those whom he had chosen for his social ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar and the motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report here. The first twenty to ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... opinion came to the aid of pontifical opinion, and, in France, the clergy spontaneously became ultramontane because there was no longer any motive for remaining Gallican. Since the Revolution, the Concordat and the Organic Articles, all the sources which maintained in it a national as well as particularist spirit, had dried up; in ceased being a distinct, proprietary and favored body; its members are no longer leagued together by the community ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pride that was become such an essential part of the dear gentleman's character, in this instance of a wife, that although he knew he could not keep it up, if he made me happy, yet it was no small motive of his choosing me, in one respect, because he expected from me more humility, more submission, than he thought would be paid him by a lady equally born and educated; and of this I will send you an instance, in a transcription from that part of my journal you have not seen, of his lessons ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... relinquish his post. Gervaise, who had,—thanks partly to his skill with his weapons, but still more to the temper of the splendid suit of armour presented to him by Genoa,—escaped without a scratch, volunteered to remain with him until next morning, his principal motive for making the request being his desire to escape from further congratulations and praise for the success of his plan. After Caretto's wounds had been dressed by the knights, and he and Gervaise had partaken of some food and wine, which they greatly needed, Caretto ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... from Sinai and saw the Calf fashioned by Aaron, he thought his brother was no better than the rest of the people, and had, like them, devoted himself to idolatry. But God knew that Aaron's participation in the construction of the Calf was merely due to the pious motive of delaying the people until Moses should return, hence He even then said to Aaron: "I am fully aware of they motive, and, as truly as thou livest, I shall appoint thee as warden over the sacrifices that My children offer Me." ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... It may easily be supposed that other rights were as little to his taste as the claim to vote the subsidies, a privilege which was in reality indisputable. Men who stood forth in defence of the provincial constitutions were, in his opinion, mere demagogues and hypocrites; their only motive being to curry favor with the populace. Yet these charters were, after all, sufficiently limited. The natural rights of man were topics which had never been broached. Man had only natural wrongs. None ventured to doubt that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Pursuit after Knowledge, and engage us to search into the Wonders of his Creation; for every new Idea brings such a Pleasure along with it, as rewards any Pains we have taken in its Acquisition, and consequently serves as a Motive to put ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... I had firmly, emphatically, yea, ofttimes passionately declined the proffered lobster, he, having with difficulty mastered his chagrin, would seek to direct my attention to the salmon, his motive for this change in tactics being that salmon, though apparently plentiful, was generally the second most expensive item upon the regular menu. Salmon as served in Paris wears a different aspect from the one commonly worn by it when it ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... in the world a species of mortals who employ themselves in promoting matrimony, and without any visible motive of interest or vanity, without any discoverable impulse of malice or benevolence, without any reason, but that they want objects of attention and topicks of conversation, are incessantly busy in procuring wives and husbands. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Elijah is similarly dissatisfied with another view, which regards evil as a negation. We have heard this opinion before and we know that Maimonides adopted it (p. 288). Its motive as we know is to remove from God the responsibility for evil. If evil is nothing positive it is not caused by the activity of an agent. All essential activity is good, and all the acts of God are good. Evil consists in the absence of good; it is due to matter, and does not come from God. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... with ears particularly open to any answers the Egyptian clergy might please to give. Yet pleasure was not the object of their journey. Science, as themselves said, curiosity, as their enemies alleged, was the motive for their encountering perils by land and water. Indeed we recollect only three travellers, either among the Greeks or Romans, who can properly be considered as journeying for pleasure. These were Herodotus—the prince of tourists, past, present, or to come,—Paullus ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... "What motive can be strong enough to require you to infringe the order I have given my children never to come to me unless I send for them?" asked the Count of his son as ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... Government, according to the ration of the deposit bill, the sum of $306,122; and similar results would follow the comparison between the small and the large States throughout the Union, thus realizing to the small States an advantage which would be doubtless as unacceptable to them as a motive for incorporating the principle in any system which would produce it as it would be inconsistent with the rights and expectations of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... written of him had he been the victor instead of the defeated. It is generous to give praise to the unfortunate Admiral for whom Nelson had such an aversion and who was constantly threatened by him with vigorous chastisement when he caught him; but generosity was not the motive—it was only part of the loose-lipped, unclean policy of decrying Napoleon. It is horrible, ungrateful, and foul brutishness of the Corsican tyrant to court-martial so amiable and brave a man as Villeneuve because he proceeded ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... he felt compelled to believe the Poulains' version of what had happened. He could think of no motive—in fact there was no motive—which could prompt a false assertion ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... thought, and gradually the perplexity cleared from her mind. Stephen La Mothe was not a fool, that counted for much. He was honest, that counted for much more. The King was notoriously ailing and, being superstitious, might well repent; no high motive, but a probable one. Philip de Commines' visit to Amboise was not by chance, and nothing less than his master's orders would have kept him so long from Valmy. If Stephen La Mothe was right, then these orders must surely have a connection ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... also showed by very carefully conducted experiments that the metallic sulphides are not only better conductors of electricity than has hitherto been supposed, but that when paired they were capable of exhibiting strong electro-motive power. Thus, if galena and zinc blende in acid solutions be connected in the usual manner by a voltaic pair, sulphuretted hydrogen is evolved from the surface of the former, and a current generated which is sufficient to reduce gold, silver or copper ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... or baptism in that name, or miracles in the name of Jesus, or of the Lord's Supper and the conception of the Lord as present with his disciples in the rite? Was this revering of Jesus, which was fast moving toward a worship of him, the inner motive force of the whole construction of the dogma of his person and ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... altogether devoid of conceit, but I could not persuade myself that affection prompted this action. We had met so briefly, always with me in the role of hunted fugitive, that it was impossible to conceive that love was the motive power of control. The thought even was almost preposterous; much as I should have rejoiced to believe it true the very ridiculousness of it caused me to smile bitterly. Perhaps her action had some connection ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... hollowness of this bombastic talk. That man has yet to be born whose practice will be regulated by this insipid theory (dieser grauen theorie). What is the idea of goodness per se? * * * The abstract idea of goodness is not an effectual motive for well-doing" (p. 104). My only comment is c'est ignolile! His Reverence acts the part of Satan in Holy Writ, "Does Job serve God for naught?" Compare this selfish, irreligious, and immoral view with Philo Judaeus (On the Allegory of the Sacred Laws, cap. 1viii.), to measure the extent of the fall ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... is one of the simplest of geniuses, I have always been in the centre of the stage, whilst Webb has been prompting me, invisible, from the side." It was this singular union more than anything else which gave direction and motive force to the propaganda carried on by the Fabian Society for a quarter of a century, whilst to Mr. Shaw personally it gave the consistency of thought and definiteness of aim which underlie all his later work. We cannot, of course, neglect the intellectual ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... told him is not a part of the conspiracy, but from that hour there were two secrets kept in the Franklin dwelling. And when he hurried home each afternoon with The News, that they might carefully examine it for anything bearing on his father's expedition, there was a double motive in the eagerness with which Manuela met him ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... observe that I have been for some years in China, am quite a stranger at home, and have no personal motive or interest in the inquiry I ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... supported in his efforts, but still hopeful and plucky. He could hardly, in 1860, have dreamed that within twenty years, steam presses would be brought into the same village to follow in the wake of the clumsy press whose only motive power was his own strong arm. But few of our citizens can now justly appreciate the obligation the community is under to Mr. Carpenter for the large part of his life-work which he ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... myself find such charges excessive. From a very different motive, Nemours put me as much out of temper as it had done my great predecessor a hundred years before. Will it be believed that a town memorialized by the great, perhaps the greatest, French novelist, could not produce its title ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Vanstone, telling him that I should leave England at the end of February, and that the nature of the business which took me away afforded little hope of my getting back from the West Indies before June. My letter was not written with any special motive. I merely thought it right—seeing that my partners were not admitted to my knowledge of Mr. Vanstone's private affairs—to warn him of my absence, as a measure of formal precaution which it was right to take. At the end of February I left England, without having heard from him. I ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... could not shut himself up while the country was ravaged; and the jay said the ladies would despise them. Kapchack remembered that the fox had always had a character for duplicity, and perhaps had some secret motive for his advice, and just then, in the midst of the uproar, a starling flew into the circle with part of his tail gone and his ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... all; that all law was a convention based on no objective truth; and that the only valid right was the natural right of the strong to rule. It was into this chaos of sceptical opinion that Plato was born; and it was the desire to meet and subdue it that was the motive of his philosophy. Like Aristophanes, he traced the root of the evil to the decay of religious belief; and though no one, as we have seen, was more trenchant than he in his criticism of the popular ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Southern slavery.[2] The recent publication by Mrs. Stowe, entitled "Uncle Tom's Cabin," is a work of that class. I have no wish to write anything harsh or unkind; for however ill-timed, ill-advised, or ill-judged the work may be, if her object was the alleviation of human woe, I can but respect the motive that prompted her to write, though I may differ with her in opinion as to the means most likely to accomplish the proposed object. The fair authoress may have meant well. I shall leave that, however, to the "Searcher of all hearts;" ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... aiding him to get possession of the throne, they should gain an influence in the kingdom which they might afterward turn to account for themselves. The King of France at this time was named Philip. He determined to espouse the cause of young Arthur in this quarrel. His motive for doing this was to have a pretext for making war upon John, and, in the war, of conquering some portion of Normandy and annexing it ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... as to the right disposition of the property of the suppressed establishments: "The simple-minded shudder at this, because they think it not right to change the last will of any body; but a greater fraud lies in this than in other abuses. See: What motive swayed those, who founded the benefices? Nothing else than because they were falsely taught, that the mass is a sacrifice. Therefore they dreamed they were bestowing their possessions on the poor, when they gave to this object. But now, since we are ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... out to him that, as she had her duties and occupations, so ought he to have. It was monstrous his thought of foregoing the shooting that year. Why, if he wanted some additional motive, what did he say to preserving as much grouse-plumage as would trim a cloak for her? It was a great pity that the skins of so beautiful a bird should be thrown away. And she desired him to present her kind regards to ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... and it involved a falsehood. Egremont happened to regard her as she spoke, and at once a blush came to her cheeks. To what was she falling? Why did she tell untruths without the least need? She could not understand the motive which had impelled her ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... therefore profoundly at rest, I will know the cause of my wretched fate, and will be at rest. My pistols lie loaded by my side—I shall die to-night. To-morrow, twelve awestruck and trembling men will come and look at me. They will ask each other: 'What could have been his motive for the rash act.' Rash! my face will be calmer than theirs, for my struggles in this life will be over; and I shall have gained—perhaps knowledge, perhaps oblivion, but certainly victory. And to-night, as the clock ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Respect for the masses he had none; interest in their affairs he had none either. On the other hand, the tone of uninstructed Conservatism—that is to say, of the party so stamped—he altogether despised. The motive which ultimately decided him to declare himself a Liberal was purely of sentiment; he remembered what Mrs. Baxendale had said about the hardships of poor Hood, and consequently allied himself with those who profess to be the special friends of ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... the bed and lay with her face on her arms, shaken by a most desperate weeping. That fatal charity; those fatal five-pound notes. Annalise, panic-stricken lest she who possessed so many should be the next victim, poured out the tale of the missing money, of the plain motive for the murder, with a convincingness, a naked truth, that stabbed Priscilla to the ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... but as you appear to have placed yourselves in my power, and claimed my confidence, I will not betray you. If you are honest, you have my thanks for your indiscreet zeal, in running such a great risk to preserve my life. The motive is laudable, but the means are most dangerous, and I fear you have not well weighed the consequences. Should the sword be once drawn in such a cause, there is no middle course to pursue; the scabberd must be thrown away. The period is not yet come ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... States, but the planters will receive some benefit from it in the protection given to their crops. The steamboats in interior waters will be exchanged for iron whalebacks, and new forces of a new nature, as yet only partly developed, such a electricity, will contest with steam as a motive power. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... had at least one good effect: it took from her the irritation she had so often felt against herself. Losing part of her self-consciousness in the whirl of a new, strong motive, wrought a great change, not only in her appearance, but also in her way of looking at things—herself included. She was almost satisfied with the image her mirror reflected. She might well have been entirely satisfied. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... mill completes what the puddling hall does in the rough. Five hundred and fifty thousand tons of iron, all shaped, are taken from the forge every day. To reach such a result it requires no less than 3,000 workmen and a motive power of 7,000 horses. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... some difficulty, "that I should thank you. I do. But I do not think that you told me all of this without some motive. I abandon the service of The Master. But what is it that you wish me to do? You know, of course, that I can order both ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... yield a fatherless generation? What is the precise structure of the nuclei of the cells which originate from the nucleus of the egg-cell only, and not from a nucleus formed by the fusion of that with a sperm-cell nucleus? These and similar questions are the motive of further careful ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the words she spoke, Then thus his melancholy silence broke: "Some other motive, goddess! sways thy mind (Some close design, or turn of womankind), Nor my return the end, nor this the way, On a slight raft to pass the swelling sea, Huge, horrid, vast! where scarce in safety sails The best-built ship, though Jove inspires the gales. The bold proposal how shall I fulfil, Dark ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... such postponement, or even a positive rejection; and he treated the menaces of the dissolution of the Union with scorn. He significantly asked, Who will dissolve the government? The opposition majority had no motive for doing it, and he did not believe that the federalists would, at the first failure of their power, revenge themselves by overthrowing the government. He expressed his belief that the people, from one end of the Union to the other, were strongly ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... wife of the governor of one of the chief provinces, she had been from the beginning en rapport with the intrigues, the gossip, and the rumours of a revolution which, for intricacy of plot and hidden motive, is incomparable with any previous national change on record. Her attitude toward education as seen in her relationship with her son educated in England and America reveals the attitude of the average Chinese father and mother if they would allow ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... first victim was now past all suffering, being no more a motive for heroism than so much mutton, the girl's blood was too hot with triumphant indignation to let her think of such an unimportant point as that. She was victor. She had outfaced and routed the foe. She had saved one victim. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... for all these ills culminating in death was the tree of life. When man sinned against his God he was put away from the tree of life. If he had remained with it he would have been beyond the reach of the motive of life, and beyond the restraining power of the fear of death. He would have lived forever, subject, like fallen angels, to mental suffering during the ages to come. But being placed beyond the reach of the tree of life he may be redeemed by ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... fantastic or trivial or even grotesque. In Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli love which cometh by the hearing of the ear (for Rudel is a sun-worshipper who has never seen his sun) is a pure imaginative devotion to the ideal. In Count Gismond love is the deliverer; the motive of the poem is essentially that of the Perseus and Andromeda myth refined upon and mediaevalised. In Cristine love is the interpreter of life; a moment of high passion explains, and explains away, all else ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... imbibe. He now viewed my daring spirit with a mingled pleasure and pain; he dreaded the result of such ardent feelings, because he foresaw that they would lead me into the greatest difficulties and dangers, unless he checked them by timely control. He now freely told me that he was actuated by this motive when he refused to give me his consent to go to Portsmouth, to witness the effects of Lord Howe's brilliant victory over the French fleet. He told me, too, that he had the same object in view, when, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... scarcely a battered tramp on the Seven Seas that was not his on time charter. As usual, his position was, "You've got to come and see me"; which they did, and, to use another of his phrases, they "paid through the nose" for the privilege. And all his venturing and fighting had now but one motive. Some day, as he confided to Hegan, when he'd made a sufficient stake, he was going back to New York and knock the spots out of Messrs. Dowsett, Letton, and Guggenhammer. He'd show them what an all-around general buzz-saw he was and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... reflection. She heard steps approaching the chamber; she drew back, but trembled not. A courage not of herself, never known before, sparkled in her eyes, and dilated her stature. Living or dead, she would be faithful still to Zanoni! There was a new motive to the preservation of honour. The door opened, and the prince entered in the gorgeous and gaudy custume still worn at that ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the party at the water's edge,—square-ended, flat-bottomed punts, sharp-bowed bateaux, long, graceful, dug-out canoes, and a commodious push-boat, with cabin and awning, whose motive power was poles. Elk River craft are as abundant as the log cabins on its banks, and their pilots are as numerous as the inhabitants. Neither sex nor size is a disqualification, for, excepting the trifling matter of being web-toed, all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... course, with them, Lady Jane Grey, who, as will be seen by the table, was the representative of the second sister of Henry VIII., was the only heir. The Earl of Northumberland embraced this view. His motive was to raise Lady Jane Grey to the throne, in order to exclude the Princess Mary, whose accession he knew very well would bring all his greatness to a very ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... with a look of calm consideration; "somebody did it, undoubtedly; and that makes the difficulty of the whole affair. 'Cui bono,' as the lawyers say. Two persons only could have had any motive, so far as wealth and fortune go. The first and most prominent, your father, who, of course, would come into every thing (which made the suspicion so hot and strong); and the other, a very nice gentleman, whom it is ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... to every vice, and one whom his friends had found it out of their power to reclaim. With well-feigned tears of regret, she upbraided herself for having ever allowed him to enter her house—ascribing her motive to humanity, and a desire to reclaim him from his errors; and hinting, when she could, that I had defeated her good intentions, and ruined myself. Alas! how true the latter part has proved to me! I and my husband wrote to her letter after letter, in vain. She refused, in the most ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... population of the Tenth, had secured the services of a primitive Methodist preacher, and was holding nightly meetings in the schoolhouse, where much good was done. But the noisy devotions of the Flats met with little favour in the sight of the Oa. Praying Donald, conscious of the purity of their motive, had visited the Methodists once, and had now little to ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... more detested, hated, feared—no man was ever better loved. That he was a sternly honest, sincere man, singularly pure in motive and abstemious in habit, even his bitterest enemies do not dispute. If Savonarola was God-intoxicated, Garibaldi ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... extends them (Nos. 9 and 54), but often merely repeats passages on the same degrees as those of the first section, or on different ones. He makes use of imitation (Nos. 7 and 36). Sometimes he evolves a phrase from a motive (No. 11). In No. 19 the development assumes a certain importance. It commences, not, as in most cases, with the opening theme or figure of the first section, but with a group of semiquaver notes which appears later in that section. In No. 20 Scarlatti preserves the rhythm, but with total change ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... gleaned from the savages some vague allusions to sources of silver and copper in the far northwest, but that was all. He had not found a northern Eldorado, nor had his quest of a new route to the Indies been a whit more fruitful. Cartier had set out with this as his main motive, but had succeeded only in finding that there was no such route by way of the St. Lawrence. Though the King was much interested in his recital of courage and hardships, he was not fired with zeal for spending ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... angry to remember what she had said to him on the previous night, or he might have guessed at the motive which had led to her departure. "Her father has done with her already," he said; "and I have done with her now." The servants received orders not to admit Miss Henley, if her audacity contemplated a return to ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... rumours likely to be raised after my retreat, by those terrifying watchers of Court transactions who inform the public of their conjectures, I dreaded the probable assertion that I must needs be disgusted or discontented, for health could not be the true motive of my resignation, since I was in public just before it took place. I feared, too, that even those who promoted the enterprise might reproach me with my ability to do what I wished. These considerations determined me to run no voluntary ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... forces, and its dynamical action is equally to be ascribed to the pressure of the Aether." Now I want to put this question to the reader: If light possesses this dynamical action, that is, if it possesses a motive or driving power, what must be the exact effect of the dynamical action of the light waves from the sun upon all the planets and meteors that revolve round it? We know that the sun is 324,000 times the mass of our earth, and that it has a ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... the past had served the State with credit in the great public offices that satisfy men's reputable pride and honourable ambition, but none before him had served his fellow creatures during a long life with no other motive than to bind up their wounds and aggravate the ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... and it made a profound impression on Jack MacRae. He passed over the underlying motive, a man justifying himself to his son for a failure which needed no justifying. He saw now why his father tabooed all things Gower, why indeed he must have hated Gower as a man who does things in the open hates an enemy who strikes ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the Mounted Police all over Canada was opportune is evidenced by the fact that, under the guise of legitimate strikes, movements were begun which led to a sort of reign of terror in some communities, and in connection with which the real motive of some who manipulated them was shown, by evidence convincing to Judges and Juries, to be nothing short of seditious conspiracy to overthrow the constitutional government of this country. Incriminating papers ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... is still another side to the farm life, Mother dear, or to any life for that matter. Your own life has taught me that to work for the love of others is a motive which directs the noblest lives. If agricultural missionaries are needed in India, they are also needed in parts of our own country where farm lands that were once productive are now greatly depleted and in some cases even abandoned for ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... responded to the invitation. Their sympathy was mostly with Shon McGann; their admiration was about equally divided; for Pretty Pierre had the quality of courage in as active a degree as the Irishman, and they knew that some extraordinary motive, promising greater excitement, was behind the Frenchman's refusal to send a bullet through Shon's head a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that to most people would seem to be magical. I showed it a short time ago to the prior, having explained to him beforehand how I had discovered it. He is above the superstitions of folks in general, and knowing that I could have no motive in deceiving him, was much interested; but he said to me, 'This is one of the things that were best concealed. I can quite understand that there are many things in nature of which we are ignorant. I know that what you say of decayed fish sometimes giving out light like this ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... objective of the armed forces is, therefore, the reduction of the opposing will to resist. It is attained through the use of actual physical violence or the threat thereof (page 7). This fact constitutes the underlying motive of every military plan, whether for the conduct of a minor or contributory operation, or for the prosecution of a major campaign. The final outcome is dependent on ability to isolate, occupy, or otherwise control ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... was plenty of other food for the dog, Edwin ate a portion, but never without feeling confident that he was not robbing his friend. As the dog usually looked very wise, Edwin took it for granted that his motive was understood as right and just, and in this way the child was able to get some of the food that he would otherwise have been denied, and the dog's allowance was still sufficient. Rather than rob the dog, he would always ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... should profit by his mistakes. He never made any mistakes. Now and again he emphasizes some trifling error, but that is "only his fun." (3) A desire that others should profit by the recital of his virtuous sagacity to reach a similar success. The last was undoubtedly his principal motive. Honest fellow, who happened to be a genius! But the point is that his success was in no way the result of his virtuous sagacity. I would go further, and say that his dreadful virtuous sagacity ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... Don, and that it was all going to be an attempt to frighten the tribe he was with. But all the same, the enemy came by degrees nearer and nearer, as they yelled and leaped; and a suspicion suddenly crossed Don's mind that there might be a motive in ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... seemed an illumination of his whole being, as if some lamp had suddenly kindled into flame inside of him, irradiating him from top to toe. Best of all, it was involuntary, born of no external effort or motive, but simply the outflashing of a hidden personality, rare and fine and sweet. With a quick interchange of smiles Anne and Paul were fast friends forever before a word had passed ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... proverb—which pray condemn as a bad one, because the motive offered is wrong—that "honesty is the best policy." Rather say, "Be honest because it is right." Pussy, with her manoeuvres to steal the creams, thought herself very clever, ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... South. One young lady, the daughter of a wealthy planter, was so determined to see her, that she bribed a maid to lend her her cap and apron, and let her carry in Miss Lind's tea. This incident amused Barnum immensely, but Miss Lind was much vexed, declaring the young lady's motive to be curiosity rather than admiration. The voyage from Wilmington to Charleston had been very rough, the trip requiring over thirty-six hours. When they arrived at last, the vessel had been given up for lost and the wreck had been telegraphed all over the country. The voyage to Havana ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... signal was given to change the motive power from the internal combustion engines to electricity, they could see the engine stop, and an attendant shift the clutch which engaged the electric motors. A dial swinging over a card alongside a pair of ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... we find in every form of life? Desire of some sort—some unexplained motive power that impels even the smallest insect on its queer travels. You must have watched some infinitesimal red spider on a fence rail, bustling along—why and whither? Who knows? And when you come to man, what ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... had no great difficulty in the end in arriving at the truth, namely, that his own loyalty was a very secondary object of interest to the minister, and that his real motive in thus apparently opening his mind to him had been, not to gather his own sentiments, but to endeavour to ascertain those of Turenne. From the talk among his officers he had already learned that the general opinion was, that although the queen had always entertained a most favourable ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... Carl: "for I see through your kind motive in asking, that I esteem myself fortunate, if I have been in any way useful to you; but that I cannot, and ought not, to think, of accepting a favour ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... replied J.T. Maston, with fresh vehemence. "There are a thousand reasons for fighting floating about, and still we don't fight! We economise legs and arms, and that to the profit of folks that don't know what to do with them. Look here, without looking any farther for a motive for war, did not North America ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... have here a ploughman out of employ. Given a ploughman out of employ, and a rick burnt. The burning of a rick is an act of vengeance, and a ploughman out of employ is a vengeful animal. The rick and the ploughman are advancing to a juxtaposition. Motive being established, we have only to prove their proximity at a certain hour, and our ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... delicate creatures rose out of the water like silver clouds, and as they passed over our Vessel numbers fell upon our decks. These fish are excellent eating, and of those that fell aboard of us we soon had an ample supply. Hartog, as much to give the crew some novel occupation as from any other motive, set the men to work salting and drying the fish, so that we secured three barrels full, as an addition to our ordinary fare, which was very acceptable. The flying fish were pursued by a shoal of dolphins, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... which many acts can be done which, while politically anti-constitutional, are not juridically unconstitutional. For this reason, the undue dependence upon the judiciary to nullify every law which either in form, necessary operation, or motive transgresses the Constitution has so far lessened the vigilance of the people to protect their own Constitution as to ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... Is not that rather my question than yours? We judge ourselves from within; 'others judge us by what we have done,' says Goethe. The means, ha, and the motive? Why will men seek stumblingly after these, when actually their sole concern is with the thing done? So, you two look at me,—I was but pondering,—putting a case;—so far, the means here have been simple and innocent,—my hand, my eye, my brain, my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... not to prevent him exposing something he knew! It seems explainable only on the hypothesis that a liaison existed between the colored boy and the girl, and the white man knew of it. The press is singularly silent. Has it a motive? We owe it to ourselves ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... undertook his new duties without allowing a murmur to escape his lips, and without even asking additional pay; though, had he but mentioned it, the general could not have well refused the demand. A noble motive engrossed Kit Carson's mind. He has ever labored to win and wear the confidence and respect of his countrymen, being ambitious to leave a name behind him that shall be an honor ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... replied, with more than wonted seriousness. "Your ambition is great enough to render you useless and discontented, but you need something to stimulate your energy, else it will waste itself in idle dreams. Perhaps love may come to be that motive power; perhaps—" and a shade crossed ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... said you! O thy mouth's a Sieve! There's not a secret thou canst keep a moment; Did I not charge thee not to name Gerardo, Till I should speak of it myself to him? Nay, 'tis the greatest motive makes me meet him, For to prevent the mischiefs else may follow; Well, I am curst for sin, and thou art made The cause o' th' sin, and curse that ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... history of the Indian, inaugurating a kind of warfare that was cruel, relentless, and demoralizing, since it was based upon the desire to conquer and to despoil the conquered of his possessions—a motive unknown to ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... being overcome by the deities, Danavas, and invincible Rakshasas, capable of splitting mountain summits and sucking the ocean itself and destroying the three worlds, fierce, and looking like Yama himself. The illustrious Kasyapa, seeing him approach and knowing also his motive, spoke unto ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... no persuasive argument to send the searchers off. In their own minds they have enough motive for haste; and, though in each it might be different in kind, as in degree, with all it is sufficiently strong. Not one of them but is willing to risk his life in the pursuit they have entered upon; and at least one would lay it down rather than fail in finding Francesca, and restoring ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... regard, I do not like the thought of a person in her circumstances going to what to her must be serious trouble and expense on our account. The easiest way to reconcile myself to it would be by believing with you all, that she has some personal motive in it." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... were to do, or how to do it, even with the means therefor provided. But the South was at last awake! And again the popular voice averred that it was not Congress, or Cabinet; that the President alone was the motive power; that his strong hand had grasped the chaos and reduced it to something like order. Rapidly one needful and pointed law after another emanated from Congress; and what had been a confused mass of weak resolves assumed shape as clear and legible ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... experience if he chose. "There is just one point that we shall have to clear up, however. What was the cause of the death of the deceased? There is no gas in the room. It couldn't have been illuminating gas, then. No, it must have been a poison of some kind. Then as to the motive," he added, trying to look confident but really shooting a tentative remark at Craig and the house detective, who said nothing. "It looks a good deal like that other suicide - at least a suicide which some one has endeavoured to conceal," he added, hastily recollecting the manner in which the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... plan in his head Phil ducked to the left, and started to run. He could have no real motive in choosing this side, because there was no time to take even a quick observation, and form ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... difference of taste, and is alive to the distinction between an original and a copy. In the second act she has got the length of knowing the enormity of taking life, and appreciating the fine distinction between taking it of one's own motive, and taking it for money. Yet the next moment, when Leucippe enters with a fawn he has killed, it appears that she does not realize the difference between man and the brute creation. Thus we are for ever shifting from ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... lures her silly gudgeons. They shall eat, they shall propagate, and for the sake of pleasing themselves they shall hurry down the road which has been laid out for them. But there lurks no bribe in the smell and beauty of the flower. It's charm has no ulterior motive. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... of any Huguenot conspiracy? How, then, could the French envoy go to the same Englishmen to whom he had made known the contents of this despatch, and tell them that the king was the author of the deed he had stigmatized as most detestable, and that the motive that had impelled him reluctantly to order the slaughter of the Huguenots was a conspiracy which he did not discover until a day or two after he gave the order? Yet this was the contradictory story which was ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... compressed air arrangement motive power is furnished the torpedo in transit for its propellers. A gyroscope keeps it on a plane and upright. A striker on the nose of the torpedo is released by a fan which revolves in the water. The nose of the torpedo strikes the side of the battleship and the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran thus: "At the first council, procuration to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... self-chosen path of life could have trained you. And if, as is quite possible, some of you are impatient already for the exercise of your powers in some great work, I will preach patience to you from another motive. It is this: that you are not yet capable of doing much that is useful, from want of training and general ability. I remember Miss Octavia Hill once saying that she could get any quantity of money, and any quantity of enthusiasm, but that her difficulty was to get trained intelligence, ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... or with joy adore. Oh, wondrous scene! most awful! most august! Th' event is certain, and the purpose just. The Judge's eye will pierce the inmost soul, Each hidden record of the past unroll; No word, no motive, no minuter thought Escape exposure, into judgment brought. Oh! that these solemn truths, with equal force, Might rule my soul, throughout its earthly course; That every scene, and every hour, may give True witness then, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... approached, and pressing him to her bosom, silently wept with him. Thaddeus, ashamed of his emotions, yet incapable of dissembling them, struggled a moment to release himself from her arms. The countess, mistaking his motive, said in a melancholy voice, "And do you, my son, despise your mother for the weakness which she has revealed? Is this the reception that I expected from a child on whose affection I reposed ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... understanding, a degree of natural elocution, and that knowledge of the world which is learned in armies and courts. We are not to take the height of his ambition from his soliciting to be general for life:[19] I am persuaded his chief motive was the pay and perquisites, by continuing the war; and that he had then no intentions of settling the crown in his family, his only son having been dead some years before.[20] He is noted to be master of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... amongst not a few people the strange delusion that America's entrance into the war was fomented by moneyed men, in part, at least, from the motive and ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... again, beginning to move slowly up and down, like the strong right arm of some automaton giant. Greater and lesser cog-wheels caught up the motive power, revolving slowly and majestically, and with steady, regular rotation, or whirling round so fast you could hardly see that they stirred at all. Of a sudden a soul had been put into that wonderful creature of man's making, that inert mass of wood ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... that a concession would be taken for a confession of weakness, as if they durst not do otherwise; while other some there are who say that it was rather out of arrogance and a willful spirit of contention, to show his own strength, that he took occasion to slight the Lacedaemonians. The worst motive of all, which is confirmed by most witnesses, is to the following effect. Phidias the Molder had, as has before been said, undertaken to make the statue of Minerva. Now he, being admitted to friendship with Pericles, and a great favorite of his, had many enemies upon this account, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... as a state of consciousness, as a spring of feeling, as a motive to exertion, as blessing your country, and as reacting on you. Think of it as it fills your mind and quickens your heart, and as it fills the mind and quickens the heart of millions around you. Instantly, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... her to attend the funeral at Willowmount, would not, if he could help it, suffer her so much as to see the trappings of woe; and in this Dinah acquiesced also, comprehending fully the motive that underlay his wish. She knew that the earthly formalities, though they had to be faced, were to Scott something of the nature of a grim farce in which, while he could not escape it himself, he was determined ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... behind all of it stands one motive which has held back the development of psychotherapy in the medical profession more than anything else. The physician feels instinctively that a real success can be reached in every one of these fields, only if ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... ardor with which this religion was propagated in the first two centuries had no motive but the yearning to make others share in its benefits and hopes; and to this end to accept the belief that Jesus Christ had come in fulfilment of the promise of a Saviour—who should be sent to this world clothed with divine authority ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... prepared by Pobedonostzeff to embarrass Germany; that, as Russia was always wretchedly unready with her army, The Hague Conference was simply a trick for gaining time against her rivals who kept up better military preparations. There may have been truth in part of this assertion; but the motive of the great Russian statesman in favoring the conference was probably not so much to gain time for the army as to gain money for the church. With his intense desire to increase the stipends of the Russian orthodox clergy, and thus to raise them somewhat above their present low condition, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... eyes. "You have said you hated her because she ruined your life—because she loved the man you loved. You have refused to tell me the name of that man. You can have but one reason in thus withholding this information—that motive is fear; therefore, I infer that Mona Forester was the first wife of your husband—her child was your ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... "Justice is the motive power of all my actions, madam," replied the emperor, curtly, "and for that very reason you cannot ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the dawn of chivalry, when, every hour and year, men were becoming more gentle and more wise; while, even through their worst cruelty and error, native qualities of noblest cast may be seen asserting themselves for primal motive, and submitting themselves for ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the faithful, is the motive which seemed so strange to your majesty yesterday, and for which I ought to incur your indignation. I ask your pardon once more as your slave, and submit to receive the chastisement I deserve. And if you vouchsafe to pronounce any thing beyond the penance I have imposed upon myself, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... is neither legitimate nor excusable except when it is made in the interests of the majority of the nation. One may be sure that this is the motive which influences him, when he makes use of moral influences only to attain his ends. If the Government have committed so many faults as to render a revolution desirable for the nation, if the Napoleonic cause have left sufficiently ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... forced himself to the safe with all the pain which walking caused him, the wounded man must have been impelled by some strong and unusual motive. It couldn't be that he had suspected Wilson and Jo of theft, because, in the first place, he must have seen at a glance that the safe was undisturbed; and in the second, that they had not taken advantage ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... The single motive which in all probability hindered the head man from acceding at once to their demands was the dread of Oko Sam's displeasure in case that despotic monarch were ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... but in the finer art of inflicting suffering in anticipation they were mere clumsy bunglers, for they lacked that finer sense of dissimulation which endows a man with the power of lying with conviction; they allowed their motive to become apparent; and, seeing this, I disappointed them by laughing in their faces. Besides, whether what they said was truth or falsehood, I was not going to afford a trio of sable outlaws the satisfaction of boasting that they had succeeded in ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... same time will be doubly poor—poor in possession, and dissolute in moral habit; and he will then naturally covet the money which the other has saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the other, and rob him of his well-earned wealth, there is no more any motive for saving, or any reward for good conduct; and all society is thereupon dissolved, or exists only in systems of rapine. Therefore the first necessity of social life is the clearness of national ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... attractive. To be sure, he was vain as well as inventive, and here was an opportunity to attract the attention of his sovereign and increase his own importance by connecting his name with hers in a romantic manner. Still, we believe that the main motive that dictated this epistle was kindness to Pocahontas. The sentence that refers to her heroic act is this: "After some six weeks [he was absent only four weeks] fatting amongst those Salvage Countries, at the minute of my execution she hazarded the beating out of her own braines to save mine, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... these expeditions was communicated by the enemies of Coligny to the court of Spain. Jealousy of the aggrandizement of the French in the New World, mortification for their own unsuccessful efforts in that quarter, and a still stronger motive of hatred to the faith of the Huguenot, induced the bigoted Philip II of Spain to despatch Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a brave, bigoted, and remorseless soldier, to drive out the French colony, and take possession of the country for himself. The compact made between the King ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... skilful in putting the most plausible colour upon his proposals and presents, the King contrived to reconcile the spirit of the proud to their profit, and to hold out to the real or pretended patriot the good of both France and Burgundy as the ostensible motive; whilst the party's own private interest, like the concealed wheel of some machine, worked not the less powerfully that its operations' were kept out of sight. For each man he had a suitable bait, and a proper mode of presenting ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... is the motive of the Crimson Tapestries? I think the tangling robe must have been in the tradition, as the murder in the bath certainly was. One motive, of course, is obvious: Clytemnestra is tempting Agamemnon to sin or "go too far." He tries to resist, but the splendour of an oriental ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... than painting pictures which nobody would buy,—it was only because no third avocation presented itself as a possibility. He is not to be compared for a moment with a true expert like Sheridan, who borrowed for borrowing's sake, and without any sordid motive connected with rents or butchers' bills. Haydon would, indeed, part with his money as readily as if it belonged to him. He would hear an "inward voice" in church, urging him to give his last sovereign; and, having ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... should occur in the meantime which would, in his opinion, justify him in again repudiating her, he would of course take advantage of such circumstance. If asked himself what was his prevailing motive in all that he did or intended to do, he would have declared that it was above all things necessary that he should "put himself right in the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the advent of a leader who should give him the key to the riddle ... he had no time to wait. He was not the kind of man, like his father, to be satisfied with the lifelong search for truth. With or without a motive, he needed always to make up his mind, to act, to turn to account, to use his energy. Traveling, the delight of art, and especially of music, with which he had gorged himself, had at first been to ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... mistress is dear to me; her happiness more sacred to me than my own. If I believed that you would ever play her false, if I believed that a sinister motive led you to accomplish this end, as I stand before you here, I would expose you as you are. I would lay bare to her the secrets of the past. I would warn her to recall the love which she has lavished on ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... get into hot water, and commit suicide upon his domestic happiness; for nothing so effectually disturbs the tranquillity of a family, as open opposition of religious creeds. Women become religious, in the every-day acceptation of the word, from any motive rather than a conviction of the truth or reasonableness of any particular creed. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to define the motive that carries women into the pale of any particular church. I have heard of an old ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... you to point that out." Drew thought that at last he had found a real motive for Topham's services. "I'm likely to be bait, ain't that the ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... Antonio Tiexera than any other woman on earth, for within Baylor's sacred precincts she had been reduced to that condition to which, when a woman arrives, men call her a Magdalene. If this was the motive that prompted his slayer, I ask why he did not appeal to the unwritten law sooner; he who appeals to it must do so at the first information has been conveyed to him that the wrong has been done and he cannot wait for months and then use it as a defense, and I do not hesitate ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... untruth, he nodded to her, saying: 'That was, beyond dispute, a good deed, but it is too small to counterbalance the great weight of your bad deeds. Perhaps it may lighten your punishment. Still great riches were meted out to you on earth, and what were a few nuts to you! The motive that urged you to bestow them is pleasing in the sight of the Lord, I acknowledge; but as I said before, your charity was too paltry for you to be released from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... much pleased, I am much rejoiced." The whole body of warriors now came forward, and our men received the caresses, and no small share of the grease and paint of their new friends. After this fraternal embrace, of which the motive was much more agreeable than the manner, captain Lewis lighted a pipe and offered it to the Indians who had now seated themselves in a circle around the party. But before they would receive this mark of friendship they pulled off their moccasins, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... formation of one party argues the formation of at least another. And this other in the National Assembly was that of the Jacobins, less pure of motive, less restrained in deed, a party in which stood pre-eminent such ruthless, uncompromising men as ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... rid of as inconvenient in the house. In this case he had to pay the penalty, when he emerged from the chest in the carpenter's shop. The men, who had complained terribly of its weight, were not inclined to allow young Astley to get off free. One of Astley's tricks had, however, a good motive, as it was intended to cure an old woman of her besetting sin—a tendency to take a drop too much. In order to cure the old woman of this weakness, he dressed himself as well as he could to represent the sable form of his satanic majesty. Alas! instead of being surprised, the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... General Howard and the aide, and stated the former's motive in making this visit. Cochise sat silent for some moments. At length, pointing to ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... hint which he dropped respecting the daughter of Waldemar Fitzurse, John had more than one motive, each the offspring of a mind which was a strange mixture of carelessness and presumption with low artifice and cunning. He was desirous of conciliating Alicia's father, Waldemar, of whom he stood in awe, and who had more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the engine whose motive power is the soul and the largest quantity of work will not be done by this curious engine for pay, or under pressure, or by the help of any kind of fuel which may be supplied by the cauldron. It will be done only when the will ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... which had been the prime motive that had lured her out of her retreat that afternoon, caught her eye now, and she shivered a little as, from where it lay on the floor, the headlines seemed to leer up at her, and mock, and menace her. "The White Moll....The Saint of the East ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... such as Miss Amedroz, even though she had reached the age of twenty-five for at the time to which I am now alluding she had nearly done so and was not young of her age, had formed for herself no plan of life in which her aunt's money figured as a motive power. She had gone to Perivale when she was very young, because she had been told to do so, and had continued to go, partly from obedience, partly from habit, and partly from affection. An aunt's dominion, when once well established in early years, cannot easily be thrown ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... "On dit qu'il aime la Mere de ce Yarmouth—mais vous Anglais, vous aimez les vielles Femmes," and he laughed very much. He avoided speaking of Maria Louisa, but spoke of Josephine with affection, saying, "Elle etoit une excellente Femme." He said that the motive of his expedition into Russia was, first, that it was necessary to lead the French Army somewhere, and then that he wished to establish Poland as an independent kingdom; for that he had always loved the Poles, and had many obligations ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
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