"Motive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happens? We who are responsible for running the thing, and raising the money and so on—we have to put on a spurt every once in a while, and work up a general state of excitement; and while it's going, don't you see that THAT is the authority, the motive power, whatever you like to call it, by which things are done? Other denominations don't need it. We do, and that's why we've ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... told O'Dwyer that he had in mind a lucrative position which Mr. Burroughs would gladly bestow on an old friend, if the Irishman saw fit to accept. Moore carefully explained, as the glasses were filled and emptied, that he had no ulterior motive. Oh, certainly not! O'Dwyer must not think that Burroughs ever offered a bribe, even in so small a matter as this of defeating ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... Pictures.—This serves well for first effort with scissors. The interest in the picture furnishes a motive, while the outline serves as a guide and allows the attention to be given wholly to ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... "Second Question: To what motive are we to attribute Miserrimus Dexter's interference with the sheriff's officers, on the day when they seized Mr. Macallan's Diary ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... who are inclined to do them surely do not need to be driven by the fear of shame and the love of honor; they have, and are to have a higher and far nobler incentive, namely, God's commandment, God's fear, God's approval, and their faith and love toward God. They who have not, or regard not this motive, and let shame and honor drive them, these also have their reward, as the Lord says, Matthew vi; and as the motive, so is also the work and the reward: none of them is good, except only in the eyes ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... accusation against the Medici as a family, that they had but one motive—mercenary ambition and self-aggrandisement—is true, the fact remains that the crown did not reach their brows until one hundred and seventy years from the first appearance of old Giovanni di Bicci in Florentine affairs. The statue of Cosimo I in the Piazza della Signoria has a ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... guilty" was entered for me. The defence set up was insanity, based on the absence of any adequate motive. This defence was soon disposed of by the prosecution; witnesses to my sanity were not wanting, and motives enough were found in my past relations with Colonel Ibbetson to "make me—a violent, morose, and vindictive-natured man—imbrue my hands in ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... permit inquiry into his motive or anything else, in fact, for he got quickly into the car and it started off instantly, leaving Mr. Wesley Thompson, a little bewildered by the rapidity of these proceedings, staring ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... rehearsed exactly what she meant to say to him, but now that the moment had arrived it did not seem so easy. He might mistake her friendliness. He might think there was some unexpressed motive in the back of her mind, that she was trying to hold him to the compact made in Blister Haines's office a year ago. It would be hateful if he thought that. But she had to risk it if their comradeship was going to mean anything. When folks were friends they helped each other, didn't they? ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... Catiline's army was cut to pieces, and he himself was killed. So desperately his haggard bands had fought that they fell in their ranks where they stood, and never Roman commander gained a victory that cost him more dear. So furious a resistance implied a motive and a purpose beyond any which Cicero or Sallust records, and the commission of inquiry suggested by Tiberius Nero in the Senate might have led to curious revelations. The Senate perhaps had its own reasons for fearing such revelations, and for wishing the voices ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Booth's persistent though inoffensive scrutiny as time wore on. More than once she had caught him looking at her with a fixedness that betrayed perplexity so plainly that she could not fail to recognise an underlying motive. He was vainly striving to refresh his memory: that was clear to her. There is no mistaking that look in a person's eyes. It cannot ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... themselves more readily to it, and so do birds; fur and feathers are obviously translatable into stitches. Leaves and flowers accommodate themselves perhaps better still; but each is best when it is only the motive, not the model, of design. If only, then, on account of the greater difficulty in treating it, the figure is not the form of design most likely to do credit to the needle, and it is absurd to argue that, figure work being the noblest form of design, therefore ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... said Bella, turning away her eyes, 'that your great regard for Mrs Boffin is a very powerful motive with you.' ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... white paper, from a small vial which he took from one of his vest pockets, a very heavy white powder; and we soon perceived that the powder was to be poured from the paper to the invalid's tongue. Bainbridge was interested in Peters—not only selfishly and with a motive to learn the facts of the old sailor's strange voyage; but he was also interested in the poor old wreck for the sake of the man himself. I saw that in the opinion of Bainbridge, if that white powder were administered to the invalid it would injure ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... their esteem. I find, too, that the chance for appreciation is much increased by being the son of an appreciator, and that these boys who now grow up are caught not only years too late, but two or three births too late, to make the best scholars of. And I think it a presentable motive to a scholar, that, as, in an old community, a well-born proprietor is usually found, after the first heats of youth, to be a careful husband, and to feel an habitual desire that the estate shall suffer no harm by his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... for breakfast, and had missed luncheon altogether, he began to question himself as to the meaning of his ailment, with sad attempt at humor. "It isn't exactly as serious as dying. Even if she reconsiders and returns my play, I can still make a living." He would not admit that any other motive ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... denied anything short of the moon that he cried for. Milly wanted people to think that she wanted me for Tony, in order to have an invincible, ironproof excuse for the rush to El Paso, which her friends of the cat tribe might attribute to a different motive. She had been rather depressed at Alvarado, but began to bubble over with wild spirits the moment we were off for El Paso. She said that this would be the great adventure of our lives, and she was only sorry all danger along ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 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 ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... indeed the case with most of the Windward Islands, is well watered by rivers running from the mountains. Some of the streams are of considerable size, and are never dry in seasons of the greatest drought. The water, conducted by canals from these rivers, constituted the chief motive power for the machinery on the sugar estates, although in a few cases windmills were used for that purpose. The estates comprised each an area of some two to five hundred acres, a considerable portion of which was planted with the cane. The remainder was improved ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... they had calculated that this fall would furnish thirty-six thousand horse-power. Eight miles off we were to see another fall of much greater height and power. There are many rivers in this region which would furnish almost unlimited motive force to populous manufacturing communities. The country round about is healthy. It is an upland region of good climate; we were visiting it in the rainy season, the season when the nights are far less cool than in the dry season, and yet we found it delightful. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 its members and ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... from sister craft that circled around were declined. A bundle of rags served to stop the inrush of most of the water, and a little later the craft, with its load of fish, was hauled up on the beach by means of a tackle and fall, horses being the motive power. Joe and Blake got pictures of the other boats making a similar landing, theirs being ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... and Sandi himself adds, a moment after, that "per altre Veneziane memorie traspiri, che non il solo desiderio di vendetta lo dispose alla congiura ma anche la innata abituale ambizion sua, per cui aneleva a farsi principe independente." The first motive appears to have been excited by the gross affront of the words written by Michel Steno on the ducal chair, and by the light and inadequate sentence of the Forty on the offender, who was one of their "tre Capi."[366] The attentions of Steno himself appear to have been directed towards ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... maternal affection. Her father seems to have been one of those individuals whom Fortune tosses to and fro with pertinacious ill-humour; moreover, he had something of the nomad in his temperament, and without any real or sufficient motive, moved from place to place, entailing upon his young family sudden and burdensome journeys. Before Adela was seven years old, she had been carried from Franche-Comte into the Bourbonnais, thence into Auvergne, and thence to Paris. She ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... we pass to Fuller's new biographer, the only biographer he has hitherto had that at all deserves the appellation. A completer life-history than that which Mr. Bailey has produced is of rare occurrence in English literature. There was no motive for his keeping back anything that is known of Fuller; and he has really enabled us to form wellnigh as distinct an idea of the portly and cheery old divine as if we had known him in the flesh. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... while other passions only operate occasionally, the interested find the object of their ordinary cares; their motive to the practice of mechanic and commercial arts; their temptation to trespass on the laws of justice; and, when extremely corrupted, the price of their prostitutions, and the standard of their opinions on the ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... 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
... Spaniards, 'For,' say they, 'we would rather lose our liberty, than be kept here to die of hunger.' Boy returned them an equivocating answer, but treated them much less roughly than I had reason to anticipate. Afterwards, I went myself to the same individual, and with a similar motive, but for some time I had no opportunity of conversing with him. It is a kind of holiday here, and most of the Brass people, with their chiefs, are merry with intoxication. As well as I can understand, during the earlier part of the day they were engaged ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... are thereby meriting heaven, and what they call working out their own salvation, underlies all they do, as they misinterpret the passage. They ignore the glorious truth that through simple faith in the atoning blood of Christ salvation is gained—that it is their own, and that the right motive of action must be through love and obedience to Him who has already saved them. All the forms and ceremonies in which they indulge are but will-worship, tending to obscure their view of Him, and to destroy their ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... had shot up into a fitting temple for such an inhabitant as his soul. He was a great long fellow, with a shock of black hair and deep dreams in his eyes; his head was what people called a type, a type I suppose of the simple motive and the noble intention, the detached point of view and the somewhat indifferent attitude to material things, as it may be humanly featured anywhere. His face bore a confusion of ideals; he had the brow ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... accepted lover—whose shadowiness made him difficult to realise even as an obstacle—he dwelt persistently on the thought of Hood's position, and found it impossible to imagine a refusal on Emily's part to avert from her father the direst of calamities. That other motive, the strength of which in Emily was independent of her plighted troth, was not within the range of his conceptions; that a woman should face martyrdom rather than marry without love was a contingency alien ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... good Harry? yet at last, Utter your motive of this heavinesse. Why go you not unto your maisters house? What, are you parted? if that be the cause, I will provide you of a ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... 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 cause of the Papacy. If their claims are ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... be reasonably conjectured, that this great and varied extension of journeying round the earth, and in all climates, will not be unaided by new discoveries in motive power. At present, we speak of steam; but there is every probability of new agents being brought into operation, less bulky and less costly, before twenty years elapse. Even while we write, men of science are painfully poring over the subject, and giving indications that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... in truth been sent to him, and in the name of Piso complained, that he was debarred from visiting him; and that he had excused himself on the score of illness and his love of retirement; but he had no motive to declare that he preferred the safety of a private man to his own security; nor was his disposition prone to flattery; as no man better knew than Nero, who had experienced more frequent proofs of the freedom than the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... Froude.[3] 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... need of being in such a hurry. She, however, seemed feverishly nervous, and insisted that the ceremony should take place immediately—yes, as soon as possible. Hubertine, surprised at the request, having a suspicion as to the true motive of this eagerness, looked at her earnestly for a moment, and turned very pale as she realised how slight was the cold breath which still attached her daughter to life. The dear invalid had already grown calm, in her tender need of consoling others and keeping them under an illusion, although ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... would have shown to be doomed to failure, this method of flight was not followed up. It is not to be wondered at, when Borelli's exaggerated estimate of the strength expended by birds in proportion to their weight is borne in mind; he alleged that the motive force in birds' wings is 10,000 times greater than the resistance of their weight, and with regard to ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... brought something of wisdom to myself; it was not only that I wished to commune with that Bolingbroke in retirement whom I had known the oracle of statesmen and the pride of courts; nor even that I loved the man, and was eager once more to embrace him. A fiercer and more active motive urged me to visit one whose knowledge of all men and application of their various utilities were so remarkable, and who even in his present peace and retirement would not improbably be acquainted with the abode of that unquiet and plotting ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... whom he had occasional conversations on the state of affairs. His friends the Fairfaxes, though liberal in feelings and opinions, were too strong in their devotion to the crown not to regard with an uneasy eye the tendency of the popular bias. From one motive or other, the earnest attention of all the inmates and visitors at Mount Vernon, was turned to England, watching the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... almost all who work have no voice in the direction of their work; throughout the hours of labor they are mere machines carrying out the will of a master. Work is usually done under disagreeable conditions, involving pain and physical hardship. The only motive to work is wages: the very idea that work might be a joy, like the work of the artist, is usually ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... apathy and 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 ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... for the truth, I can tell it you," said the lawyer. "He is living as a husband with Fanny Beaupre. You have forced me to tell you this secret; I should never have told you, for you might have suspected me perhaps of an ungenerous motive." ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... and grief looking at his friend. He was well acquainted with his resolute soul, and saw with pain how completely his persuasions had failed. At length he spoke again. He used every argument that he could think of. He brought forward every motive that might influence him. He told him of the terrible fate that awaited him, and the peculiar vengeance that would be directed against him. But all his words were completely useless. At length ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... The bringing of that suit in his name, death of Alice Webster, dismissal of the case, with subsequent skulking, aliases and disguises, would make a strong circumstantial chain. Against the charge of murder he could oppose only his own word. His admitted actions, confession, and motive would be conclusive. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... majesty abduct the daughter of the grand duke? For what benefits? To what end? Ah, Count, if some motive could be brought forward, some motive ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... instance of obstinate perseverance in the path of malice. * * * Could you have reaped any advantage from injuring this people, there would have been some excuse for the manifold abuses with which you have loaded them. But when a diabolical thirst for mischief is the alone motive of your conduct, you must not wonder if you are treated with open dislike; for it is impossible, how much soever we endeavor it, to feel any esteem for a man like you. * * * Nothing has ever been more intolerable than your insolence upon ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... and in the possible secret passions underlying their union that one should look for the cause of the murderous crime I secretly imagined to be hidden behind this seeming suicide? Or were these parties innocent and old David Moore the one motive power in precipitating a tragedy, the result of which had been to enrich him and impoverish them? Certainly, a most serious and important question, and one which any man might be pardoned for attempting to answer, ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... feeling came to Philip that possibly the whole story was an elaborate imposture, not told with any base motive, but merely from a wish to impress, startle, and amaze. Athelny had told him that he was at Winchester; but Philip, sensitive to differences of manner, did not feel that his host had the characteristics of a man educated at a great public school. While he pointed out the great alliances which ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... they excited such applause that the above honor was accorded her. These decorations are in the form of panels, in which water, in its varying natural aspects, supplies the subordinate features, while the fundamental motive is vegetation of every description. The artist has evidently felt the influence of Markart in Vienna, and some of her conceptions remind one of H. von Preusschen. Her technique is a combination of embroidery, painting, and applications ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... "But the motive, Mac?" he questioned, without looking up. "How could the theft or the destruction of a locomotive serve any purpose that Hallock might have ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... inspired the divinest acts of Christ. The commonest acts of humility and beneficence are to be imitations of the condescension which brought Him from the position of equality with God to the obedience of the cross; and the ruling motive of the love and kindness practised by Christians to one another is to be the recollection of their ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... 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 before ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... neglect of his promise to Mrs. Brewer. More than that, he charged himself with foolish disregard of a possibility which might have boundless significance for him. Here, it seemed, was sufficient motive for a return to London. The alternative was to wander on, and see more of foreign countries; a tempting suggestion, but marred by the prospect of loneliness. He would go back among his own people and make friends. Without ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... afraid," answered Rooke. "I painted it for the great pleasure it gave me and not from any mercenary motive." ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... figure flattened against the inswung half of the window, in the dense shadow of the portiere. Otherwise the game was altogether up; Lanyard could see no way to avoid the necessity of staggering Blensop with a blow, racing for freedom, abandoning utterly further effort to learn the motive of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... seizing it, however, the alternatives were difficult. She was without a cent, a shelter, a job, a friend, or the prospect of a meal. It was probable that there was not at that minute in New York a human being so destitute. Before nightfall she would have to find some nominal motive for living or be ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... subject-matter has been psychologized, that is, viewed as an out-growth of present tendencies and activities, it is easy to locate in the present some obstacle, intellectual, practical, or ethical, which can be handled more adequately if the truth in question be mastered. This need supplies motive for the learning. An end which is the child's own carries him on to possess the means of its accomplishment. But when material is directly supplied in the form of a lesson to be learned as a lesson, the connecting links of need and aim are conspicuous for their absence. What we mean by ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... came to Mantua and the sick were abandoned by all, as happens in such cases, Fra Girolamo, with no other motive but the purest love, would never desert the poor plague-stricken monks, and even tended them all day long with his own hands. And thus, careless of his life for the love of God, he became infected ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... Nicholaevitch, in love with this little rustic? Impossible! It was the real Peter, tired of the sham and make-believe of self-restraint and virtue, who had merely kissed a country girl. He was no anchorite, no saint. Why had he tied himself to such a duty from a motive of silly sentimentalism? ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Caesar, the frequent references to Caesar in Hamlet, the kinship in character of Brutus and Hamlet (see note, p. 46, l. 65), the treatment of the supernatural, and the development of the revenge motive give strong cumulative evidence that the composition of Julius Caesar is in time very near to that of Hamlet, the first Shakespearian draft of which is now generally conceded to date from the first months of 1602. The diction of Julius Caesar, the quality of the blank verse, ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... Merry England. Nine of the monks died of prison fever, and others were banished. The king's court went into mourning, and Henry knotted his beard and henceforth would be no more shaven—eloquent evidence to the world that whatever motive dominated the king's heart, these bloody deeds were unpleasantly disturbing. Certainly such a spectacle as that of a monk's arm nailed to a monastery was never ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... but no man of intellect and thought will be duped by this seeming inconsistency. If the part which I play seem unworthy, I may be excused in view of my motive—at all events, I do not think it wrong. The folly of mankind has left me but one alternative—to be a hypocrite, or to prepare bitter grief for my relations, who love me tenderly. 'Out of love,' ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... estate elsewhere, or are interested in diverting traffic in certain directions; again, under corporate management, it is for the interest of the company to haul a commodity as far as possible over its own lines (with the government owning all the lines this motive will lose its force), and thus traffic is forced into unnatural channels. For instance: much of the grain from Kansas should find its way to foreign markets via the short route to the Gulf, the distance to tide water by this route being less than half what it is to the Atlantic, yet so opposed ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... halt for a moment and speak to her as he rode past,—only for a moment; then, pricking his horse sharply, he had galloped off down the valley road. No breakfast had Alessandro had at Margarita's hands, or any other's, that morning. What could have been Margarita's motive for telling ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... but went nearer to it than he had been since he wrote DD at the end of his name and gave up cricket; while before they were half-way across the cricket-field Mr Rampson was emitting puffs suggesting that the motive-power by which he moved was connected with a modern ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... could or ought to have known of her mistress in the days of her sowing of wild (being a lady) flowers. Was it from choice that the princess had still retained about her person this so-well-informed witness of the numerous follies of her youth? The world was kept in ignorance of the motive; but one thing was evident, viz., that Mrs. Grivois enjoyed great privileges under the princess, and was treated by her rather as a companion than as a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the undefined distance of the future, saw all objects from a new position. Her experience since the moment of her waking in the boat had come to her with as strong an effect as that of the fresh seal on the dissolving wax. She had felt herself without bonds, without motive; sinking in mere egoistic complaining that life could bring her no content; feeling a right to say, "I am tired of life, I want to die." That thought had sobbed within her as she fell asleep, but from the moment after her waking ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... be nearer to his wife—subject, too, to occasional fits of hard drinking. We had reason to believe that his wife had been murdered, and that a man—presumably a seafaring man—had been murdered at the same time. Jealousy, of course, at once suggests itself as the motive for the crime. And why should these proofs of the deed be sent to Miss Sarah Cushing? Probably because during her residence in Liverpool she had some hand in bringing about the events which led to the tragedy. ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... when conditions do not warrant it. If we are to make progress in the Christian life or accomplish anything for God, we must have strong aspirations. These are as a spur to our energies. Aspiration is the cure for being "at ease in Zion." Aspirations are good or bad according to the motive that prompts them. Some are essentially selfish, and such are necessarily evil. If we desire to be or do for selfish advantage, for glory and praise; if we aspire to be leaders, as so many religious people do, only that they may have authority or honor—our aspirations are evil. But ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... enthusiasm at least—in his assiduity. I shall never forget our first trip abroad, after we were married—he was like a boy in the galleries, in the studios. I could not understand it then. I had no real sympathy with art, but I tried to make sacrifices, what I thought were Christian sacrifices. The motive power was lacking, and no matter how hard I tried, I was only half-hearted, and he realized it instinctively—no amount of feigning could deceive him. Something deep in me, which was a part of my nature, was antagonistic, stultifying to the essentials of his own being. Of course neither ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Quincy, Earl of Winchester, joined Louis outside the walls of Farnham. Saer's motive was to persuade Louis to hasten to the relief of his castle of Mount Sorrel. The French prince was not in a position to resist pressure from a powerful supporter. He divided his army, and while the Earl of Winchester, along with the Count of Perche and Robert FitzWalter, made their ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... had gone to his heart like a spear. If he had dared to mask his motive, that thrust ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... friendship and kinship. That these things should have needed to be done was an evil; that men should have become ready to do them was altogether good. The Reformation brought not peace but a sword; Religion was but one of the motives which made men partisans of either side; yet that it became a motive at all meant that they had realised it as an essential necessity in ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... desired to set herself up as a successful colonizing rival of Spain. Impelled by this motive, the earlier English adventurers sought treasure rather than homes. But the high hopes of the early English joint stock companies were not justified. Those who had looked to America for treasure were disappointed: no gold ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... began to wonder whether he had any private motive to gain, any place he sought to fill, that he should assume such a touch-me-not air at this stray allusion to ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... amusements of a great city filled their minds in the same way as the Regimental tradition and routine filled those of the old British Regular Army. With a few exceptions, the feeling of duty was a far stronger motive to their soldiering than any love of adventure. These Manchester men had little of the Crusader or Elizabethan but his valour. They were, in fact, almost arrogantly civilian, coming from a country which had dared ineptly to look down on ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... no stockings, and that the wife of the Spanish Minister should by no means assume, even for one evening, such a costume. I brought in my dresses, showed their length and their propriety, but in vain; and, in fact, as to their being in the right, there could be no doubt, and nothing but a kind motive could have induced them to take this trouble; so I yielded with a good grace, and thanked the cabinet council for their timely warning, though fearing, that in this land of procrastination, it would be difficult to procure another dress for the fancy ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... cannot embrace the most distant idea of them, which the theologian assures him he cannot, How is it possible he can set about imitating them? How follow a conduct suitable to please them —to render himself acceptable in their sight? What can in effect be the motive of that worship, of that homage, of that obedience, which these beings are said to exact—which he is informed he should offer at their altars, if he does not establish it upon their goodness—their veracity —their justice: in short, upon ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... story abounds is not, therefore, that impressive obscurity which springs from the mysterious; it is, on the contrary, the obscurity of the unintelligible and absurd. In all of Cooper's novels, it is a fault that the characters are often represented as acting without sufficient motive. In the story of adventure this can be pardoned, or at least overlooked; for freak plays an important part in determining the movements of many of us. It is not so, however, in tales containing a plot similar to that of "Lionel ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... Vigors could easily induce his ward to pay a visit to Lady Haughton, and Lady Haughton had only to extend her invitations to her niece; hence the letter to Mrs. Ashleigh, of which Mr. Vigors was the bearer, and hence my advice to you, of which you can now understand the motive. Since you thought Lilian Ashleigh the only woman you could love, and since I thought there were other women in the world who might do as well for Ashleigh Sumner, it seemed to me fair for all parties that Lilian should not go to Lady Haughton's in ignorance of the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for several days had behaved in an unusual and peculiar manner. She neglected her work, was brusque with her master, and wept without apparent motive. One evening she went out, saying that she intended going to the parish church to say her prayers. At nine o'clock Don Rocco, as she had not returned, went philosophically to bed, and never knew at what ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... instruction, and will necessarily seek to inculcate some moral maxim, social duty, or political truth. The true Fable, if it rise to its high requirements, ever aims at one great end and purpose representation of human motive, and the improvement of human conduct, and yet it so conceals its design under the disguise of fictitious characters, by clothing with speech the animals of the field, the birds of the air, the trees ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... said your most uncommon name?' continued Owen. 'The man was evidently truthful, for there was not motive sufficient for his invention of such a tale, and he could not have done ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... which no valour or skill upon the side of the French could avert. Dunois, himself an unlikely person, one would have thought, to yield the honour of the fight to a woman, seems to have perceived that without a strong counter-motive, not within the range of ordinary methods, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... Hebrews is essentially religious in its whole motive and spirit. This is true even of their historical writings. The marks of the one defining characteristic of their national life—faith in Jehovah and in his sovereign and righteous control—are everywhere seen. Hebrew poetry is mainly lyrical. Relics of old songs are ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... spontaneous, rendered with cheerfulness and prompted by love; not extorted by authority and law, as is the singing in our churches today. No one sings, preaches or prays from a recognition of mercy and grace received. The motive is a hope for gain, or a fear of punishment, injury and shame; or again, the holiest individuals bind themselves to obedience, or are driven to it, for the sake of winning heaven, and not at all to further the knowledge of the Word of God—the understanding of it ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... had had rather more imagination. He had, I think, as little as was possible—which would have counted in fact for an unmitigated blank had not W. J., among us, on that spot and elsewhere, supplied this motive force in any quantity required. He imagined—that was the point—the comprehensive comedies we were to prepare and to act; comprehensive by the fact that each one of us, even to the God-fearing but surreptitiously ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... vanquish Emilia's resentment, and for that reason quitted the pursuit, which he would never renew, howsoever his heart might suffer by that resolution; though he took Heaven to witness, that his love, esteem, and admiration of her, were not in the least impaired. But the true motive of his laying aside his design, was the consciousness of his decayed fortune, which, by adding to the sensibility of his pride, increased the horror of another repulse. She expressed her concern for ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of the metal walls of the capsule, which takes place upon the boiling of its contents, provides the motive force, transmitted through the rigid rod to raise the long arm of the lever B D, and as this expansion only takes place at a predetermined temperature, the lever will only be acted upon when the critical temperature is reached, no sensible effect being produced ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... Roman Army, claiming that he has been defrauded of his due in salary, and leaning upon the popularity of the dead Stilicho, whose murder he says he will avenge. His thirty thousand claim the barbarian slaves within the city, and certain sums of money which had been, the pretext and motive of his rebellion. ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... you ask? That I might see, hear, and be in company with her whom I loved, Antipho. Is {that} a slight motive, or a poor reason? I was presented to {the} woman. She, as soon as she received me, joyfully took me home to her ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... affectionately, "would you mind telling me what on earth possesses you to come down here to-night? I'm not asking out of mere curiosity, nor do I believe that is the motive that ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... chess without being mastered by it will find that it discovers essential principles. In the world he will see a larger chess-field, and one also shaped by the severest mathematics: the world is so because the brain of man is so,—motive and move, motive and move: they sum up life, all life,—from the aspen-leaf turning its back to the wind, to the ecstasy of a saint. See the array of pawns (forces, as the Hindoo calls them): the bodily presence and abilities, power of persistence, endurance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... in Teddy's tone. Mr. Upton did not smile, he was gazing abstractedly out of the window, and said slowly, 'The root of murder is anger. The same motive that prompts a passionate statement, prompts a passionate and perhaps ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... rejected though they were, had this good effect upon her mind. They encouraged her to think more hopefully of herself. Salome was too unworldly, too pure, and holy, to suspect that these offers had been made her from any other motive than personal preference. It was possible, then, that she might be loved. If other men preferred her, so also might he on whom she had fixed. And now it had come to this with the dreaming girl—she resolved to think no more ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... "The motive is everything, Monsignor. I was speaking then of the stage as a vanity, as a glorification ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... 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 witnesses, it is ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... pausing a moment to take breath, Ungque, who detected the wavering of Peter's mind, and who acted far more in opposition to the mysterious and tribeless chief than from any other motive, profited by the occasion thus afforded to speak. Without this pause, however, the breeding of an Indian would ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... destined for French ports. His private correspondence with Auckland shows that this measure was due to the fear that the French would store the corn for the use of the army that was threatening Holland. That motive of course could not be disclosed to Chauvelin; and Grenville declined to explain it at all until the resolutions arrived at in Paris were ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... window up, and then he turned on the stranger with a look that seemed to imply: "Although I seemed so truculent a few minutes ago, you see what a good-natured fellow I am at heart." In most of Captain Ducie's actions there was some ulterior motive at work, however trivial many of his actions might appear to an outsider, and in the present case it was not likely that he acted out of mere complaisance to a man whom he had never seen nor heard ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... occasionally heard and applauded by fair elegantes, who, two years ago, would have recoiled at the name of either. It is not that their former deeds are forgotten, but the French are grown wise by suffering; and it is politic, when bad men act well, whatever the motive, to give them credit for it, as nothing is so likely to make them persevere, as the hope that their reputation is yet retrievable. On this principle the aristocrats are the eulogists of Tallien, while the Jacobins remind him ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... the reason I have given should be enough. Yes, aunt, there is another motive—do not laugh at my folly, that I cannot dwarf myself and become a helpless nonentity, without a struggle to grasp the blessings so much desired by other men. It has been a happy time that I have known at ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... homage to the young Queen, who now first since the death of her child was to appear among them at a high function; there were others who, uncertain or careless of their sentiments had responded to the urgent invitation of the Council of the Realm, from no stronger motive than a mild curiosity; and possibly a few had come with a wrathful determination to find something to condemn in the bearing of the Queen that might stimulate an ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... that occupied Hannay's mind for the present was the union between Okoya and her daughter Mitsha. Okoya had, unknown to himself, no stronger ally than the mother of the girl. The motive that actuated her in this matter was simply the apparent physical fitness of the match and the momentary advantages that she, considering her own age and the loose nature of Indian marriages, might eventually derive from the daily ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... not a war of peoples. The precipitating cause of the Civil War was not 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 was ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... Country." Here is the same zeal, now directed to stimulating the conscience of the Westminster Jurors, which moved Captain Vinegar to lay about him so lustily on all the abuses within reach of his newspaper, and which inspired the 'father of the English Novel' with the admitted motive,—"I declare, that to recommend Goodness and Innocence hath been my sincere Endeavour in this History"—if not with the consummate art ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... but I had seen few Delawares in my life, and had never heard them speak at all, save to boast in their cups of Uncas, Tamanund, and Miontonomoh. As for a Siwanois Mohican, this Sagamore of the Magic Clan was the first of his tribe and ensign that I had ever beheld. And with every motive and every interest and desire in the world to believe him honest—and even in my secret heart believing him to be so—yet I could not close eyes and ears to what so stealthily was passing in the midnight ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... with the image of the great anatomist, began to occupy itself with his so-called victim. Who was he? what motive had induced him to surrender his body to the scalpel of the master, his life to the realization of the master's idea? A slave, a debtor, from whom the ingenious savant had thus exacted a pound of flesh? A trembling poltroon, forced to the sacrifice more ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... the motive that inspires us that makes all the difference. To have once realised life, not as an opportunity for self-pleasing, but as an opportunity for service, makes us willing to do the small tasks gladly, that they may fit us for the higher tasks. It would seem ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... very absorbing interest. His decision was final against Hilda's scheme. His worn experience cried out at the sacrifice in it without the illumination—which it would certainly lack—of religious faith. She confessed to the lack, and that was all she had to say about her motive, which, of course, placed him at an immense disadvantage in considering it. But the question then descended to another plane, became merely a doubt as to the most useful employment of energy, and that doubt nobody could entertain long, nobody of reasonable breadth of view, who had ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... liberty under a great tyrant; under Charles it was turned simply to the profit of the Exchequer. Large numbers of cases which would ordinarily have come before the Courts of Common Law were called before the Star Chamber, simply for the purpose of levying fines for the Crown. The same motive accounts for the enormous penalties which were exacted for offences of a trivial character. The marriage of a gentleman with his niece was punished by the forfeiture of twelve thousand pounds, and fines of four ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... that Mr. Sherman is thoroughly honest in this affair? That his only motive is a sense ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... attended neither party. Addie's immediate belongings were as poor as they were numerous, and he gathered that Miss Wenham's pretensions to wealth were not so marked as to expose the claim of kinship to the imputation of motive. To this lady's single identity the original stock had at all events dwindled, and our young man was properly warned that he would find her shy and solitary. What was singular was that in these conditions she should desire, she should endure, to receive ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... sense fought each other. Halsey who knew much of his Bible by heart was inwardly comparing texts. "A spirit hath not flesh and blood"—True—but on the other hand what about the "bodies of the saints"—that "arose"? While, perhaps, the strongest motive of all in the old man's mind was the obstinate desire to prove himself right, and so to confound ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... buried, first at Langley and afterwards at Westminster. The absence, consequently, of all marks of violence on that body, till its identity with the corpse of Richard is established, proves nothing. But surely there is no reason to believe that any deception was practised. There could have been no motive for such fraud, and the strongest reasons must have existed to dissuade Henry from adopting it. The only object wished to be secured by the exposure of Richard's corpse, (and it was exposed at all the chief places between Pontefract and London,—at ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... reconciliation of Laupepa and Mataafa; secondly, the supersession of the unlucky Chief Justice and President by men better qualified for their tasks. To effect the former purpose, he made his only practical intromission in local politics, and made it unsuccessfully. The motive of his letters to the Times was the hope to effect the second. In this matter, after undergoing the risk, which was at one moment serious, of deportation, he in the end saw his wishes fulfilled. The first Chief Justice and President were replaced by better qualified persons in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rectification, some such eagerness of reunion with dear Mr. Berridge, some talk, after all the tiresome music, of questions really urgent; while, thanks to the supreme strangeness of it, the high tide of golden fable floated him afresh, and her pretext and her plea, the queerness of her offered motive, melted away after the fashion of the enveloping clouds that do their office in epics and idylls. "You didn't perhaps know I'm Amy Evans," she smiled, "or even perhaps that I write in English—which I love, I assure you, as much as you can yourself do, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... under a necessity to judge his motives, for they had to pass upon his fitness for high office and great responsibilities, and no other motive than ambition was so natural and obvious an explanation of his course. But it is questionable if any such positive judgment as was necessary, and therefore right, in his contemporaries, is obligatory upon ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... only a cursory examination of the village. His principal motive in taking Estelle there was to give her some mental occupation to ward off the reaction from ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... 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
... programmatist, especially in the battle-scenes, where it suggests the crash of maces and swords, and the blare of horns, the galloping of horses, and the general din of huge battle. Leading-motives are much used, too, with good effect and most ingenious elaboration, notably the Banquo motive. A certain amount of Gaelic color also adds interest to the work, particularly a stirring Gaelic march. The orchestration ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... grant, I maintain, that the only motive which is sufficient to justify such an act, is the conviction that one's salvation depends on it. Now, I speak sincerely, my dear Carlton, in saying that I don't think I shall be saved if I ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... which ranks these several species under the same genus? What, in the language of logicians, is the common differential principle which determines these various aspects of moral obligation to a common genius? Another question, and a more interesting question to men in general, is this,—What is the motive to virtue? By what impulse, law, or motive, am I impelled to be virtuous rather than vicious? Whence is the motive derived which should impel me to one line of conduct in preference to the other? ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... leap in the dark. Thrown entirely upon his own resources he felt wholly inadequate, found his breast filled with incomprehensible misgivings. The work he had come there to do seemed to have lost much of its force as a motive, as an inspiration. He felt himself—so far as his mission to Lone Moose was concerned—in the anomalous position of one compelled ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Devonshire, I went to see your daughter!" We must do the Colonel the justice of supposing that he had by this time quite taught himself to believe that the church porch at Cockchaffington had been the motive cause of his journey into Devonshire. "Upon my word it is too hard," continued he indignantly. "As for Outhouse,—only for the gown upon his back, I'd pull his nose. And I wish that you would tell him that ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... difference on the subject of the right function of the church continued to be held as the ground for continuing the separation from the General Assembly after the alleged ground in political geography had ceased to be valid; the working motive for it was more obvious in the unfraternal and almost wantonly exasperating course of the national General Assembly during the war; but the best justification for it is to be found in the effective and useful working of the Southern Presbyterian Church. Considering ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... also, sitting on chairs before kings; it therefore ill becomes us to talk of such trifles as beads, especially as I know if you ever return this way I shall get more from you." "Begging your majesty's pardon," I said, "the mention of beads only fell in the way of our talk like stones in a walk; our motive being to get at the truth of what Baraka did and said here, as his conduct in returning after receiving strict orders from Rumanika and ourselves to open the road, is a perfect enigma to us. We could ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... motive, Thad. On the contrary, while he went out to try and find a reason for believing Nick guilty, in spite of his alibi, I mean only to ask a few questions that will clear up a little point that is ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... knees, begging for mercy. The seamen were about to cut them down when Archie recognised two or three slaves who had saved his life, and throwing himself before them intreated the seamen to desist. The master, who had fortunately heard his account, understanding his motive, restrained the sailors, and the lives of the ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... spoken to ask for more bathing, than the people who lie in death-like trance can move, or utter sound, to arrest the awful preparations for their burial, while they are yet fully aware, not merely of the actions of those around them, but of the idea that is the motive for such actions. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... will always be the type of the artist mind, mainly because of its practical bent, its healthful objectivity. The Greek never looked inward, but outward. Criticism and speculation were foreign to him. His head shows a very marked predominance of the motive and perceptive powers over the reflective. The expression of the face is never what we call intellectual or thoughtful, but commanding. His gods are not philosophers, but delight in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... higher classes of the natives to those intellectual pursuits on the cultivation of which the superiority of the European race to the rest of mankind principally depends. Surely, in such circumstances, from motives of selfish policy, if from no higher motive, we ought to fill the magistracies of our Eastern Empire with men who may do honour to their country, with men who may represent the best part of the English nation. This, Sir, is our object; and we believe that by the plan which is now proposed this object will be ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pointed 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 Lady Macleod ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... She rose and surveyed her audience with smiling impressiveness. "Ladies," she said, and there was an immediate hush, "Ladies, I have the pleasure, the exceeding pleasure of presenting you to my guest, Miss Martha Wallingford, the author of Hearts Astray. She will now speak briefly to you upon her motive in writing and her method of work." There was a soft clapping of hands. Margaret sat down. She was quite pale. Annie Eustace regarded her wonderingly. What had happened to ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... be theft I could not believe, since thieves are practically unknown upon Barsoom. Assassination, however, is rampant, but even this could not have been the motive of my stealthy friend, for he might easily have killed ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... letters amidst the busy strife of politics, closed his career at the age of sixty, in 1458. Though a conspicuous actor in the revolutionary scenes of the period, he maintained a character for honor and purity of motive, unimpeached even by his enemies. The king, notwithstanding his devotion to the faction of his son Henry, conferred on him the dignities of count of Real de Manzanares and marquis of Santillana; this being the oldest creation ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... 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 strove to dismiss ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... was not merely to give us what is statical in our institutions and rational in our law, but to blend into one elemental creed the spiritual aspirations of Aryan and of Semite. Italy was not a pioneer in intellectual progress, nor a motive power in the evolution of thought. The owl of the goddess of Wisdom traversed over the whole land and found nowhere a resting-place. The dove, which is the bird of Christ, flew straight to the city of Rome and the new reign began. It was the fashion of early Italian painters ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... restless to prove itself, and that welled up in every glance and tone she gave Miss Sampson, there were a certain respect and interest that could not withhold themselves from one who so evidently worked on with a great motive that dignified her smallest acts. In whom self-abnegation was the underlying ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... poor fellow to life again," I said with a sigh. "We must act, and act promptly, in order to discover the identity of the murderer and the motive of the crime. That there is a motive is certain; yet it is indeed strange that anyone should actually kill a man suffering from a disease which, in a few months at most, must prove fatal. The motive was therefore his immediate decease, and that ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... social animal. He had an instinctive disposition to act according to the expectations of the people about him, whether they were reasonable or congenial expectations or whether they were not. That, he saw for the first time, had been the ruling motive of his life; it was the clue to him. Man is not a reasonable creature; he is a socially responsive creature trying to be reasonable in spite of that fact. From the days in the rectory nursery when Scrope had tried to be a good boy on the whole and just a little naughty sometimes until ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... hope you will permit me to take this opportunity to say that I deplore, as must all right-minded and clear-thinking men, the occasional petty criticisms which attribute to you some selfish motive for the honest and noble stand you have taken concerning the importance of immediate action and of a widespread, far-reaching, and generally effective movement looking toward, not the conservation, but the restoration, and permanent preservation ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... beautiful ceiling 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
... feared the tenderness of his nature. He felt, that I was growing upon his affections, and that in a short time he could not have deserted me. He was driven by a sort of implicit impulse, for the sake of avoiding one ungenerous action, to take refuge in another, the basest and most diabolical. This motive, conjoining with the prospect of the proffered reward, was an incitement too powerful ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... incitements to change. Such a writer as Mr. Swinnerton, on the contrary, sees life and renders it with a steadiness and detachment and patience quite foreign to my disposition. He has no underlying motive. He sees and tells. His aim is the attainment of that beauty which comes with exquisite presentation. Seen through his art, life is seen as one sees things through a crystal lens, more intensely, more completed, and with less turbidity. There the business begins ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... them, "That a suspension of arms in the Netherlands would be necessary; and that the Duke of Ormonde intended very soon to declare it after he had taken possession of Dunkirk." But his lordship endeavoured to convince them, that this incident ought rather to be a motive for hastening the States into a compliance with Her Majesty. He likewise communicated to the ministers of the allies the offers made by France, as delivered in the speech from the throne, which Her Majesty thought to be satisfactory, and hoped their masters would concur with her in bringing ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... earnest. Pluralism, in exorcising the absolute, exorcises the great de-realizer of the only life we are at home in, and thus redeems the nature of reality from essential foreignness. Every end, reason, motive, object of desire or aversion, ground of sorrow or joy that we feel is in the world of finite multifariousness, for only in that world does anything really happen, only there do ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... after this that his brethren and other relatives began seriously to consider that Lovat's own kindred and friends became too numerous, and that the country could not accommodate them all, which was a motive for their removing to other places according as they had encouragement. One of the brothers went to Brae Ross and lived at Brahan, where there is a piece of land called Knock Vic Ra, and the spring well which affords water to the Castle is called Tober Vic Ra. His succession spread westward ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... enlightened regarding every incident worth regarding along the route, almost as soon as it happened. He was enabled to do this by means of a portable telegraphic machine of new and most ingenious construction. Though its motive power was electricity, it could dispense with the ordinary instruments and even with wires altogether, yet it managed to transmit messages to most parts of the world with an accuracy that, considering how seldom it failed, is almost miraculous. The principle actuating it, though guessed at ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... those sure destroyers of Mental and Moral Worth, and by which our Sisters and Daughters shall no longer be exposed to the vile arts of the gentlemanly-appearing, gallant, but really half-inebriated seducer. Our motive is to ask of you counsel in the formation, and co-operation in the carrying-out of plans which may produce a radical ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... would "take at second hand nothing for which he vouched in teaching." Some one reproached him for wasting time verifying what another had already done. "If that is his practice," he commented, "his work will never live." The same motive made him a master of languages. To be able to read at first hand the writings of other nations, he learned German, French, Italian, and Greek. One of the chief reasons for learning to read Greek was to see for himself if Aristotle really did say that the heart had only ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Cuvier, set forth views analogous to those which Mr. Darwin has lately reproduced. But in his replies to the attacks which were made upon his system, he affirmed that his theory offered "one of the most glorious manifestations of creative power, and an additional motive for admiration, gratitude, and love."[126] Two different interpretations may therefore be given to the system. I wish to show you that these interpretations proceed in all cases from considerations external to the system. The system in itself, as a theory of natural history, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... should ever have so mournful a motive to depart in some degree from my resolution. I intended to leave you to glean what you could of our religious condition from such publications as might reach you. But I am now constrained to write something about it. My dear brother, you will hear it with a sad heart;—your nephew and mine, our ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... who had hitherto kept her eyes averted from Ruth's face from a motive of kindly delicacy, now looked at her ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... glad I have then, my lad," smiled back the young lieutenant. "I'm glad for your sake, Sergeant, and, if you wish, you may consider that I took much of the trouble on your account personally. But I had also a still greater motive ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... written on this subject, and confine myself to giving the substance of Mr. Spencer's most telling argument against Mr. Darwin's theory that accidental variations, if favourable, would accumulate and result in seemingly adaptive structures. Mr. Spencer well shows that luck or chance is insufficient as a motive-power, or helm, of evolution; but luck is only absence of design; if, then, absence of design is found to fail, it follows that there must have been design somewhere, nor can the design be more conveniently placed ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... the 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 spirit ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... 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 |
