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Incentive   /ɪnsˈɛntɪv/  /ɪnsˈɛnɪv/   Listen
Incentive

noun
1.
A positive motivational influence.  Synonyms: inducement, motivator.
2.
An additional payment (or other remuneration) to employees as a means of increasing output.  Synonym: bonus.



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"Incentive" Quotes from Famous Books



... will look at the Athens, Ala., Trinity School in our list, they will see their own State represented there, an incentive, we trust, to special effort toward the sum recommended by the officers ...
— The American Missionary Vol. XLIV. No. 2. • Various

... literary mentor, advised her as to the books she should read and the attitude of mind she should cultivate. For some years he corresponded with her very faithfully; his letters are full of noble and characteristic utterances, and give evidence of a warm regard that in itself was a stimulus and a high incentive. But encouragement even from so illustrious a source failed to elate the young poetess, or even to give her a due sense of the importance and value of her work, or the dignity of her vocation. We have already alluded to her modesty in ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... They threw up their camp in a deep and dark ravine. The murderers could have no rest. They were in continual fear that the friends of La Salle would rise and kill them. Father Douay, M. Joutel, and La Salle's brother the Chevalier, knew full well that the murderers had the strongest possible incentive to kill them also. ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... shining before men that prompts us to whatever may effect it? and if it can create, can it not also support? I mean, that if you allow that to shine, to eclater, to enjoy praise, is no ordinary incentive to the commencement of great works, the conviction of future success for this desire becomes no inconsiderable reward. Grant, for instance, that this desire produced the 'Paradise Lost,' and you will not deny that it might also support the poet through his ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... employed human learning, and has become a great formative force in modern intellectual movements. It favors a broad catholic spirit, and is the counterpoise and remedy of a narrow range of intellectual activity. History teaches that it has been a strong incentive in the search after truth, and the chief factor in training the race to a higher civilized life. The changes in the progress in modern civilization are stimulated and guided by Christian knowledge. The whole trend of modern thought and ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... dimly, because if her hair were glossy and trim it suited those plain, ninety-eight-cent shirt waists better than the elaborate fashions affected by Lily Leavitt and one or two of the more successful tigresses who cheaply copied expensive customers. Now there was an incentive for the experiment and Win laughed at the eagerness with which she looked forward to the moment of making it, laughed patronizingly, as she might have laughed at a child's ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... speech; even our colleges often leave that uncouth. Many of Mrs. Harmon's boarders spoke bad grammar through their noses; but the ladies dressed stylishly, and the men were good arithmeticians. Lemuel obeyed a native impulse rather than a good example in cultivating a better address; but the incentive to thrift and fashion was all about him. He had not been ignorant that his clothes were queer in cut and out of date, and during his stay at Miss Vane's he had taken much council with himself as to whether he ought not to get a new suit with his first money instead ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... whoo-hoop!" yelled back the Indians, excitedly; and taking it as an incentive to renewed exertion, they pressed the flanks of their horses, which responded freely, and they ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... intervals along this unattractive stretch of country, but there are no continuously ridable stretches, and the principal incentive to mount at all is a feeling of disgust at so much compulsory walking. A noticeable feature through the desert is the almost unquenchable thirst that the dry saline air inflicts upon one. Reaching ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... at these a insults, Carlton made no answer to them, but contented himself with redoubling his exertions with the brush; and it did seem to him after such encounters, and every new insult, that his hand received a fresh inspiration, and his mind renewed vigor. Perhaps he needed the incentive of pride, as well as that of love and ambition, to lead him on, and sustain him in the prosecution ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... that they had some important things to attend to. The pleasures of life have an important part, but they were now engaged in serious work. The fact that they had accomplished so much was a great incentive to go on and investigate other things which were still mysteries, and which might be ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay

... very kind as to grant my request, it will certainly be a constant incentive to me to strain every nerve where I can officially serve you; and will, if possible, increase that grateful respect with which I ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... the equal balance of genius and talent in one individual. Leonardo had great talent, but his genius outstripped it, for he planned what twenty lifetimes could not complete. He was indeed the endless experimenter—his was in very truth the Experimental Life. His incentive was self-development—to conceive was enough—common men could complete. To try many things means Power: to finish ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... aloft sending down their messages of commendation for shots well aimed. It is the statement of those in a position to know that never were jackies so quick to learn as those of our war-time personnel. Whether the fact of war is an incentive or whether American boys are adapted, through a life of competitive sport, quickly to grasp the sailorman's trade, the truth remains that in a very short space the boy who has never seen a ship develops swiftly into a bluejacket, rolling, ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... was leaving aside the most powerful of all his motives, and one which demanded closest scrutiny. Not ambition, in any ordinary sense; not desire of material luxury; no incentive recognised by unprincipled schemers first suggested his dishonour. This edifice of subtle untruth had for its foundation a mere ideal of sexual love. For the winning of some chosen woman, men have wrought vehemently, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... advantage and the justification of a contest confined to a single state or a limited region. Also, when residents of a state, through a contest, discover promising seedlings within their own state, it is believed that there is created in the sponsors more incentive to compile continuous data about the new kinds than would exist when the prize winners are chosen from regions quite removed. That so many examples were submitted was the result of excellent publicity ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... achievement in the drama. By the date of his birth Europe was witnessing the passing of the religious drama that had held its course for some five centuries, and the creation of new and mixed forms under the incentive of classical tragedy and comedy. These new forms were at first mainly written by scholars and performed by amateurs, but in England, as everywhere else in western Europe, the growth of a class of professional actors ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... organization he took up the study of Haydn's "Creation." It seemed a stupendous undertaking for a young and inexperienced chorus, one with no trained voices, few of whom could even read music at sight. But they plunged into the study with spirit. No incentive was needed to come to rehearsals, no one thought of dropping out. Indeed, the opportunity to study such music under such a master brought many new members. And in the fall of that year the oratorio was given with ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... performed a public service in presenting this volume to the public in so attractive a shape. It is full of incentive to ambitious youth; it abounds in encouragement to every patriotic heart."—Charleston ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... poets, accomplished his mission, not by means of the contrapuntal fashion of his age, but in spite of it. The laws of canon and fugue are based upon as prosaic a foundation as those of the rondo and sonata form; I find it impossible to imagine their ever having been a spur or an incentive to poetic musical speech. ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte

... age of blind love. She had not the incentive of a healthy competition. She had not that more dangerous incentive of middle-aged vanity, which draws the finger of derision so often in the direction of widows. And yet she took a certain pleasure ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... his class had acquired a thorough knowledge of the multiplication table, I gave a searching test upon that subject and issued a simple little certificate to the effect that the pupil had completed it. These little certificates acted like stakes put down along the way, to give incentive, direction, and definiteness to the educative processes, and to stimulate a reasonable class spirit or individual rivalry. I meet these pupils occasionally now—they are to-day grown men and women—and they retain in their possession ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... laborers are slaves, and they have no incentive to be industrious; they are clothed and victualed, whether lazy or hard-working; and, from the calculations that have been made, one freeman is worth two slaves in the field, which make it in many instances cheaper to have hirelings; for they are incited to industry by hopes of ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole

... it may be worth while to point out that the current impression that the maintenance by states of "bloated armaments" is a keen incentive to war, is fallacious. How often do we hear, "There must be a big war soon; the powers cannot long stand the cost of standing looking at each other, all armed to the teeth!" War is infinitely more costly than the costliest preparedness. But this is not all. The country ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... nature; first of the moving wind, then of the falling water and finally of steam. From one step to another he has obtained better houses, better clothes, and better books, and he has done it by holding out every incentive to the ingenious to produce them. The world has said, give us better clubs and guns and cannons with which to kill our fellow Christians. And whoever will give us better weapons and better music, and ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... savages is poor in food-supply their number is, as a rule, small and their condition poor. It is not good for a people to have too easy times; that deprives them of the incentive to work. But also it is not good for people who are backward in civilization to be kept to a land which treats them too harshly; for then they never get a fair chance to progress in the scale of civilization. The people of the tropics and the people ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox

... indifferent to fatigue and perils, the months spent in Central Africa had been far more to his taste than the dull monotony of the life at Craven Towers. But with his face turned, though indirectly, toward home—the home of his adoption—Yoshio was still cheerful. For him life held only one incentive—the man who had years before saved his life in California. Where ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... not say that there was a very powerful incentive in his heart just then that in itself was more than sufficient to make him cling to life. It was the thought ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... England social and literary culture. With all his fervid humanity and deeply ingrained modernness, Whitman has the virtues of the primal and the savage. "Leaves of Grass" has not the charm, or the kind of charm, of the more highly wrought artistic works, but it has the incentive of nature and the charm of real things. We shall not go to it to be soothed and lulled. It will always remain among the difficult and heroic undertakings, demanding our best moments, our best strength, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... He was still confident of himself, but he became suddenly conscious that these women were necessary to his happiness and his success, that his nature demanded the constant daily tonic of their love and service. He understood now the primal necessity of woman, not as an individual, but as an incentive and an appendage to ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... Newton. Instead of square pegs in round holes, the Newton High School can boast of sixty or seventy children who come, each year, in search of a new opening for which they are technically not ready, but into which they may grow. After coming to the high school, two-thirds of them find an incentive sufficient to lead them to continue with an education of which they had ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... for them to see from ours. While appreciating the kindnesses measured out to us in this city by our friends and the press, yet laboring without visible results for the recognition of our rights as citizens of the United States, we cannot, even through the potent incentive of sympathizing with our "husbands, fathers, brothers and sons," lay aside our grievances and rejoice in a triumph which more clearly marks our ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... possible—acquisitiveness—saving. Self-interest, losing its moral, and assuming a guilty, character, degenerates into egotism; acquisitiveness, into covetousness; and the disposition to save, into avarice—the solipsismus of Kant. The incentive to ameliorate one's condition is common to all men, no matter how varied the form or different the intensity of its manifestation. It guides us all from the cradle to the grave. It may be restricted within certain limits, but ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... incentive to make men love their country; it encourages that patriotism which never falters, even at the cannon's mouth. The sight of a flag or the music of a band merely enthuses as long as one is in sight or the other can be heard; but history and its knowledge are lasting and a source ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow

... of her. And her tutor, he now knew, was the Master Mind, omniscient God. And he knew, more, that she possessed secrets whose potency he might as yet scarcely imagine. For, in an environment which for dearth of mental stimulus and incentive could scarcely be matched; amid poverty but slightly raised above actual want; untouched by the temperamental hopelessness which lies just beneath the surface of these dull, simple folk, this child lived a life of such ecstasy as might well ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... severe rebuke, saying, "Every parish ought to keep their own poor." Jones then fell a-laughing, and asked Partridge, "if he was not ashamed, with so much charity in his mouth, to have no charity in his heart. Your religion," says he, "serves you only for an excuse for your faults, but is no incentive to your virtue. Can any man who is really a Christian abstain from relieving one of his brethren in such a miserable condition?" And at the same time, putting his hand in his pocket, he gave ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... much outcry in these latter days against the newly-formed habit of cigarette smoking cultivated by ladies of the West. Condemnation of the practice seems if anything to act as an incentive, so, yielding to the pleasant temptation of palliating faults in pretty women, I would suggest as an excuse that they are but following in the foot-steps of their sisters of the Far East, where, it may be roughly stated, the women-folk of a third ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... the charge, grandfather," Harry said quietly, "I only state the alternative. That one of your nephews took this note seems to me to be clear; the crime would be infinitely greater, infinitely more unpardonable in the one case than the other, but the incentive, too, was enormously greater. In the one case the only object for the theft would be to avoid the consequence of a foolish, but, after all, not a serious freak; in the other to obtain a large fortune, and to ruin the ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... homage in words; but we must in honor make our words good by deeds. We have every right to take a just pride in the great deeds of our forefathers; but we show ourselves unworthy to be their descendants if we make what they did an excuse for our lying supine instead of an incentive to the effort to show ourselves, by our acts, worthy of them. In the administration of city, State, and nation, in the management of our home life and conduct of our business and social relations, we are bound to show ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... no worse, for I love Graylees. I might have turned out a less decent sort of chap than I am if it hadn't been for the prospect of inheriting it sooner or later. One has to live up to certain things, and Graylees was an incentive. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... now to a consideration of those inventions made by colored inventors since the war period, and at a time when no obstacles stood in the way. With the broadening of their industrial opportunities, and the incentive of a freer market for the products of their talent, it was thought that the Negroes would correspondingly exhibit inventive genius, and the records abundantly prove this to have been true. But how ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... all valueless and inconsequential articles, including a box of old sea shells which she found in the closet. It was a curious fact that neither Sutter nor Travail possessed relatives or friends to make inquiry as to their whereabouts and thus without incentive the ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi

... Lacking incentive to stir about, they came to spend most of their time lying on their backs watching the sky. This in turn bred a languor which is the sickest, most soul- and temper-destroying affair invented by the devil. They could not muster up energy ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... all that was left for the crowded House to do was to roar with resentment. Mr. O'Donnell was used to this incentive, and had it been withheld would probably have shown signs of failing vigour. As it was, he produced a pocket-handkerchief, took down his eye-glass and carefully polished it, whilst members yelled and tossed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... be insufficient against rare and unusual dangers. But bad as is this system when voluntarily chosen, it becomes far worse when legally and compulsorily imposed. In a sensitive state of the English money market the near approach to the legal limit of reserve would be a sure incentive to panic; if one-third were fixed by law, the moment the banks were close to one-third, alarm would begin, and would run like magic. And the fear would be worse because it would not be unfoundedat least, not wholly. If you say that the Bank shall always hold one-third ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... his feelings or his intentions; in fact, his determination to marry her was strengthened. Because she loved him very much, she ran away from him, leaving him in a strange city without even her name for a clue. But now she had a hope, a real incentive—the biggest one there is. She pawned all the coveted clothes she had bought and went to a place far away where she could begin a new life—the life ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... which Adam Smith declares employers grow rich, as far as this applies to the soil, would not be possible, since the vast volume of increased production brought about by the industry of the multitude of co-equal small farmers would so reduce the cost price of food products as to destroy the incentive to speculation in them, and at the same time utterly destroy the necessity or the possibility of famines, such as those which have from time to time come upon the Irish people. There could be no famine, in the natural course of things, where all had an opportunity ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... the desire for exercising tyranny is apt to spring. Autonomy, both for districts and for organizations, would leave fewer occasions when governments were called upon to make decisions as to other people's concerns. And the abolition of capitalism and the wage system would remove the chief incentive to fear and greed, those correlative passions by which all free life is choked ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell

... told in the Preface, "owes its appearance to the Union of Jewish Literary Societies" in London, and it does credit to their earnestness and loyalty to the cause of Jewish learning. Let us hope it may serve as an example and incentive to the revival of Jewish interests in this country. It is well that all should read this useful little book and many others of the kind which we hope will follow. But it is more important that such reading shall inspire the student with a desire to study at first hand the original ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... I hoped you would see it that way and I wanted you to acknowledge the incentive to yourselves. I am sure you can carry on the work, as you say. We have had enough of practical experimentation together, and then, what made me think of you, was that fish dam you put in for ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... you, dear, that the country, in its present condition, leaves no other incentive to exertion, and therein it is cursed. Military fame, military rank, even, are unattainable, under our system: the arts, letters and science, bring little or no reward; and there being no political rank that a ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... remarked that those corps in which indulgences were most freely given contained the largest number of well-behaved men, and I had been assured that such indulgences were seldom abused, and that, while they were greatly appreciated by those who received them, they acted as an incentive to less well conducted men to try ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... indeed, look for a continuance of the horrors which then prevailed. She knew that when the incentive was removed the acts would cease. There would be peace, because there would no longer be any need for violence. But she was sure there would be no real freedom, no equality of right, no certainty of justice. She did not care who ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... pioneering finds less to stimulate it, the gregarious impulse, the tendency to flock together for our work and our play, gains in ascendancy. Growing out of the greater intellectual opportunities and demands of modern times, the standard of education has greatly advanced. And under the incentive of present-day economic success and luxury, comfortable circumstances and a moderate competence no longer satisfy our people. Hence they turn to the city, looking to find there the coveted social, educational, ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts

... for an instant. If there were no gentlemen-tramps, perhaps there were gentlemen-burglars, and she hastily made a mental inventory of Mr Westray's belongings, but could think of nothing among them likely to act as an incentive to crime. Still she would not venture to show a strange man to the top of the house, when there was no one at home but herself. The stranger ought not to have asked her. He could not be a gentleman after all, or he would have seen how irregular was such a request, unless he had indeed some particular ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... incentive given to geographical discovery led various travellers, such as the celebrated Italian, Marco Polo, and the scarcely less noted Englishman, Sir John Mandeville, to explore the most remote countries of Asia. Even that spirit of maritime enterprise and adventure ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... me want to," said Paul Overt, feeling strongly, on the instant, the suggestion of what she said and that of the emotion with which she said it, and well aware of what an incentive, on St. George's lips, such a ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James

... persecutions. Scarcely had the medical officers reported me fit to sustain the ordeal, when a court-martial was assembled to try me on a variety of charges. Who was my prosecutor? Listen, Clara," and he shook her violently by the arm. "He who had robbed me of all that gave value to life, and incentive to honour,—he who, under the guise of friendship, had stolen into the Eden of my love, and left it barren of affection. In a word, yon detested governor, to whose inhuman cruelty even the son of my brother has, by ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... is insured if you fully comprehend the importance of the epoch which you now begin, and the greatness of its results for the rest of your life. Let past delinquencies become an incentive, stimulating your will to energetic action. Let the need of repairing the past, and the importance of preparing for the future inspire you with generous resolutions and an ardent desire of acquiring all ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... 13th of March she says: "To-day, for the first time, I ironed my clothes, and felt as though it was an acceptable sacrifice. This seemed part of the preparation for my removal to the North. I felt fearful lest this object was a stronger incentive to me than the desire ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... Deal—lines which as I have so often made clear, are in complete accord with the underlying principles of orderly popular government which Americans have demanded since the white man first came to these shores. We count, in the future as in the past, on the driving power of individual initiative and the incentive of fair private profit, strengthened with the acceptance of those obligations to the public interest which rest upon us all. We have the right to expect that this driving power will be given patriotically and ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... incentive to self-control, she felt that she would have given way to the hot disappointed tears that were choking in her throat. How sad her heart was as she sat there alone in the prayer-room. It was early and but few were present. She had never felt so much alone. The companionship which had ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... being provided for the priesthood by the munificence of the kings; "rice prepared with sugar and honey, rice with clarified butter, and rice in its ordinary form."[3] In addition to the enjoyment of a life of idleness, another powerful incentive conspired to swell the numbers of these devotees. The followers and successors of Wijayo preserved intact the institution of caste, which they had brought with them from the valley of the Ganges; and, although ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... of course," answered Norbert phlegmatically; "but that will be an incentive for you to conceal my death as I ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... time to give in defense of his own life's incentive, since no sacrifice is too great for the silent endurance of his love. What has not unselfed love achieved for the race? All that ever was accomplished, [10] and more than history has yet recorded. The reformer works on unmentioned, save when he is abused ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... both sides a story of unceasing activity, of unending labor, of unremitting toil, of endless suffering, of unlimited heroism, and of unsurpassed courage, the more so, because much of all that was accomplished was counted only as part of the regular daily routine, and lacked both the incentive and the reward of widespread publicity, which more frequently attaches to military operations of more extensive character. Not for years to come will it be possible to write a detailed history of this phase of the Great War as far as the eastern front is concerned. Not until the regimental ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... minds, inflamed a hell. So that the most primitive passions of mankind found outlet and held sway. The operations of the Border Legion were lost in deeds done in the gambling dens, in the saloons, and on the street, in broad day. Men fought for no other reason than that the incentive was in the charged air. Men were shot at gaming-tables—and the game went on. Men were killed in the dance-halls, dragged out, marking a line of blood on the rude floor—and the dance went on. Still the pursuit of gold went on, more frenzied than ever, and still the greater and richer claims ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... Hastings that his sole reliance was on him, "and that in every instance he depended on his faith, religion, promises, and actions." But he, the said Warren Hastings, as if the being reminded of his faith and promises were an incentive to him to violate the same, although he had agreed that his demand should not be drawn into precedent, and the payment of the fifty thousand pounds aforesaid should continue only for one year, did, the very day after he had received the letter ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... in rearing the "domestic calamity," and these are over-vigilance and under-vigilance. Some parents never lose sight of their daughters, suspect them of all evil intentions, and are silly enough to show their suspicions, which is an incentive to evil-doing. For the weak-minded things do naturally say, "I will be wicked at once. What do I now but suffer all the pains and penalties of badness, without enjoying its pleasures?" And so they are guilty of many evil actions; for, however ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... said, "the fear of getting fired is a pretty strong incentive to do one's best, but I suppose when one gets up against big things there is something else. After all, one hates ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... hopes," the clear tones rang forth, "that this important event will serve as an incentive to every officer and soldier to act with fidelity and courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of the country depend, under God, solely on the success of our arms and that he is in the service of a state possessed of ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... Grant, and that it has an object which, if you understood, you would be loath to frustrate. True, these troops are, in strict law, only to be removed by my order; but General Grant's judgment would be the highest incentive to me to make such order. Nor can I understand how doing so is bad faith and dishonor, nor yet how it so exposes Kentucky to ruin. Military men here do not perceive how it exposes Kentucky, and I am sure Grant would not permit it if it so ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... their flocks, with their brethren, slaughtered by thousands. We give these the more willingly, as there has so far been no full review of Catholic Mission work in the English language. This tale of steadfastness in faith is also a new incentive to love of the Sacred Heart of ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... very well satisfied to leave us," said Madame Bonaparte with a kind smile. "It is not leaving Madame, but joining the First Consul, which delights me."—"I hope so," replied she. "Go, Constant; and take good care of him." If any incentive had been needed, this injunction of my noble mistress would have added to the zeal and fidelity with which I had determined to discharge my new duties. I hurried without delay to the office of Maret, secretary of state, who already knew me, and had shown his good-will ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... Her sweet face was the "beauty of holiness." She hoped he was not a bad boy. She liked a good boy; and this was incentive enough to incur a lifetime of trial and self-sacrifice. Harry was an orphan. To have one feel an interest in his moral welfare, to have one wish him to be a good boy, had not grown stale by long ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... to give him another chance now; his Spanish blood would lull him to ease and forgetfulness; he would tell himself he would pay the mortgage manana. By giving him another chance, I would merely remove his incentive to hustle ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... culture extended itself much more slowly over the rural districts, the inhabitants of which, in addition to being much more conservative and passionately attached to their native institutions and language, lacked the incentive of ambition and of commercial and trade necessity. A powerful Druidical priesthood held the rural Celts together and set their faces against Roman culture and religion. But even in the rural districts Latin made its way ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... to the time when they should be numbered among those brave soldiers, whose arms had maintained for a long series of years the supremacy of the crescent. There was no rank, no dignity in the Turkish army to which a Janissary could not aspire—a strong incentive to the display of bravery. Such was the constitution of the army when it was the most powerful in Europe: then it gained its victories, not by force of numbers, but by superior military discipline and valor. In the middle of the nineteenth century the capture ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... curule chair; and often "Little Jeff"—the Benjamin of Mr. Davis' household—trotted at his side. But there was never a suite, seldom a courier; and wherever he went, plain, stirring syllables of cheer—and strong, grave words of incentive—dropped from his lips among the soldiery. They were treasured as the truth, too, by that rough auditory; for as yet, Mr. Davis was in the zenith of his popularity—a perfect idol with army and people. The ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... tragedy which had deprived him at once of the girl he had loved and the incentive to a better, worthier manhood which her love had supplied. For her sake he could have done much, could have vanquished all the petty failings, the selfish weaknesses which marred his not otherwise unattractive character; ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... have a way of coming back with startling vividness in the still solitude of mountains, and out of the passing of painful panoramas had grown Bruce's desire to "make good." Now, in the first shock of his intense disappointment he felt that without a tangible incentive he was done before he ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... otherwise beyond apprehension—coolly adding, with a highwayman's impudence, "take that or nothing;" and the owner has to put up with a total loss, or compromise for a third of the value of his property—the result in either case, proving an incentive to others to be off ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... society. He must try to work out a scheme of morality suitable to his own case and temperament, which found the prohibitory law of Moses chill and uninspiring, but in the Sermon on the Mount a strong incentive to all those impulses of pity and charity to which his heart was prone. In early days his sense of social injustice and the inequalities of human opportunity made him inwardly much of a rebel, who would have embraced and acted on theories ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Ohio, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he realized the difference in the extreme and perhaps beyond it. I tried to make him believe that if a man had one or two friends anywhere who loved letters and sympathized with him in his literary attempts, it was incentive enough; but of course he wished to be in the centres of literature, as we all do; and he never was content until he had set his face and his foot Eastward. It was a great step for him from the Swedenborgian school at Urbana to the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... MacAnder's words he might never have done what he had done. Without their incentive and the accident of finding his wife's door for once unlocked, which had enabled him to steal ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... token of assent. "You are right; I AM proud of my descent. Such an ancestry as mine should inspire a man to noble deeds; and if I encourage pride of birth in my subjects, it is because I believe it to be an incentive to virtue and honor. Remembering, then, with mingled gratulation and humility, that we are the posterity of Charles V., let us determine to-day to act in a manner worthy of our great progenitor; for, by your haste to assemble here this morning, I judge that we have ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... race from whom the soldiers can get no other booty, because the Moros do not possess it, they fight unwillingly. If the soldiers could make captives of them, they would become very eager, and that would be a great incentive for the soldiers to destroy them. There is less incentive for them to capture those people than to kill them, as they do now. Again it would be very useful to the said islands, for the natives would also ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... say, upon that of seniority, or long residence, and not of merit. Because there was no competition, scholars who were deficient in education at Eton were promoted to Cambridge, where they had no incentive to work, being exempt from the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... great incentive for writers to work for children. This was the demand made for stories from the American Sunday School Union, whose influence upon the character of juvenile literature was a force bearing upon the various writers, and whose growth was coincident with ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... servants of any position of importance in that vast continent of swarming bees intent on their day's labour and nothing else. It is a good token for the future that men shall feel their labour is appreciated, although a desire for official recognition may be no incentive to the devotion itself. It is certain that William McNair always valued the appreciation of his official superiors, and that nothing could have given him greater pleasure or more comfort, in his review of his own brief labours, than to have known ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard

... the splendour of his privileges. He examined Tipping carefully, as the latter was still assuming a hostile attitude and chanting a sort of war-cry supposed to be an infallible incentive to strife. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... because of "predestination" nor "election" to that fate. If this be true, then one is given the understanding to stoically bear the pains and miseries of this life without cursing Fate or imputing injustice to the Divine. And likewise he is given an incentive toward making the best of his opportunities now, in order to pass on to higher and more satisfactory conditions in future lives. Reincarnationists claim that rewards and punishments are properly awarded only on the ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... general chapter at the time, was in ecstasies of joy, when he heard that five Friars Minor had received the crown of martyrdom; that he looked upon it as the first fruits of the plans of his friend Francis, and, at the same time, as a powerful incentive for his brethren to aspire to what is most perfect, which is to suffer for the faith of Jesus Christ. The Friars Preachers have profited by the example, as is evinced by the great number of martyrs of their order, by whom ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... writings the treatise Of Good Works also belongs Though the incentive for its composition came from George Spalatin, court-preacher to the Elector, who reminded Luther of a promise he had given, still Luther was willing to undertake it only when he recalled that in a previous sermon to his congregation he occasionally had ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... gradually for myself rather than have the essence of it extracted and poured into me in advance. The preface has not the excuse of a mere advertisement; to open this book at any point is to read the whole, and every page is the strongest possible incentive to the reading of the others. If (as is not admitted) any personal explanation was necessary, it should have been put at the end and in small type so that those who, like myself, detest explanations might have avoided this one. I am the more severe about this, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... sole form of prayer. Steve wondered if what Mary had recently said to him could be true, at least in his own case. She had said that defeat at thirty should be an incentive—only after fifty could it be counted a ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... opening and Sheridan's army marched eastward. Men and horses were covered with mud, but they still had the flush of victories won, and the incentive of others expected. They were even yet worn by hard marching and some fighting, but it was a healthy leanness, making their muscles as tough as whipcord, while their eyes were ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and the Pounds. "Thy pound has gained five, I will set thee over five cities. Thy pound has gained ten, I will set thee over ten cities. I will give thee a larger and nobler work hereafter." Is not that an incentive to stir one's blood? The more I grow in love, in unselfishness, in knowledge of God, in righteousness of life, the more use I shall be to my dear Lord and to my ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... Mistress Oldfield, like that of Barton Booth, was cast in pleasant places. Yet the lady had her little agitations, and found them, no doubt, rather an incentive to existence than otherwise. Take, for instance, the excitement surrounding the production, during the Drury Lane season of 1711-12, of Mrs. Centlivre's play, "The Perplexed Lovers." To the lovely Nance was entrusted the duty of speaking ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... be very glad if I could send you a new Organ work, but unfortunately all incentive to that sort of work is wanting to me here; and until the Tieffurt Cantor makes a pilgrimage to Rome all my organ wares will ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... lions' as you once said—but I should best do this if I lived quietly with myself and with you. That you cannot dance like Cerito does not materially disarrange this plan—nor that I might (beside the perpetual incentive and sustainment and consolation) get, over and above the main reward, the incidental, particular and unexpected happiness of being allowed when not working to rather occupy myself with watching you, than with certain other pursuits I might be otherwise addicted to—this, also, does not constitute ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... realise my position, there was this one question to consider; was I still strong enough to resist the temptation which accident had thrown in my way? I had this one incentive to resistance: the conviction that, if I succumbed, as far as my family prospects were concerned, I should be ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... made a general, is due the impetus which the trade with Santa Fe received shortly after his return to the United States. The student of American history will remember that the expedition commanded by this soldier was inaugurated in 1806; his report of the route he had taken was the incentive for commercial speculation in the direction of trade with New Mexico, but it was so handicapped by restrictions imposed by the Mexican government, that the adventurers into the precarious traffic were not only subject to a complete ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... you see how much more glorious, how much better, is the doctrine of the apostles—the New Testament—than the doctrine of those who preach merely great works and holiness without Christ. We should see in this fact an incentive to hear the Gospel with gladness. We ought joyfully to thank God for it when we learn how it has power to bring to men life and eternal salvation, and when it gives us assurance that the Holy Spirit accompanies it and is ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... attacked, women did not take active part in war. When the men went forth on a long journey to meet the enemy, the women remained at home, attending to domestic duties. Their thoughts, however, were with the absent ones; and, under the incentive of the belief in will power, they would gather in groups at the lodge of the Leader of the war party, and in the hearing of his family would sing a We'-ton song, which should carry strength to the far-away warriors and help them to ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher

... up at the window of the tower there was a wise maiden who thought within herself that the knight had not undertaken the battle either on her account or for the sake of the common herd who had gathered about the list, but that his only incentive had been the Queen; and she thought that, if he knew that she was at the window seeing and watching him, his strength and courage would increase. And if she had known his name, she would gladly have called to him to look about him. Then she came to the Queen and said: "Lady, for God's sake ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... the stranger, "one advantage in the poetical inclination, that it is an incentive to philanthropy. There is a certain poetic ground, on which a man cannot tread without feelings that enlarge the heart: the causes of human depravity vanish before the romantic enthusiasm he professes, and many who are not able to reach the Parnassian ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... parish priest, a rigid disciplinarian, an alien to Nepenthe, a frost-bitten soul from the Central Provinces of the mainland. He used to complain that times were changed; that what was good in the days of the Duke might not be good for the present generation; that a scene such as this was no incentive to true religion; that the Holy Mother of God could hardly be edified by the performance, seeing that the players were almost nude, and that certain of the gestures verged on indelicacy and even immodesty. Every year he complained ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... a confession he would be in good company. Even Shakespeare, with all his dramatic genius, confessed that he could not avoid monotony in his praise of true love. Its ways were ways of pleasantness, but did not afford much incentive to originality. ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... by all, need hardly be said. He rejoiced that he was enabled to do so much good, retained his modest bearing, and continued to regard his wealth as only an incentive to promote the happiness of mankind, without distinction of creed or nationality. Unhappily, his wife was just the opposite. She rarely gave food or raiment to the poor, and felt angry at her husband's liberality, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... magnificent exhibit of the French Republic at Chicago in 1893, on which a million dollars were expended, should be a strong incentive to reciprocal liberality on the part of the Government of the United States, and suggests to our citizens the necessity as well as the propriety of installing at the Paris Exposition an exhibit on a par with that of the Government ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... of yours!" However, he patted Thornton Bristol's shoulder when he said it. "It's a good thing for a young man to have a healthy debt when he starts out—a debt that's a joy to pay. Just look on it as an incentive, boy! You ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... animals sexual desire is not less powerful as an incentive to strenuous exertion than hunger and thirst. In the rut-time, the males, even of the most cowardly species, engage ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... he looked rather sheepishly out of the window. "I've given her an incentive to do ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... incentive to create witchcraft cases, thus keeping the land dark. Sir George met that, and farther bonded them fiefs of the Queen, by giving them small salaries as magistrates. He established regular courts, and in these the chiefs had ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... daughters in a manner that should rebuke vanity and deceit, and blend grace with utility. None went before him in knowledge of the art of taming obstinate boyhood into tenderness, and with all modern improvements our best teachers may find in his works a mine of knowledge and incentive both in their ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... of the theater," continued Mrs. Mansfield, "and I confess it with shame, feeling as if I should never find again the incentive to a noble action, as if the world were turned to chaff. And yet I had ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... mark, no mere degenerate who hacked off great chunks of a splendid fortune for the sake of violent exercise. He was too indolent for violence, too inherently fastidious for degeneracy. And deep down somewhere in a nature that had had no incentive to develop, there was the fag end of that family shrewdness which had made the early Palgraves envied and maligned. Tall and well built, with a handsome Anglo-Saxon type of face, small, soft, fair mustache, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... to their experiences of an easy aboriginal holding of the soil, and were sceptical both as to the validity and justice of these revived alien grants; but the newer arrivals hailed this certain tenure of legal titles as a guarantee to capital and an incentive to improvement. There was also a growing and influential party of Eastern and Northern men, who were not sorry to see a fruitful source of dissension and bloodshed removed. The feuds of the McKinstrys and Harrisons, kept alive over ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... greater intelligence than his fellows, and therefore the possessor of better developed powers of imagination. To him the expedition savored of adventure, and so appealed, strongly. With Taglat there was another incentive—a secret and sinister incentive, which, had Tarzan of the Apes had knowledge of it, would have sent him at the other's throat ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... and lenders are able to take it into account, and as experience shows, do take it into account.[13] When prices fall men become more eager to sell wealth, to lend the proceeds, and more reluctant to borrow for investment at the prevailing rate of interest and at the prevailing prices. There is an incentive to divest one's self of ownership (e.g., by selling stocks) and to become a lender (e.g., by buying bonds). This whole situation is reversed in a period of rising prices. The result is that the rate of interest in any long continued period of falling prices (such as from 1873 to 1896) has ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... rejecting the apprenticeship. He considered it absurd. It took the chains partly from off the slave, and fastened them on the master, and enslaved them both. It withdrew from the latter the power of compelling labor, and it supplied to the former no incentive ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... who had been cruelly and unjustly deprived of it; that I was resolved this night to recover it, cost what it would, and fearing lest he might raise his voice and call for assistance, I let him see the powerful incentive to silence which I had kept concealed in my bosom. 'A pistol!' cried he. 'What! my son? will you take away my life in return for the attentions I have shown you?' 'God forbid,' replied I; 'you are too reasonable to drive me to that horrible ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... following pages contribute to impress this salutary truth on my countrymen, my utmost ambition will be gratified; persuaded, that a sense of the miseries they have avoided, and of the happiness they enjoy, will be their best incentive, whether they may have to oppose the arms of the enemy in a continuance of the war, or their more dangerous machinations on ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady



Words linked to "Incentive" :   moral force, rational motive, premium, dynamic, payment, dividend, disincentive, sales incentive



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