"Motif" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... keyed to a higher strain. Less theatrical than his gifted namesake, not so fluid nor so picturesque, his thought reduced to black and white reads better. What Theodore Parker said can be analyzed, parsed, taken apart. He always had a motif and his verb fetches ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... rest for several hours in the arms of Saint Giangiuseppe, who, on being disturbed by some priestly visitor, exclaimed, "O how I have enjoyed holding the Holy Babe in my arms!" This is an old and favourite motif; it occurs, for example, in the Fioretti of Saint Francis; there are precedents, in fact, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... cure to make an excursion three or four times a week. So that we were all quite unanimous in being grateful to Florence for providing the motive power. Florence, of course, had a motive of her own. She was at that time engaged in educating Captain Ashburnham—oh, of course, quite pour le bon motif! She used to say to Leonora: "I simply can't understand how you can let him live by your side and be so ignorant!" Leonora herself always struck me as being remarkably well educated. At any rate, she knew beforehand all that Florence had to tell her. ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... that as only a queer romantic gesture, but with what she said last night, it occurred to him that there was a deeper motif to it all.... She was often in Dublin these days.... ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... tried (the Valhalla motif). At first it seemed to produce the opposite effect, for the pulse was lowered. Later it rose to a rate double the normal, and the tension was diminished. The impression described by the subject ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... experiences, most of them of a disgraceful sort, and the story is a story of low life. Women play an important role in the narrative, more important perhaps than they do in any other kind of ancient literature—at least their individuality is more marked. The efficient motif is erotic. I say the efficient, because the conventional motif which seems to account for all the misadventures of the anti-hero Encolpius is the wrath of an offended deity. A great part of the book has an atmosphere of satire about it which piques our curiosity and baffles us at the same ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... suddenly began to play a noisy Strauss waltz, which started with such a mighty and rapid trill as made even Gedeonovsky start; in the very middle of the waltz, she abruptly changed into a mournful motif, and wound up with the aria from "Lucia": "Fra poco."... She had reflected that merry music was not compatible with her situation. The aria from "Lucia," with emphasis on the sentimental notes, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... que nous la consequence qu'aurait pour l'avenir une interruption complete dans les etudes de vos deux filles; vous deciderez ce qu'il faut faire, et vous nous pardonnerez notre franchise, si vous daignez considerer que le motif qui nous fait agir est une affection bien desinteressee et qui s'affligerait beaucoup de devoir deja se resigner a n'etre plus utile a ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a mere decorative border, I now realized was a motif I have seen all my life! A tiny lighthouse sending forth a beam! The ...
— With a Vengeance • J. B. Woodley
... verse, sing them again to Sister Mayberry, child, that her ears may be rejoiced with mine." And Mother Mayberry caught at the top of the gate as the girl slipped the nodding baby down into her arms and in her wonderful muted voice hummed the Grail motif while the Deacon raised his thin old hands ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... our friendship from becoming anything of value to each other. Naturally I have seen that you are not happy, though there have been moments when you were the very personification of light-hearted ness, and I have known for a long time that the motif of your whole nature is resentment. Believe me, Miss Durwent, if I could be a friend—and I mean that to the last ditch—I should be deeply grateful ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... of the building there comes floating the dull roar of the turbulent river Kura, mingled with shouts from the hucksters of the Avlabar Bazaar (the town's Asiatic quarter) and as a cross motif thrown into these sounds, the sighing of the wind and the cooing of doves. In fact, to be here is like being in a drum which a myriad drumsticks ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... who guard the imperial crown in a fairy castle and are favorable to the ancient house of Hohenstaufen but inimical to the ruling Habsburgs. The basis is the newly awakening ideal of German unity but Arnim fails to express this clearly, and the concluding motif, that Germany's crown is to be spiritually won, resolves the whole into a frosty allegory. The progress of the story is, however, extremely interesting; the whole spacious and varied scene of medieval life is there, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Western Hemisphere is conceived as taurine and characterized as a human bull. The base of the Equestrian is surrounded by a frieze of architecturalized fish and the rearing sea horses that furnish the principal upper motif for the play of water. Energy himself is presented as a nude male, typically American, standing in his stirrups astride a snorting charger - an exultant super-horse needing no rein - commanding with grandly elemental gesture of extended arms, the ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... curious, and at the same time clearly resolved she must not hear it. She felt she must get him talking upon some impersonal theme at any cost. She snatched about in her mind. "What is the exact force of a motif?" she asked at random. "Before I heard much Wagnerian music I heard enthusiastic descriptions of it from a mistress I didn't like at school. She gave me an impression of a sort of patched quilt; little bits of patterned stuff coming up ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the name, and what was the scheme or motif of his poem? Something is to be gathered from his own remarks and reflections; but it must be borne in mind that he is on the defensive, and that his half-humorous paradoxes were provoked by advice and opposition. Writing to Moore (September 19, 1818), he says, "I have ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Though I was far from feeling at home, it was necessary to sweep the surrounding country for transport of all kinds. This was done almost automatically, since I found myself unable to give a whole-hearted attention to the job, while the infernal motif of the engine's rag-time drone dominated everything and invited speculation on how much lower we were than the others, and whether we were likely to reach a friendly landing-ground. And all the while a troublesome verse chose very inopportunely ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... les fouilles ne devront etre accordees qu'aux personnes qui offrent des garanties suffisantes d'experience archeologique. Aucune des Puissances mandataires ne devra, en accordant ces autorisations, agir de facon a ecarter, sans motif valable, les ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... the pussywillow for her flower, and this makes a delightful springlike motif for decoration. For the breakfast have round tables or one long table with twig baskets of pussywillows tied with bows of soft grasses, raffia dyed a silvery grey. The table is set with the old-fashioned ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... finds that a visit is due from his Aunt Selina, an elderly lady having ideas about things quite apart from the Bohemian set in which her nephew is a shining light. The way in which matters are temporarily adjusted forms the motif of ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... antagonistic. In Carlyle, individualism frowned upon democracy. In Whitman they are blended and work together. Never was such audacious and uncompromising individualism, and never was such bold and sweeping fraternalism or otherism. The great pride of man in himself, which is one motif of the poems, flows naturally into the great pride of man in his fellows; his egoism does not separate him from, but rather unites him with, all men. What he assumes they shall assume, and what he claims for himself he demands in ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... along the lines of the French renaissance, but it was entirely modern in treatment. For instance, in the relief ornament of frieze and cornice the fleur-de-lis was replaced by the ear of corn motif. This was Illinois renaissance and was something more than cut and dried ornament. It was ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... prostitutes are frequently married by their patrons, it is believed that not a few women from "special villages" are taken to wife without their origin being known. Unwitting marriage with an Eta woman has long been a common motif in fiction and folk story. Many members of the "special tribes" go to Hokkaido and there pass into the general body of the population. The folk of this class are "despised," I was told by a responsible Japanese, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... world, a fact to which Epicurus gave expression by placing them in the empty spaces between the infinite number of spherical worlds which he assumed. There his gods lived in bliss like ideal Epicureans. Lucretius, the only poet of this school, extolled them in splendid verse whose motif he borrowed from Homer's description of Olympus. In this way Epicurus also managed to uphold public worship itself. It could not, of course, have any practical aim, but it was justified as an expression of the respect man owed to beings whose ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... Here the motif was distinctly one of officialdom. Although the Southern element was not lacking, it was not so marked as in the library or in the hall. The place was appointed for utility rather than ornament. Everything ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... to describe a future composition of mobile light. Certainly there is an extensive variety of possibilities. A sunset may be compressed into minutes or an opalescent sky may be a motif. Varying intensities of a single hue or of allied hues may serve as a gentle melody. Realistic effects may be introduced. The expressiveness of individual colors may be taken as a basis for constructing the various motifs. These may be woven ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... farmer regarded his wife with serious attention. Lighting his pipe, he lay back in the Turkey-red chair, puffing in silence. At last he laid the pipe down and, laboriously pulling off his boots, hummed an air which had for its sole motif ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... two inter-dependent. Illness of King entails misfortune on Land. Enquiry into nature of King's disability. Sone de Nansai. For elucidation of problem necessary to bear in mind close connection between Land and Ruler. Importance of Waste Land motif ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... detest German heroes to English books, but Von Rosen is irresistible! and the refrain outbreaks of his jealousy are really high art, when he unconsciously brings every subject back to the original motif—"but that young man of Twickenham—he is a most pitiful fellow—" you feel Dr. Wolff was never more simply sincere and self-deluded, than Von Rosen's belief that it is an abstract criticism. Also you know how tedious broken English in a novel is, as a rule. ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden |
