"Motive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... home, and I'll defy him to find the pearl! Theory, my dear Bunny? I know how he's got here as well as though I'd been inside that Scotchman's skin, and I know what he'll do next. He found out I'd gone abroad, and looked for a motive; he found out about von Heumann and his mission, and there was his motive cut-and-dried. Great chance—to nab me on a new job altogether. But he won't do it, Bunny; mark my words, he'll search the ship and search us all, when the loss is known; but he'll ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... insolent; his foul was incapable of any thing that approached towards generosity, and when his resentment was heated, he pursued revenge, and retained the most lasting hatred; he had always entertained a prejudice against Dryden, from no other motive than envy, Dryden's plays met with success, and this was enough to fire the resentment of Rochester, who was naturally envious. In order to hurt the character, and shake the interest of this noble poet, he recommended Crown, an obscure man, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... hath come to General Washington from your own general in which he deplores the action of Lippencott. He asks for further time for investigation, and promises that no more such atrocities shall be perpetrated upon American prisoners, which was our chief motive for reprisal. And your father, Colonel Owen, hath protested strongly against thus using a prisoner of the Capitulation of Yorktown, claiming that such an one cannot be used as hostage in any manner. Our chief, sir, is exceedingly jealous of ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... was said at that time; but what she had heard already left Maude's mind in a turmoil. She next, but very cautiously, endeavoured to ascertain the opinions of her mistress. Constance made her explain her motive in asking, and ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... asylum in one of the cells. This is the time, and this is the cell in which the accompanying picture represents our hero. Two years he passed in this monastery, making use of his involuntary seclusion to carry on with great zeal his musical studies. The story of Tartini's dream, and his motive for writing the "Devil's Sonata" is told in various ways and with many additions. Tartini told the tale himself to the astronomer Lalande, who relates it in the following manner in his "Italian Travels." "One night in the year 1713," said ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... at the time, and reported in a series of intolerably dull letters to the newspaper which supplied a financial basis for my sentimental journey. They are full of information; but I have been amused to note, after these many years, how wide they steer of the true motive and interest of the excursion. There is not even a hint of Sheila in any of them. Youth, after all, is a shamefaced and secretive season; like the fringed polygala, it hides its real ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... drawing-room that I did not speak to her there. I was rather surprised, then, to receive a note from her a few days later, asking me to dinner; and I finally went, I am ashamed to own, more from curiosity than from any other motive. I had been, in the mean time, thoroughly coached concerning her by Mrs. Makely, whom I told of my invitation, and who said, quite frankly, that she wished Mrs. Strange had asked her, too. "But Eveleth Strange wouldn't ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... priest rose, his whole attention concentrated on Robert, as though some deeper-lying motive were suddenly brought into play than any suggested by the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are brought to light through the Gospel." Is it not strange that dying men will reject the motive of life? "This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son; he that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." Jesus "came to his own and his own received him not, but as many as received him to them ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... between our sailing and the embarcation of the specie, which once commenced could not be kept secret in passing through a number of hands, and might be a temptation to enterprises on the part of the enemy. The same motive determined me not to shift the whole of the money into cases, which would have been more portable. This precaution became indispensable however with respect to two of the casks, that had suffered too much from the violent shaking on the road to be embarked in that condition, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... a scene perhaps the most celebrated in all the mythological legends; a scene which was the origin of the sacred dance in Japan and which furnished to artists in later ages a frequent motive. The "eight hundred myriads" of Kami—so numerous have the denizens of the "plain of high heaven" unaccountably become—assemble in the bed of the "tranquil river"* to confer about a means of enticing ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... believe the old lady had slept through the furious fusilades of shots of the night before. What her motive was in ignoring the matter he could not understand, but he decided to set himself right with her and also with her mountain friends by telling of the events of ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... a wolf. Of course we young fellows flatly refused to divide it, as we knew the Doctor, twice our age, needed it more than we. We said, "We were not hungry; couldn't eat anything to save us." A lie, that I hope the recording Angel, considering the motive, didn't take down; or, if he did, I hope he added a note ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... Mr. Adams, who never in his life allowed fear to become a motive, wrote, with obvious contempt and indignation: "I observe among the members great embarrassment, alarm, anxiety, and confusion of mind, but no preparation for any measure of vigor, and an obvious strong disposition to yield all that Great Britain may (p. 049) require, to preserve peace, under ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... his other character of legislator, we have seen, that already the earliest stages of Mahometan experience exposed decisively his ruinous imbecility. Where a rude tribe offered no resistance to his system, for the simple reason that their barbarism suggested no motive for resistance, it could be no honour to prevail. And where, on the other hand, a higher civilization had furnished strong points of repulsion to his system, it appears plainly that this pretended apostle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... descended at the head of the bold and affectionate Isaurians; and his final victory confounded the arms and predictions of the fanatics. His long reign was distracted with clamor, sedition, conspiracy, and mutual hatred, and sanguinary revenge; the persecution of images was the motive or pretence, of his adversaries; and, if they missed a temporal diadem, they were rewarded by the Greeks with the crown of martyrdom. In every act of open and clandestine treason, the emperor felt the unforgiving enmity of the monks, the faithful ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... have begun to go over the top. They are going up the scaling-ladder and out into All Man's Land. Perhaps love of adventure tempts them, perhaps love of money, or a fine spirit of service, but whatever the propelling motive, we are seeing them make ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... questioned, no motive within the complicated mechanism of Cesare's mind upon which I could play? Was there nothing which he held sacred, no terror in earth or hell which ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... embalming given above, there may have been the motive arising from the respect for bodily organization, so deeply ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... asserted his rights, as he thought, gave way, but not without a sufficient motive, as may be gathered from ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... adversary's conduct, and was in a fury. For a whole month he had been insulting him with impunity, and had so far been unable to make him lose patience. What he wanted was a challenge on the part of Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, as he had not himself any direct pretext for challenging him. His secret motive for it, that is, his almost morbid hatred of Stavrogin for the insult to his family four years before, he was for some reason ashamed to confess. And indeed he regarded this himself as an impossible pretext for a challenge, especially in view of the humble apology offered by Nikolay Stavrogin ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in range, of a young man of high impulses but weak determination. In its over-emphasis upon errors of judgment, as well as upon real if exaggerated misdeeds, it has all the crudeness of youth. An almost fantastic self-consciousness is the central motive: it is a matter of question if this be absolutely vicarious. To me it seems that the author himself was at the time confused by the complicated flashing of the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... served to make it more certain that what ought to be will be. Time has done justice to the idiotic policy of fighting the rebellion with one hand and with the other upholding the institution that constituted at once its motive and its strength. Time has brought policy and justice to shake hands together at the right moment on the same road, and made that respectable and acceptable as a military necessity which was once repudiated as a fanaticism. Time has brought out the President's Emancipation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... people. Young men came to the cabin sometimes to see Cicely, but when they found her entirely absorbed in the stranger they ceased their visits. For a time Cicely kept him away, as much as possible, from others, because she did not wish them to see that there was anything wrong about him. This was her motive at first, but after a while she kept him to herself simply because she was happier so. He was hers—hers alone. She had found him, as Pharaoh's daughter had found Moses in the bulrushes; she had taught him to ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Vermandois, son of Louis XIV and Mademoiselle de la Valliere), who was visited by Ali-Momajou (the Duc d'Orleans, the regent) in the fortress of Ispahan (the Bastille), in which he had been imprisoned for several years. This visit had probably no other motive than to make sure that this prince was really alive, he having been reputed dead of the plague for over thirty years, and his obsequies having been celebrated in presence ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... less Motive than Idleness to this kind of Mercenary Pursuit. A Fop who admires his Person in a Glass, soon enters into a Resolution of making his Fortune by it, not questioning but every Woman that falls in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... hope amounting almost to confidence that he is alive. The thought that I might possibly meet with him made me less unwilling than I should otherwise have been to obey Mrs Podgers' commands to accompany her on the voyage she was about to make. Her sole motive, I suspect, in wishing me to go, was to save the expense of my continuing at school. Still I wonder sometimes how I could have ventured on board, suspecting, as I had already done, the hypocritical character of the woman who had ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... said that the genius of the Jew is entirely religious. I do not think that that is historically a demonstrable proposition. For the dominant motive even in Judaism is not a religious motive. It is an ethical motive. Judaism does not conceive its God as requiring man to be damned for his glory. It conceives its God as an instrument by the worship of whom "thy days may be lengthened in the land." Righteousness ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... The motive of the history is evidently the glorification of the author's old general, Tiberius, whose actual reign, however, he dismisses in eight chapters. Probably he felt the subject too risky, and devoted his strength to the earlier life of Tiberius, which occupies the greater part even of the chapters ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... 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 presence of Okoya ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... at present on the best terms with the Porte: the readiness with which such hopes arise in the minds of the people, is my motive for avoiding political conversations with Rayahs ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... most sophisticated sitter. To Paul it was uncanny. He had often seen his own reflection and was familiar with his own appearance, but this was the first time that he had looked at himself impersonally. The sketch was vivid, the likeness excellent; the motive, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Hitt. "We have many gods, chief of whom is matter. The world's acknowledged god is not spirit, despite the inescapable fact that the motive-power of the universe is spiritual, and the only action is the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was evidently in distress at going, but that it had any reference to Jack she totally disbelieved. A latent suspicion revived, and her face grew pained and hard. It was near dinner time, but, instead of going up to dress, she turned into a little smoking room to ponder it out. What motive could Bluebell have had to avow a perfectly fictitious love affair with Vavasour, unless it was to throw dust in Mrs. Rolleston's eyes and blind her to, perhaps, some underhand flirtation with Bertie? Cecil's affection for her ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Luis, "was to see to poor Malcolm, and our next object was to go in pursuit of the ruffians. On intimating as much to our new friends, to our surprise they declined to render us any assistance. Their curiosity, which it seems was the only motive that brought them towards us, had been satisfied, and I felt disgusted at the brutality of their conduct when they coolly turned their horses' heads round, and left us alone with our dying friend, not deigning further to notice our ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... purpose and motive to live aright can be gained now. This point won, you have started as you should. 326:18 You have begun at the numeration-table of Christian Science, and nothing but wrong intention can hinder your advancement. Working and praying ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... him to prevent his shouting, and ended his frantic struggles with one swift, ruthless blow. But why? What sort of soldiers could these be who wore the uniform of a brave, chivalrous country and yet did murder? What sort of mission were they bound upon that for no visible gain or motive they risked desperate ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... 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, the situation ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... manner towards her, a little less respect perhaps from men, and an avoidance by women. She had attributed this latter partly to jealousy of her, for no one is willing to acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive can be found for the estrangement of his acquaintances. But now, if society had turned on her, she would defy it. It was not in her nature to shrink. She knew she had been wronged, and she knew that she ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... indeed you have supped already?" I was obliged, somewhat awkwardly, to decline his invitation, conscious as I was that the means of payment were not in my power. He continued, however, to urge my compliance till at length it was, though reluctantly, yielded. My chief motive was the certainty of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... caused a coldness between the revengeful prima donna and her admirer, but a reconciliation had ultimately taken place between them and they were now man and wife. Prior to their marriage Mlle. d' Armilly had acknowledged herself to be Eugenie Danglars, and thus the motive of her bitter hostility to the Count of Monte-Cristo was revealed. She had retired from the operatic stage, and had received a large sum of money, stated to be a legacy from her father, but generally believed to be a gift from the Count, intended by ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... for Nervous Debility and all Nervous Complaints, after having tested its wonderful curative powers in thousands of cases, has felt it his duty to make it known to his suffering fellows. Actuated by this motive and a desire to relieve human suffering, I will send free of charge, to all who desire it, this recipe, in German, French, or English, with full directions for preparing and using. Sent by mail by addressing with stamp, naming this paper. W. A. NOYES, 149 Power's Block, Rochester, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... that be a root of barbarism, which the utmost degree of intelligence and cultivation has no power to do away, nor even to lessen, however it may afford motive to control? Men may often put a brave face upon it and shew none of their thoughts to the world; but I think no one capable of reflection has not at times felt the influence ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... stuff as old-fashioned as this?" And thus dishonesty begets dishonesty, till dishonesty seems to be beautiful. How nice to be good-natured! How glorious to assist struggling young authors, especially if the young author be also a pretty woman! How gracious to oblige a friend! Then the motive, though still pleasing, departs further from the border of what is good. In what way can the critic better repay the hospitality of his wealthy literary friend than by good-natured criticism,—or more certainly ensure for himself ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... he hastened to explain to Desiree, fearing that she might ascribe some other motive to his action. "Some day the patron may be in power again, and then he will remember a poor soldier. It is good ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... finally, in a voice that was deep and thrilling with feeling, "have I ever been other than a friend to you? Have I ever given you cause to suspect even one little motive of mine?" ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... deception for friendship, and moved by that extreme French politeness and warmth of feeling, which he thought doing the gentleman par excellence; while the latter, with a quicker perception of right and wrong, and understanding our language, saw the motive and disdained its nefarious object. For when Paul arrived at the jail he was minus a five-dollar gold-piece, which his very amiable official companion took particular care of, lest something should befall it. Poor John Paul! He was as harmless as South Carolina's secession and chivalry-two of ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Harrodsburg drew up a petition addressed to Virginia stating their doubts of the legality of Henderson's title and requesting Virginia to assert her authority according to the stipulations of her charter. That defense was the primary and essential motive of the Harrodsburg Remonstrance seems plain, for when George Rogers Clark set off on foot with one companion to lay the document before the Virginian authorities, he also went to plead for a load of powder. In his account of that hazardous journey, as a matter ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... Hippo did not lose his head among so many honours. He felt chiefly the perils of them, and he regarded them as a trial sent by God. "I have been forced into this," he said, "doubtless in punishment of my sins; for from what other motive can I think that the second place at the helm should be given to me—to me who do not even know how ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... doubt, the motive of his generosity," replied Lisbeth. "In Paris, most beneficence is a speculation, as most acts of ingratitude are revenge! To a poor relation you behave as you do to rats to whom you offer a bit of bacon. Now, I will accept the Baron's offer, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... thus to conform. Man would be then most truly man in resisting that which would merely overpower him, even if it were goodness. Of course, there can be no goodness which overpowers. There can be no goodness which is not willed. Nothing can be a motive except through awakening our desire. That which one desires is never wholly external ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... according as he was told that she willed it—that she required it. During the time he was in Mr. Escourt's service he might have been betrayed into more active steps, had he not detected, with a keen and instinctive jealousy, the motive which dictated his patron's sharp investigations, and the object he had in view; which, with a singular mixture of cunning and honesty, he ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... also a mystery which occasioned them considerable anxiety and doubt. That he should have abandoned them in the very moment of danger, was a circumstance quite out of their calculation. On the other hand, it was obvious that he had done so, and that from whatever motive his conduct proceeded, he distinctly separated himself from them, at the very crisis when his presence and assistance might ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... professors, physicians, clergymen, and enlightened merchants. His second rule was, to have a due balance of young men, frequently of very young men, selected from the students of the university, in order to impress a movement of gaiety and juvenile playfulness on the conversation; an additional motive for which, as I have reason to believe, was, that in this way he withdrew his mind from the sadness which sometimes overshadowed it, for the early deaths of some young friends whom ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and arm. Gobs of paint from the tubes melted into pearly-grays and purples in the middle of his palette to be quickly transposed and placed tone beside tone like a pale mosaic enriched and blended by the soft fingers of Time. His motive was simple—a rock, some trees, a stretch of sandy waste, backed by a rugged hill and a glimpse of sea, all bathed in mist; and his brush moved decisively, heavily at times, lightly, caressingly at others as the sketch grew to completion, while his dark eyes ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... be too contagious; even a great and inspiring motive may work for harm, and the university must not become a desert. In the twenty-four hours since that young man went to join the army last night, one hundred and eleven of our young men students have left our walls; eighty-four of them went off together at three ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... the application of steam as a motive power has united once widely separated regions. So swiftly have the changes come and so quickly have we adapted ourselves to them that it is difficult to realize the magnitude of the transformation that has been achieved. We ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... due to carelessness, the pen of such people has been used to write down such trivial and banal phrases that it goes on writing them out of force of habit. Sometimes the misquotation is due to impertinence on the part of some one who wants to improve upon my work; but a bad motive only too often prompts the misquotation—it is then horrid baseness and roguery, and, like a man who commits forgery, he loses the character for being an ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... who tried to get us into trouble. The little woman in black!" she exclaimed suddenly. "I knew she had a motive ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... Dick, who thought he was pondering something, resumed: "These half-breeds are a revengeful lot, but after all, Oliva wouldn't run a serious risk without a stronger motive than ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... the emperor's hand was losing its grip on the helm, there were many in Corsica keenly alive to the fact that any disturbance in France would probably lead to anarchy in the turbulent island. There were even some who saw a hidden motive in the appointment of Colonel Gilbert as engineer officer to a fortified place that had no ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Ideal. Idealism of motive determines the character of etheric vibrations, and idealism of magnetic activities determines the ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... then the will of Louis XIV was not respected; it is likely that mine would be? A dead man, let him be who he will, is nobody." In opposition to all urgency, he ordered the second question to be erased, and the first only to be submitted to the people. It is impossible to divine the motive which influenced Napoleon in the most unexpected decision. Some have supposed that even then he had in view the Empire and the hereditary monarchy, and that he wished to leave a chasm in the organization of the government, as a reason for future ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... been generally accepted and constantly repeated. He admits the German coloring given the translation by Bode through German allusions and German word-plays: he says that Bode allowed himself these liberties, feeling that he was no longer dealing with Sterne, astatement of motive on Bode's part which the latter never makes and never hints at. The only absolute additions which Bttiger mentions as made by Bode to the narrative of Eugenius are the episode, "Das Hndchen," and the digression, "Die Moral." The erroneous ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... acquainted with the great galleasse of Spain and Venice, a sort of compromise between the rowed galley and the sailing galleon; for it was too heavy to depend wholly on its oars (which by way of distinction were rowed under cover), and its great lateen sails were generally its motive power. The galleys themselves, moreover, had sails, though not square sails; and the seaman who can sail a ship on lateen sails soon learns the management of the square rig. The engravings on pp. 5, 11, 165, 197, and 227 sufficiently show the type of vessel that now again came into ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... great pains have been taken to secure the result. Because a poem is an "occasional" one, it does not follow that it has not taken as much time and skill as if it had been written without immediate, accidental, temporary motive. Pindar's great odes were occasional poems, just as much as our Commencement and Phi Beta Kappa poems are, and yet they have come down among the most precious bequests of antiquity ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... interference, which was friendly only, and avowed to be inofficial, has given occasion to your letter of yesterday, in a style which I did not expect, and to which I can have no motive for further exposing myself, I must take the liberty of desiring that the correspondence between us on this subject may cease. I presume that the certificate given you points out the person, here or elsewhere, to whom your applications are to be made, and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... was first apprized of the existence of the latter. He had received this important information at a moment when the authorities of Genoa were most active in pursuing those who had long and desperately trifled with the laws, and the avowed motive for the revelation was an appeal to his natural affection in behalf of a son, who was likely to become the victim of his practices. The recovery of a child under such circumstances was a blow severer than his ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... up the instruments, he answered, as politely as he could, the ranger's numberless questions. Behind every question he saw, or thought he could see, some ulterior motive. By every means he could, Lumley was trying to find out all that was possible about Charley and his relations with the forester. And Charley could see that Lumley was envious of his intimacy with Mr. ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... all around and took the edge off of the danger that had clouded the people's faces, which was the motive Jim had in view in making the joking remarks, for no one knew better than Jim did how necessary it is to keep a company in good spirits, and to keep them from dwelling on the danger that might ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... the quiet world wherein they lived. He did not give his own address, nor that of Mr. Prickett. He dated his letters from a small coffee-house near the bookseller's, to which he occasionally went for his simple meals. He had a motive in this. He did not desire to be found out. Mr. Dale replied for himself and for Mrs. Fairfield, to the epistles addressed to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her great features France is the same as ever. An oppressive air of solitude seems to hover over these rich and extended plains, while we are sensible that, whatever is the motive of the desolation, it cannot be sterility. The towns are small, and have a poor appearance, and more frequently exhibit signs of decayed splendour than of thriving and increasing prosperity. The chateau, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... not desire work, but they desired that which could be obtained only by work. These desires multiplied and the modern industrial world is the result. When material objects alone were desired, the motive of work was relatively simple; but as we pass from the desire for goods to the desire for wealth, and to the desire for wealth as a means of gaining power and prestige, the industrial movement becomes more complex. We go on and on, producing ever greater wealth and generating more and more ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... Arnold had in mind when he said that with all his genius Byron had the ideas of a country squire? The poet was a master of the technique of his art; he had rare gifts of passion and imagination; but he lacked breadth, variety, and depth of thought. There is a monotony of theme and of motive in his compositions. Tennyson, on the other hand, exalted his technical skill by the reality and richness of his culture. Nothing which contains and reveals the human spirit was alien to him. He did not ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... The motive that shears the trees also razes the copse, in order that the gardener or "improver" may show his art. Compare Figs. 14 and 15. Many persons seem to fear that they will never be known to the world unless they expend a great amount of muscle or do something emphatic or spectacular; and their fears ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... till reason is developed. We are born into the Eastern, Western or Anglican communion or some other denomination, but it was of his own free choice that the serious minded young Greek or Roman embraced the tenets of one of the great sects which divided the world of philosophy. The motive which led him to do so in the first instance may have been merely the influence of a friend or a discourse from some eloquent speaker, but the choice once made was his own choice, and he adhered to it as such. Conversions from one sect to another were of quite ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... dedicated in fraternal affection to the friend of my youth and maturer years—the REV. A. MOSS MERWIN, who, with every avenue of earthly ambition open to him at home, and with every motive urged upon him to remain at home, has been for years, and is now, a faithful missionary ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... be a glorious revenge," Stanwick had muttered to himself, "if I could win her from him." Then a sordid motive of revenge alone prompted him—now he was beginning to experience the sweet thrillings of awakened love himself. Yes, he had learned to love Daisy ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... by a wild confusion of screaming discords that yet gradually resolved into a wailing melody of passionate despair beneath which I seemed to hear the relentless tramp of countless marching feet with, ever and anon, a far, faint echo of that first grand and stately motive. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... unfortunately for me; because my adversity had not lasted long enough to form and season my character. I had been driven to exertion by a mixture of pride and generosity; my understanding being uncultivated, I had acted from the virtuous impulse of the moment, but never from rational motive, which alone can be permanent in its operation. When the spur of the occasion pressed upon me no longer, I relapsed into my former inactivity. When the great interests and strong passions, by which I had been impelled to exertion, subsided, all ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... said about Helen and me; but his extravagant way of saying them rubs me the wrong way. The simple facts would be so much more convincing! Why, for instance, does he take the trouble to ascribe motives to me that I never dreamed of? You know, and he knows, and I know, that my motive in coming here was not in any sense philanthropic. How ridiculous it is to say I had drunk so copiously of the noble spirit of Dr. Howe that I was fired with the desire to rescue from darkness and obscurity the little Alabamian! ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... 'He does not intend in them to reproduce the substance of words actually spoken, or even to imitate the tone of the time in which the speech is laid. He uses them as a vivid and dramatic method of portraying character and motive.' —Mackail. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... the trade of the west to different points on the Atlantic, he expressed unequivocally the opinion, that the rivers of Virginia afforded a more convenient, and a more direct course than could be found elsewhere, for that rich and increasing commerce. This was strongly urged as a motive for immediately commencing the work. But the rivers of the Atlantic constituted only a part of the great plan he contemplated. He suggested the appointment of commissioners of integrity and abilities, exempt from ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... speech he makes to his second parliament, referring to the very same period, narrating the very same events, can talk of this army as "a company of poor men," "your poor army," "those poor contemptible men." To attempt to detect any political motive for this absurd phraseology, would be a very idle speculation, mere waste of ingenuity: he was simply more in the puritanic vein in the one case than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Lithgow is now in possession of the telegram, which he probably, or rather certainly, sent himself. But how he came to know anything about the girl, or what possible motive he can have had—" muttered Maitland to himself. "She has never been in any place, Miss Marlett, since she came to you, where she could ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... 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
... his attentions to that pretty girl. Mademoiselle de Russaie, who loved him and whom he seemed to love, was a mystery which took complete possession of me, this time without any underlying professional motive. He was to give me the key before we reached Paris. At any rate I shall always believe that part of his conversation was in an indirect way a confidence. He was still unstrung by the unexpected incident which had caused both his hasty departure and the sudden metamorphosis in what he himself, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... statesman, he regarded these tributes not as meant for himself, but for the great body of childhood he innocently represents, and indeed from which his applauders are not so inextricably severed. With the placid and unconscious happiness of a puppy he careered and meandered, without motive or method. Perhaps his underlying thought of a university, if he has any, is that it is a place where no one says "Keep Off the Grass," and, intellectually speaking, that would not be such a bad motto for ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... Havre-de-grace to New York, with General the Marquis de Lafayette and suite as passengers. A noble, venerable looking veteran advanced from the poop towards us, and offered his greetings with the courtesy of the old French school. He was Lafayette. My explanation of who we were, and the motive of our visit, appeared to excite his surprise. That five officers of the land service, unaccompanied by a single sailor, should leave their vessel on the open ocean, and from mere curiosity, visit a strange sail at such a distance, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... had that effect had not a higher motive than mere worldly advancement actuated me in leaving my native country to come hither. Look you, it was thus: I had for many years been the pastor of a small village in the mining districts of Cumberland. I was dear to the hearts of my people, and they were my joy and crown in the Lord. ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... of the way up to the drawing-room was marked by a protest or an inquiry. Did I expect her to believe that I couldn't say which of us was the elder of the two? that I didn't really know what my father's motive was for this extraordinary mystification? that my sister and I had submitted to be robbed, as it were, of our own ages, and had not insisted on discovering which of us had come into the world first? that our friends had not put ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... was not a case for anything so ordinary as approval, or anything so personal as liking; it was a matter of observation, enjoyment, stimulus. He availed himself of these abstractions with a candor that was the more open for not being complicated with any less hardy motive. He had long ago decided that relations of sentiment with Elfrida would require a temperament quite different from that of any man he knew. It was entirely otherwise with Janet Cardiff, and Kendal smiled as he thought of ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... determined his method of work. In science, Huxley 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 ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... before he had asked for a change of post, or at least for a grant of land with permission to retire to private life, but this was under the inspiration of a motive of an entirely different nature. Now he had specifically asked for a command in the army, adding that his leg was quite healed and that he was fit physically for field duty. In entering this demand, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Their presence gave a distinction to Chad's entertainment, and the interest of calculating their effect on Sarah was actually so sharp as to be almost painful. Unmistakeably, in her single person, the motive of the composition and dressed in a splendour of crimson which affected Strether as the sound of a fall through a skylight, she would now be in the forefront of the listening circle and committed by it up to her eyes. Those eyes during ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... of the altar, placed one wreath on the head of the drunken sailor, who had fallen asleep by this time. He then drew near me, and I had little doubt that he meant to make me also wear a garland, like some woman of rank and fashion at a giddy secular entertainment. Whatever his motive might be I was determined to wear nothing of the kind. But here some attendants grappled and held me, my hat was lifted from my brows, and the circlet of blossoms was carefully entwined all round my hat. The head- covering was then ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... and Peggy—though she wondered at his tone—was too grateful for his presence even to question Alice's motive in permitting such remarks. ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... longer—an earnest, helpful talk that went far to inspire Frances's hazy ambition with a definite purpose. She understood that she must not write merely to win fame for herself or even for the higher motive of pure pleasure in her work. She must aim, however humbly, to help her readers to higher planes of thought and endeavour. Then and only then would it ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable motive, in his youth and at the threshold of his career he had chosen to disappear from the world—which is to say, the little Indian station where he lived. Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence at his club, among the billiard-tables. Upon ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... on the contrary he dislikes them so much that he would like to keep St. George's Channel between them and himself. But by his own speeches he has hypnotized himself into the belief that everything done by the British Government in Ireland must have a corrupt motive. His colleague from West Belfast is not much wiser, to judge by the tone of his speech to-night; and I think Mr. DUKE, who is doing his best to reconcile the irreconcilable, must have been tempted to adapt one of MR. DILLON'S phrases ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... he has probably good reason for doing so," answered Emily; "though, of course, you are welcome to ask him to come over here, if you like to do so. I greatly respect him, and I am sure whatever he does is from a right motive." ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the stars, are of pure Fire, have therefore an eternal and unchangeable being; they are on the extremest verge of the universe, and corresponding to them at the centre is another fiery sphere, which, itself unmoved, is the cause of all motion and generation in the mixed region between. The motive and procreative power, sometimes called Love, is at other times called by Parmenides Necessity, Bearer of ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... common with modern historians to detect a principal motive for the expulsion of the Jews, in the avarice of the government. It is only necessary, however, to transport ourselves back to those times, to find it in perfect accordance with their spirit, at least in Spain. It is indeed incredible, that persons possessing the political sagacity of Ferdinand ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... the coming to an understanding of his own want, and the forming of his ideal,—yes, even in the mere general pleasantness and gentle use of intercourse—before the individual woman reveals herself, slowly or suddenly, as the one only central need, and motive, and reward, and satisfying, that the world holds and has kept for him. For him to gain or to lose: either way, to have mightily to do with that soul-forging and shaping that the Lord, in his handling of every ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... He seemed to be struggling with self-interest; Chesnel thought that he had gained a hold on his enemy through the great motive of human action. At that supreme moment ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... dangerous for me, and it made me very thankful that as a boy I never experienced it. I felt very early the force of the words, "Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect," and as a teacher, or friend, or counsellor of youth, I would hold forth no other motive to exertion than this. There is, I think, none other held forth in the gospels. No permission is given to emulation there.... There must always be a danger of incurring the passion of vanity by emulation. If we try to outstrip a fellow-creature, and succeed, we may naturally enough be ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... seems to distend their forms to proportions almost superhuman, and to cast upon their faces a gravity that hardly belongs to this world; and it may, perhaps, help us to bring them and their work somewhat nearer to the plane of natural human life and motive, and into a light that is as the light of reality, if, turning to the daily memoranda made at the time by one of their number, we can see how merrily, after all, nay, with what flowing feasts, with what convivial communings, passed those days ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... demand for expansion towards the southwest was based upon the common desire, the common law of growth, and this growth was the only means of winning new votes in Congress and in the electoral college. It was the same motive which actuated the farmers of the Northwest and the commercial leaders of New England when they demanded of the Federal Government the seizure of Oregon or the protection of ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... engendered in him. Almost hate, instead of love, spoke in Slone's words. He hauled on the lasso, pulling the stallion's head down and down. The action was the lust of capture as well as the rider's instinctive motive to make the horse fear him. Life was unquenchably wild and strong in that stallion; it showed in the terror which made him hideous. And man and beast somehow resembled each other in that moment which was ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... not be a speck in our Country. Provision is already taken place in Connecticut for abolishing it. And the abolition has already taken place in Massachusetts. As to the danger of insurrection from foreign influence, that will become a motive to kind treatment of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... cunning wiles of Egerton Ryerson, is a solemn pledge of their love and veneration for the glorious institution of the Empire.... Thus ever thought we of British Wesleyans; and thus thinking was our impelling motive for persevering for the first three years of our editorial career, in one incessant battering of the pernicious, seditious principles of Egerton Ryerson; the very first number of whose paper betrayed him to us, flagrante ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... of their extinct civilization it is their knowledge of astronomy that chiefly causes astonishment (see also p. 85). As in the case of the Chaldeans and Babylonians, a motive for the study of the stars and planets was the priestly one of accurately fixing the religious festivals. The tropical year being thus ascertained, their tables showed the exact time of the equinox or sun's transit across the equatorial, and of the solstice. From a very early ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... not attempt to intrude upon the transports of this happy pair in again rejoining each other. At length Suliman learnt from the lips of his wife the motive and object of his inhuman and treacherous uncle, in causing him to be immured in that fatal cell, from which he had ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... concluded, a tribunician war at home alarmed the senate. The tribunes held that the detention of the army abroad was due to a fraudulent motive: that that deception was intended to prevent the passing of the law; that they, however, would none the less go through with the matter they had undertaken. Publius Lucretius, however, the prefect of the city, so far prevailed, that the proceedings of the tribunes were postponed till the arrival ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... reconsideration of many of the rules of international practice hitherto sought to be established may be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive for such changes is convincing and compelling. There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... midst of the confusion another cry of "Man overboard!" might have been heard in a distant part of the ship, had not the attention of the crowd been fastened on the Colonel. Such a cry was, however, uttered, offering a still more urgent motive for stopping; and the steamer being again made fast, Colonel Demarion ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Rosendo, his eyes suffused with tears of joy as he beheld his cherished ideals and his longing of years at last at the point of realization. What he, too, had instinctively seen in the child was now to be summoned forth; and the vague, half-understood motive which had impelled him to take the abandoned babe from Badillo into the shelter of his own great heart would at length be revealed. The man's joy was ecstatic. With a final clasp of the priest's hand, he rushed from the house to plunge into the work ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... said Mrs. Ellison; and Kitty, who had been blushing to the verge of tears, laughed instead, and then was consumed with vexation when Mr. Arbuton came up, feeling that he must suspect himself the motive of her ill-timed mirth. "The champagne ought to be cooled, I suppose," observed Mrs. Ellison, when the coffee had been finally stirred and set to ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... had Clara departed from the house of Mr. Charlston than Frederick, from some impulsive motive, glided out of the room; and having hastily disguised himself in his father's great coat, hat and muffler, hurried out, and followed in pursuit of Clara. In the vicinity of the house at which she had left her acquaintance, he observed a young man sauntering around. This person ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... seem to be vastly greater than those on the earth. Yet the intensity of the sun's heat on Jupiter is only a mere fraction—less, indeed, than the twenty-fifth part—of that received by the earth. It is incredible that the motive power of the appalling tempests on the great planet can be entirely, or even largely, due to the feeble influence of solar heat. We are, therefore, led to seek for some other source of such disturbances. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... profound astonishment on noticing any piece of furniture freshly upholstered in her well-appointed apartment. You must immediately make her explain to you the advantages of the change; and then you must ransack your mind to discover whether there be not some underhand motive in the transaction. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... all done with a good motive. You were not born to endure a life of privation, but to shine the ornament of an elegant and refined circle. I hope you will not love me the less when you learn that I am worth nearly half a million—that's the melancholy fact, and I ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... more or less briefly, several instances of the use of wheels "moving by themselves" or the use of a fluid for purposes other than as a motive power. Chronologically arranged, these are the Indian devices of ca. 1150 or a little earlier, as those of Ri[d.]w[a]n ca. 1200, that of the Alfonsine mercury clock, ca. 1272, and the French Bible illumination ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... mountebank, and Webb is one of the simplest of geniuses, I have always been in the centre of the stage, whilst Webb has been prompting me, invisible, from the side." It was this singular union more than anything else which gave direction and motive force to the propaganda carried on by the Fabian Society for a quarter of a century, whilst to Mr. Shaw personally it gave the consistency of thought and definiteness of aim which underlie all his later ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... this Serjeant Eitherside,—I have some reason to think that my lord is tied down by some means or other to bring the serjeant in, the very first vacancy, for one of these boroughs;—now that, I believe, is the sole motive why the serjeant is so strenuous that my lord should keep the boroughs in his own power;—fearing that you might reject him for some man of ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... this interruption to his drive; and the less did he like it, that the intruders were quaggas—ill-conditioned brutes that they were! Had they been game animals, he would have shot one; but the only motive that would have induced him to shoot one of the quaggas would have been a feeling of anger—for, at that moment, he was really ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... in this period of schism may be dispatched with a brevity out of all proportion to their importance, on account of the simplicity of motive and action ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... so critical a time the support of Rhodes and his party would have been invaluable. And Sir Alfred would have welcomed it. Cecil Rhodes, of course, had declared himself officially in accord with the High Commissioner, and even praised him to a degree of fulsomeness. But the ulterior motive was simply to excite the Dutch party against him. The reputation of Sir Alfred Milner as a statesman and as a politician was constantly challenged by the very people who ought to have defended it. Rhodes himself had been persuaded ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... scheme which had been under discussion for three weeks in the Commons, and had been sifted, explored, and denounced by Pitt, Jenkinson, the Lord Advocate, Mr. Grenville, and others. Nor is it to be believed that, with so strong a motive operating in the minds of His Majesty's personal friends as that which was furnished by the well-known desire of His Majesty to seize upon the first opportunity to make a breach with the Cabinet, Lord Temple and those who acted with him ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... ejaculated Stella. She said no more, for she no more thought of inquiring the motive of her father's actions than of opposing his wishes. Alick watched her countenance. It was graver and more sad than he had ever seen it. Her lip quivered, but with a strong effort she recovered herself, though she did ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... proving fatal to both. They so startled Leland that he could not prevent himself from betraying somewhat his emotion and excitement. This was observed by a savage near at hand, who approached to satisfy himself of the cause. Leland, suspecting his motive, repeated the action and accompanied it by a shudder, as though the scene which was being enacted had overcome him. This satisfied the wily Indian, who retreated and ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... with—beg your pardon, Miss Bell. Sir Miles was a very well known man in London, and a friend of the Prince of Wales, This gentleman is a man of the greatest talents, the very highest accomplishments,—sure to get on, if he had a motive to ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... understood Rapp's motive, closed the door. Then, returning hastily to Cadoudal's side, he said: "Ah! so it is you at last! One of your enemies, my aide-de-camp, Roland de Montrevel, has told me fine things ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... principle of endeavouring to thrive by imposing bad ware at high prices to their customers, whereby no shopkeeper can reasonably expect to thrive. For, besides the dread of God's anger, (which is a motive of small force among them,) they may be sure that no buyer of common sense will return to the same shop where he was once or twice defrauded. That gentlemen and ladies, when they found nothing but deceit in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... adding that he only wrote it because his feeble health made it hopeless to attempt anything more useful. We need not take this too seriously; he was often wrong about the reasons for his own actions. From whatever motive, write poetry he did. We will now consider some of the more voluminous, if ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... often happened, some famous figure was seen on the streets, people used to say first, "Here to see old Grid, I suppose," and then, "Funny how he sticks here. They say he was offered seven thousand at the University of California." In the absence of any known motive for this steadfastness, the village legend-making instinct had evolved a theory that he did not wish to move away from a State of which his father had been Governor, and where the name of Gridley was like ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... and besought him to continue it, we prepared to set out. The waves still ran high, though the wind had subsided, and we determined merely to go along the shore, as the roads still continued impassable from the rain, and the sand was easier to walk on than the wet grass; besides, our principal motive for the excursion was to search for any traces of a recent shipwreck. At first we could discover nothing, even with the telescope; but Fritz, mounting a high rock, fancied he discovered something floating towards the island. He besought me to allow him to take the canoe, which ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... decent motive in all this, Jenkins," he resumed in a few moments. "Don't forget that. This hold-up is going to result in a reformation that will be for the good of everybody, so don't have any scruples ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... her perversion of his account of Algarve, without detecting her motive, and Moodie thought her evident desire to visit this region proved her little less than mad, for only her version of select portions of L'Isle's remarks ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... "The motive power is supplied by a mechanism of my own devising! It has nothing to do with rockets! It's as superior to rocket power as the electric motor ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... be seen from my evidence that the oftener curers settle with their men the better for my trade; and therefore, wishing to guard against having my mind influenced by selfish motive, I stated honestly what objections to daily or weekly settlements occurred to ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... might come to be a right clever gentleman if you tried hard." A new idea lodged itself under Link's red thatch of hair and a new motive stirred in his shrewd little soul. Here was one visibly present whose good opinion he valued. At all costs that good opinion he ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... Malcolm had to explain that the motive lay in his anxiety lest his grandfather should over exert himself, seeing he was subject ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... way all the machinery of social evolution has been reduced by Marxian socialism to the law of the Struggle between Classes. This theory not only gives us the secret motive-power and the only scientific explanation of the history of mankind; it also furnishes the ideal and rigid standard of discipline for political socialism and thus enables it to avoid all the elastic, vaporous, inconclusive ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... said, "that he who sets a colony on foot designs a great work." "He designs all the good, and all the glory, of which, in the series of ages, it might be the means; and he shall be judged more by the lofty, ultimate aim and result, than by the actual instant motive. You may well admire, therefore, the solemn and adorned plausibilities of the colonizing of Rome from Troy, in the Eneid! Though the leader had been burned out of house and home, and could not choose but go. You may find in the flight of the female ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... neither ambition nor the desire for power, which, in the majority of rulers, is the motive of their crimes, was the cause of his evil deeds. Nor was it hate of his fellows, nor cruelty, nor yet a vicious pleasure in doing evil. It was, however, his sensuality and also his love for his children—one of the noblest of human sentiments. All psychological ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... Granice. He was about to explain, as he had explained to Ascham; but suddenly it occurred to him that if his motive had not seemed convincing to the lawyer it would carry much less weight with Denver. Both were successful men, and success does not understand the subtle agony of failure. Granice cast ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... idleness, ignorance. So is it with sacrifice too, which indeed is most often the withered arm resignation still shakes in the void. There is beauty in simple self-sacrifice when its hour has come unsought, when its motive is happiness of others; but it cannot be wise, or of use to mankind, to make sacrifice the aim of one's life, or to regard its achievement as the magnificent triumph of the spirit over the body. (And here let us add that ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... "I nearly did such a mad thing this morning. Quinones sent me to pour out his drops of arsenic that he has taken for some time. I took up the bottle quickly and, as if pushed by the elbow by an invisible hand, I poured half of the contents into the glass. Don't tremble, coward, for there was no motive in the matter. I never felt anything like it. I swear to you that my will was not party to it. I was controlled by a superior will which strove to overpower mine. I put the glass upon the table, looked at it for an instant, and held it up to the light. There was nothing, not the slightest ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... necessary to fatten and bring our Texas cattle to perfect maturity. Two winters in the North will insure a gain of from three to four hundred pounds' extra weight more per head than if allowed to reach maturity on their native heath. This gain fully doubles the value of every hoof, and is a further motive why we are your guests to-night; we are looking for a northern range on which to mature ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... farmer is particularly hard hit. His market, so affected by the world consumption, does not admit of the price adjustment to meet carrying charges. In the last half of the year now closing the railways, broken in carrying capacity because of motive power and rolling stock out of order, though insistently declaring to the contrary, embargoed his shipments or denied him cars when fortunate markets were calling. Too frequently transportation failed while perishable ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... a reading-room to the parlor of a public house; should understand what they are about, instead of being merely able to go through their allotted task as so many beasts of burden; and that they should have the strong motive of making their homes decent and respectable, and of bettering their condition. All these motives are now working—strongly, too—in the public mind, and have begun ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Simplicio was intended as a portraiture of himself; and this opinion received some probability from the fact, that the peripatetic disputant had employed many of the arguments which Urban had himself used in his discussions with Galileo. The latest biographer of Galileo[33] regards this motive as necessary to account for "the otherwise inexplicable change which took place in the conduct of Urban to his old friend;"—but we cannot admit the truth of this supposition. The church had been ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... bird, then remembered that a shot might be heard and those from the camp come to inquire why it had been fired. Save themselves there were supposed to be no other sportsmen for miles around, and they would surely come, if from no other motive ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... foreseen that Shears would accept the battle! Nay, more, the letter written by Lupin proved that he himself wished for the battle and that it formed part of his intentions to measure swords once more with his rival. Why? What possible motive could urge him to re-commence ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... bourgeoisie were thoroughly devoted to the settlement of 1791. Most of them doubtless were. But a thoughtful and conspicuous minority allied themselves with the proletariat. Probably in many instances it was for the selfish motive of personal ambition that this or that middle-class individual prated much about his love for "the people" and shed tears over their wretchedness and made all manner of election promises to them. But, on the other hand, there ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... infinitely relieved by this new move, and infinitely amused as she guessed the motive that prompted it but the more contented she seemed, the more violently Mr. Joe flirted with her rival, till at last weak-minded Miss Clara began to think her absent George the most undesirable of lovers, and to mourn that she ever said ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... in spite of himself,' said Diaz, when he had finished. 'He assigned definite and precise ideas to all those melodies. Nothing could be more futile. I shall not label them for you. But perhaps you can guess the love-motive for yourself.' ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett |
