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More "Motive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... divorce sooner or later, as the liberality of the world in such matters made it natural that she should do. He also knew that it was the larger command of the income which he had allowed her for his child's sake, combined with the lack of strong personal motive, which had prevented her from getting a divorce before. Her letter irritated him, not because she desired to break the shadowy bonds which still held her, but because he had behaved well to her, and she had taken it as her right ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... thought. Nor is the encouragement of a belief, by means of the spread of a doctrine, necessarily inspired by good motives. The preaching of doctrine known to be false is frequently encountered in many human activities. The deliberate spread of false propaganda is an example. But, whatever the motive and whether the doctrine be sound or false, the act of indoctrination is intended to shape ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... saved, it is because he chooses 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 ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... outgrown. It was outgrown both intellectually and morally. People were ceasing to believe in its doctrines, and were ceasing to respect its precepts. The learned were taking refuge in philosophy, the ignorant in mystical superstitions imported from Asia. The commanding ethical motive of ancient republican times had been patriotism,—devotion to the interests of the community. But Roman dominion had destroyed patriotism as a guiding principle of life, and thus in every way the minds of men were left in a sceptical, unsatisfied state,—craving ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... case, if you will allow me to say what I think.... Your picture is so fine that my observation cannot detract from it, and, besides, it is only my personal opinion. With you it is different. Your very motive is different. But let us take Ivanov. I imagine that if Christ is brought down to the level of an historical character, it would have been better for Ivanov to select some other historical ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... feels sure that some additional territory is needed as slave territory. Then it is as easy to show the necessity of additional slave-territory as it is to assert anything that is incapable of absolute demonstration. Whatever motive a man or a set of men may have for making annexation of property or territory, it is very easy to assert, but much less easy to disprove, that it is necessary for ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... purposely to conceal their hatred, it being a hideous and degrading vice, of which all men are more or less either ashamed or afraid. To preserve these appearances, or perhaps from the impulse of vanity, the rector admitted of my excursions to Mowbray Hall. For my own part, I found a motive more alluring than the society of Hector, that frequently occasioned me to repeat these visits. His sister, Olivia, two years younger than myself, was usually one of our parlour playmates. Born of the same mother, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... harm in that," Cayley said. "We are given forty-eight hours. I should like to do the scoundrels, but I cannot forget that revenge may be as much a motive as money." ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... intestine revolt, the Republic established an iron discipline in its army, and enforced obedience by the summary process of military execution. The liberty and the enthusiasm developed by the outburst of the long pent-up revolutionary forces supplied the motive power, but it was the discipline of the revolutionary armies, the stern, unbending obedience which was enforced in all ranks from the highest to the lowest, which created for Napoleon the admirable military instrument by which ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... been some reason for her silence towards me, Sarah. She could not have acted so cruelly without some powerful motive. Heaven only knows what it may have been. The business of my life will be to find her—to see her face to face once more, and hear the explanation of her conduct from ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... no reason why he should not seize it, except the profound one that he had lost the habit of travel. May had disliked to move except for valid reasons, such as taking the children to the sea or in the mountains: she could imagine no other motive for leaving the house in Thirty-ninth Street or their comfortable quarters at the Wellands' in Newport. After Dallas had taken his degree she had thought it her duty to travel for six months; and the whole family had made the old-fashioned tour through England, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... he had left his watch in pledge with the game-owner for twenty dollars' worth of chips besides. As the reporter and his guide reached the sidewalk, one of the young men who had been in the place was asked what he thought of the place. Not suspecting the reporter's motive, the player answered glibly: 'Oh, that racket in French flats is getting to be all the go now, and I tell you it's immense. The police can't get on to it, and now as all the faro games are closed or not making ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... His subjects hurl infernal machines at the tyrant because he represents the system which oppresses them. But the evil is far deeper than the throne, and cannot be remedied by striking the occupant of it-the throne itself must be rooted out and demolished. So the Irish question has a more powerful motive to foment agitation and murder than the landlord and landlordism. The landlord simply stands out as the representative of the real grievance. To remove him would not remove the evil; agitation would not cease; murder would still stalk abroad at noonday. The ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... most cunningly devised of all mechanisms, the heart and brain, must sooner or later tire and cease from their labors. The motive energy becomes exhausted, and the mechanism must cease its work. So it was with John Ericsson. In the first hour of the morning of March 8, 1889, Ericsson died. This was within one day of the twenty-seventh anniversary of the battle ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... active, more contemplative, and sin and money-making are almost absent. The wicked of all sorts have one fate; they are fired off the planet. We can overcome the attraction of gravitation by our Toto powder. These executions are strange to earth eyes. You will see them. The Toto powder is also a motive power. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Your motive for desiring a change of fortune has been greatly enforced since we have become known to each other. Thou hast honoured me with thy affection; but that union, on which we rely for happiness, could not take place while both of us were poor. My ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... steering-wheel turned useless, and Gadabout headed for the marsh woods. She minded none of our makeshift devices to shape her course; and we were forced to stop the engine and resort to a more primitive motive power. ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... must be closely watched, their various actions carefully noted, their behaviour under different circumstances, and especially those movements which seem to us mere vagaries, undirected by any suggestible motive or cause, well examined. A rich fruit of result, often new and curious and unexpected, will, I am sure, reward anyone who studies living animals in this way. The most interesting parts, by far, of published Natural History are ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... of them," he repeated, "or, at least, they weighed with me as nothing compared with another motive. As for the thing itself, by the time yesterday arrived I had given up my judgment to yours—I had simply come to think that what you wished was good. A force I no longer questioned drove me on to help you to your end. That was the whole secret of last night. The rest was only ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... soon as we enter the regions of Tragedy, we find a great change. There is no lack of fine sentiment there. Metastasio is surpassed in his own department. Scuderi is out-scuderied. We are introduced to people whose proceedings we can trace to no motive,—of whose feelings we can form no more idea than of a sixth sense. We have left a race of creatures, whose love is as delicate and affectionate as the passion which an alderman feels for a turtle. We find ourselves ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... One motive for anxiety—on my part—was set at rest in the first lines. After an official inquiry into the circumstances, the French authorities had decided that it was not expedient to put the survivor of the duelists on his trial before a court of law. No jury, hearing ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... the first volume of "The Tatler" to Arthur Maynwaring Richard Steele, its projector and editor, gives characteristic expression to the motive which prompted him in its establishment. "The state of conversation and business in this town," says Steele, "having been long perplexed with pretenders in both kinds, in order to open men's eyes against such abuses, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... gave over his search for hostile motive in our visit, and we discussed the programme for the morrow. I found that there was a healthy fear of the Prince of Montenegro, for, when I told him that the Prince's little steamer would be waiting for me at Plamnitza the next day at noon, the whole circle broke ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... man, Clayton Spencer had a flash of revelation. There was love and love. The love of a man for a woman, and of a woman for a man, of a mother for the child at her knee, of that child for its mother. But that the great actuating motive of a man's maturity, of the middle span, was vested along with his dreams, his pride and his love, in his ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... While in the latter the personality of the author is always apparent, and properly so, in the epic the intrusion of the poet's self is usually a defect. The lyric is subjective, the epic objective. To tell a story effectively and well is the prime motive, to tell it beautifully and in a way to excite the imagination and move the feelings of the reader is the contributory poetic impulse. Of the lesser epics groups might be set apart. The ballad is the oldest form. It was originally the production of wandering ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... competently the financial demands which spring out of it. It is only in their logical connection with the entire development, political and moral, of the State that the military requirements find their motive ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... alone, ought to convince us, that the prediction is of no small importance to mankind, since the author of it appears not to have been influenced by any other motive, than that noble and exalted philanthropy, which is above the narrow views of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... straight track, between A and B. On the track a long platform car, reaching from A to within a quarter of a mile of B. We will now discard ordinary locomotives and adopt as our motive power a series of compact magnetic engines, distributed underneath the platform car, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... spiritual powers, he can go forward and the Power will go with him and will help him. When once the Power has been aroused, man must cease all purely selfish striving, although, of course, there will still be much selfishness in his motive. He must seek his success through service and through following noble aims: through merit and a fair exchange, instead of trying to wring success from life, no matter who may ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... than they imagined; but on paper, at least, it looked as if the enemy could be crushed without difficulty. So the public thought, and yet they consented to the upraised sword being stayed. With them, as apart from the politicians, the motive was undoubtedly a moral and Christian one. They considered that the annexation of the Transvaal had evidently been an injustice, that the farmers had a right to the freedom for which they fought, and that ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from a desire to deceive or mislead the person, that we withhold the truth. We feel sure that the sick person, when he recovers; the insane person when he is restored to reason; the criminal, if he is ever converted to uprightness, will appreciate the kindness of our motive, and thank us for our deed. To the person of sound body, sound mind, and sound moral intent, no conceivable combination of circumstances can ever excuse us from the strict requirement of absolute veracity, or make a lie anything but base, ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... field-glass he had been yearning for ever since they found themselves within touch of the field of battle. He even tried to assist the wearied army surgeon as best he might, for Josh had an abundance of nerve, and could accustom himself to almost any sight if he had a motive ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... inadequate for the development of the resources of the interior of the country. The products of a forest or a mine could not be transported upon them to any great extent. The crossing of a single water-shed, owing to the necessity for largely increased motive power, would often materially decrease the value of the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... a laugh 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 ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... a history of a literature and to ascertain the psychology of a people; in selecting this one, it is not without a motive. A people had to be taken possessing a vast and complete literature, which is rarely found. There are few nations which, throughout their existence, have thought and written well in the full sense ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Sibyl's name to enter into this matter," he said. "You did what you did, God knows with what motive. I don't care, and I do not mean to inquire. The question I have now to ask is, what is the meaning of this?" As he spoke he waved his hand round the room, and then ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... so," the boy said. "You shall not complain of me, again. Hitherto I have played for amusement, and because I liked to exercise my limbs, and to show the others that I could run faster and was stronger than they were; but in future I shall have a motive in doing so, and will strive to ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... be it said, en passant, is sheer obstinacy. The marchesa is obstinate to folly, and full of contradictions. Besides, there is another powerful motive that influences her—she hates Count Nobili. Not that he has ever done any thing personally to offend her; of this he is incapable—indeed, he has his own reasons for desiring passionately to be ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... the doctor while the bells were still ringing for morning service. Mr. Sheldon received him at the gate; and explained the motive of his summons. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the plates of gold were made. It was evident to him, that Buckar Sano had either practised an imposition upon him, or that he had grossly exaggerated the treasures of the wonderful city; but in regard to the former, he could not divine any motive by which Buckar Sano could be actuated in imposing upon him; and in regard to the latter, making every allowance for exaggeration, it might eventually transpire, that the country abounded with the precious metal, although perhaps not exactly in ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... discussions and disputes as to speed, and John's wagon, a long, well-oiled affair with a coat of red, discarded house paint on its framework, had come to grief in a collision with Brown's, one sunny afternoon. Even Silvey, the optimist, who had furnished the motive power, had looked at the wreckage in ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... descended from an anterior life on high may be exhibited in three forms, each animated by a different motive. The first is the view of some of the Manichean teachers, that spirits were embodied by a hostile violence and cunning, the force and fraud of the apostatized Devil. Adam and Eve were angels sent to observe the doings of Lucifer, the rebel king of matter. He seized these heavenly spies and encased ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... might in any way wound the sensibilities of the excessively sensitive South. Certainly, nothing can be more sincerely desired than the utter eradication of the passions and animosities that were evoked by armed conflict. But to ignore the fundamental cause and motive which led the South to precipitate the war, with a view to seeming not to be influenced by sectional prejudices is pushing magnanimity to the verge of vapid sentimentality—a folly in which the South, in ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... with the spirit, movement, and motive of African legends will accept Mr. Derby's statement as conclusive. It has been suspected even by Professor J. W. Powell, of the Smithsonian Institution, that the Southern negroes obtained their myths and legends from the Indians; but it is impossible to ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... make their way to small, isolated places, change their appearance as much as possible, and each shift for himself. To remain together increases the risk of capture for each and all. There must be some powerful motive to make them take such risks. Such men risk nothing except for money. But there are no banks here to be looted, no strangers to be waylaid in dark alleys, not even a blind ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... wider experience are prepared to forgive the Doctor that he did not recognize the spiritual as the more important interests which might lead a young man to a church social. While Hubert debated a reply which should illuminate Doctor Schoolman as to his real motive, others were pressing up to take the hand of the minister, and he passed on with his mother and Winifred. They drifted not far away, and Hubert glanced frequently at Doctor Schoolman, watching his suave smile, almost ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... Lady Macbeth show in Act I, scene 5? Why does she not discuss with herself the pros and cons of the act to be committed? What fundamental difference does this illustrate between herself and her husband? Do you think Lady Macbeth's motive for the murder of Duncan was selfish or unselfish? Give reasons. What sort of woman do you suppose she was before the play opens? Why? What light does Act III, scene 2, throw on her character? Does her calmness and tenderness ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... extraordinary faithfulness. Instead of ascending he was descending the gallery. An evil design would have taken him up not down. This reflection restored me to calmness, and I turned to other thoughts. None but some weighty motive could have induced so quiet a man to forfeit his sleep. Was he on a journey of discovery? Had he during the silence of the night caught a sound, a murmuring of something in the distance, which had failed ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... tenanted by the French servants of M. de Fontelles. Although peace had been made between them and the host, they sat in deep dejection; the reason was plain to see in two empty glasses and an empty bottle that stood on a table between them. Kindliness, aided, it may be, by another motive, made me resolve to cure ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... the window. But investigation showed that the axe and rope were no different from scores of other axes and ropes in Prouty, and it was soon recognized that the solution of the case hinged upon the ownership of the gun and the finding of a motive for this peculiarly ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... figure its power for good as almost illimitable. What is to prevent it from achieving a very rapid elimination of the ape and the tiger, the Junker and the Tory, and substituting social enthusiasms for individual passions as the motive-power of human conduct? We may admit that the brain of man must first be developed up to a certain point before divine suggestion could effectively work upon it. But we know that men and races of magnificent brainpower must ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... moment of intense military anxiety, Davis again visited the front; and of a third journey which he undertook in 1864, we shall hear in time. It is to be noted that each of these journeys was prompted by a military motive; and here, possibly, we get an explanation of his inadequacy as a statesman. He could not lay aside his interest in military affairs for the supremely important concerns of civil office; and he failed to understand ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... repeated to his master the whole history of the squabble which had brought Roland Graeme into disgrace with his mistress, but in a manner so favourable for the page, that Sir Halbert could not but suspect his generous motive. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... and, breathing asthmatically, had the additional motive for making her remarks unexceptionable and giving them a general bearing, that even her whispers were loud and liable to sudden bursts like ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... and had already some suspicion of his guest's want of wits, was quite convinced of it on hearing talk of this kind from him, and to make sport for the night he determined to fall in with his humour. So he told him he was quite right in pursuing the object he had in view, and that such a motive was natural and becoming in cavaliers as distinguished as he seemed and his gallant bearing showed him to be; and that he himself in his younger days had followed the same honourable calling, roaming in quest of adventures in various parts of the world, among others the Curing-grounds ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... years I have deceived myself as to the motive that was spurring me. He spoke of me last night as the evil genius of his life, and himself he recognized the justice of this. It may be that he was right, and because of that it is probable that even ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... disciples and defenders, who prove themselves no contemptible adversaries of the orthodox school of religion. Very few of us probably sympathize with these modern iconoclasts who would destroy all motive for right doing in this world, by breaking down human faith in the existence of one Supreme Being; but, at the same time, no one can deny the earnestness and ability these writers bring to their work. It is quite obvious that ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... pump worked by the machine itself. The reservoir need not be large as the expenditure of water is very minute in volume. To the objection which may naturally be made, that the working of the pump must be a tax on the motive power without return, a reply at once simple and satisfactory is found in the experience of Mr. Girard, that the working of the pump does not consume so much as half, and sometimes not more than one one quarter, of the power which is lost in friction when ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Manilov and Sobakevitch, seeing that he had promised on his honour to do so. Yet what really incited him to this may have been a more essential cause, a matter of greater gravity, a purpose which stood nearer to his heart, than the motive which I have just given; and of that purpose the reader will learn if only he will have the patience to read this prefatory narrative (which, lengthy though it be, may yet develop and expand in proportion as we approach ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... any resemblance to fore and main and mizzen in the three spires of Litchfield. But the Doctor, not being a scamp, was not compelled to choose. Many another is not so well off. Like little boys who are sent to school, they learn what they learn from pretty much the same motive. Sometimes they turn out good and gallant men; but not often does it reform a man who is unfit for the shore to dispatch him to sea. If there are any vices he does not carry with him, they are commonly to be had dog- and dirt-cheap at the first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... by those aromatic stanzas, suddenly brought to his point of departure, to the motive of his meditation, by the return of the initial theme, reappearing, at stated intervals, in the fragrant orchestration of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... others, such advice cannot even seem to have an improper motive." Here she paused, feeling the difficulty of her task— aware that she could not conclude it without an admission which no woman willingly makes. But she shook away the impediment, bracing herself to the work, and ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... to go, but Mr. Brown stopped him by a gesture. "A cousin!" he exclaimed. "Do not excite yourself; be calm. On the face of it, that would seem conclusive; but appearances are notoriously deceitful. Will you assure me on your honor that there is no motive, no family feud, at the bottom of this? Cousins do not go about the world denouncing each other—as a rule. Family pride, affection, a thousand things, prevent them from making such things public; but still it is not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... passions of men? Who would throw the human intellect back into a state of uncertainty respecting a future existence and the manner of securing its blessedness? Who would dry up the living fountains of joy which have been opened to us in the gospel? Who would destroy the motive power of our religion and wither its fruits of righteousness? Who would rob the bereaved heart of its consolations and provoke anew the tears of the mourner which have been wiped away? Who would go to the widow and say: Go and visit ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... quiet tap at the door. Mister Goggins himself answered to the knock, and began a loud and florid welcome to Edward, who stopped his career of eloquence by laying a finger on his lip in token of silence. A few words sufficed to explain the motive of his visit. He wished to ascertain the sum for which the gentleman up-stairs was detained. The bailiff informed him; and the money necessary to procure the captive's liberty ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... of any fault of selfishness now, and justified in taking any steps necessary to the punishment of Gilfoyle. Religion is a large, loose word, and it can be made to fit any motive; but once assumed it seems to strengthen every resolution, to chloroform mercy and hallow any means to the self-sanctified end. What people would shrink from as inhuman ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... I'm out of gasoline again. Well, here goes!" And he proceeded to carefully spiral down as gently as he could, no easy job when all motive power is ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... child, and winking all the while at other children who are mightily pleased at being let into the secret; but a consummate villain entrapping a noble nature into toils, against which no discernment was available, where the manner was as fathomless as the purpose seemed dark, and without motive. The part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night, was performed by Bensley, with a richness and a dignity, of which (to judge from some recent castings of that character) the very tradition must be worn out from the stage. No manager in those days would have dreamed of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... contending for errors of translation, mistakes and misapprehensions in the ancient texts. Nevertheless, we are inclined to think that nine-tenths of those who refuse the old and accept the new opinion, do so for a motive no better than a disinclination to believe that which they cannot comprehend. This pride of reason is one of the most insinuating of our foibles, and is to be watched ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... in an enlightened tone. "She's in our first class, and if she studied she would learn something. She's bright, but she hasn't motive enough." ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... as play: I mean when he either was provoked to it by his equals, or tempted to it by the hopes of defrauding of their little property those who he knew had neither strength enough nor courage to resist him. But whatever was his motive either for beginning or suffering himself to be drawn into an engagement, he was very far from confining himself to any rules of honour, or to the established laws of war; for instead of boxing fairly, he would kick, pull hair, bite, and ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... this field can know. Yet the inner work is by far the greater. The thought, the cares, the fears, the prayers, the tears, the anguish, the heart-breaking disappointments, and the fiery ordeals of spirit by which alone the motive is kept pure and the flame of a true zeal is fed,—in short, all the lavish expenditure of soul that cannot be spoken, or written, or known, until the Omniscient Recorder, who forgets nothing and repays even the good purpose of the heart, will reveal it at the final award, ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... She was ashamed to speak of her girlish aspirations, such as they had been; and she could not tell the other motive—the secret about Mr. Gwynne. Besides, Vanbrugh would have scorned the bare idea of her entering on the great career of Art for money! ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... followed the black line of the herd until it disappeared under the northern rim of darkness. He was wondering why the buffaloes were traveling so steadily after daylight and he came to the conclusion that the impelling motive was not a search for new pastures. He listened a long time until the last rumble of the hundred thousand died away in a faint echo, and then he awakened ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Coligny; and latterly the Germans occupied it, were driven out, and again reoccupied it as a base in 1870-71. Such, in brief, is a partial record of its troubles and trials, with scarce a reference to a Christian or religious motive, if we except Attila's unsuccessful attack and Coligny's ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... anything I have said should give the idea that their behavior was either fantastic or arrogant through their religion. It was simply a pervading influence; and I am sure that in the father and mother it dignified life, and freighted motive and action here with the significance of eternal fate. When the children were taught that in every thought and in every deed they were choosing their portion with the devils or the angels, and that God himself could not save them against themselves, ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... of her mother. She was perplexed and disappointed. Then she reflected that when she had asked the question she had been very ill and Aunt Miriam was trying to answer in a way that pleased her. She generously forgave the deceit for the sake of the kindly motive behind it. ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... Bonne-Biche had done for her, Blondine, alas! believed blindly in the Parrot, the unknown bird of whose character and veracity she had no proof. She did not remember that the Parrot could have no possible motive for risking its life to render her a service. Blondine believed it though, implicitly, because of the flattery which the Parrot had lavished upon her. She did not even recall with gratitude the sweet and happy existence which Bonne-Biche and Beau-Minon had secured ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... so strikingly true of medical science as to make contrary declarations in the matter utterly ridiculous, and to suggest at once that there must be some motive for seeing things so different to the reality, the same story can be told of graduate science in other departments. It was to Italy that men came for special higher studies in mathematics and astronomy, in botany, in mineralogy, and in applied chemistry, so far as it related to the arts of painting, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... in the Christian's conduct respecting those things which he uses in common with the world. Under this head falls that large class of actions, which, in themselves considered, have no moral value, but acquire one from the end they are made to serve, the manner in which they are pursued, or the motive in which they originate. On these arise the most perplexing of all moral questions, the most subtle cases of conscience, and too often, I grieve to say, the most acrimonious discussions. Under this head are included most of those vexed questions as to amusements, dress, meat and drink, ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... followed him, but he turned out to be a rich proprietor of land, showed us part of his domains, and seemed a well-informed man, talking familiarly of England and its comte de Chester, asking us our motive for visiting this part of France, which he concluded to be economy, and entertaining us greatly by his remarks. Our walk, or rather scramble, to the cascade was very agreeable, but exceedingly rugged, mounting the whole way between the hills till we reached the spot where the Gave comes foaming over ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... also from Mohill—characters with whom Denis was not apt to consort himself, and whom he looked on as paupers and rapparees. He had also made out, it is presumed with the aid of his affianced, that some other motive was probably ensuring their attendance than merely that of doing honour to his, Denis's, nuptials. Pat Brady was not likely to have made a confidant of his sister or of Denis on the occasion; but ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... make a thorough investigation of the subject. Its members have shown their public spirit by accepting their trust without pledge of compensation, but I trust that Congress will see in the national and international bearings of the matter a sufficient motive for providing at least for reimbursement of such expenses ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... right to laugh, for when one does try to do us good, even if what he does causes us discomfort, we should always remember rather the motive than the deed. And besides, the simpleton's dancing saved the woman's life, for she gave up her knife. In this, too, she did well, for it is always better to live for the living than ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... enhanced by a careful adherence to the probable, and a strict avoidance of physical impossibilities; and, in accordance with this belief, I have been scrupulous in confining myself to authentic facts and practicable methods. The stories have, for the most part, a medico-legal motive, and the methods of solution described in them are similar to those employed in actual practice by medical jurists. The stories illustrate, in fact, the application to the detection of crime of the ordinary methods of scientific research. I may add that the experiments ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... orthodox school, I have been harassed by distressing doubts whether, after all, this enormous labour is not in vain; and, wearied by the effort, overloaded by the detail, bewildered by the argument, and sickened by the pitiless dissection of character and motive, have been tempted to cry aloud, quoting—or rather, in the agony ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... into my blood and I was falling forty fathoms deep in love. Despite myself she was for making a hero of me, and my leal-hearted friend, Macdonald, was not a whit behind, though the droll look in his eyes suggested sometimes an ulterior motive. We talked of many things, but in the end we always got back to the one subject that burned like a flame in their hearts—the rising of the clans that was to bring back the Stuarts to their own. Their pure zeal shamed ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Christlike love for the ignorant and stolid Mongols, so also did the delicately nurtured and refined lady who, in order to do her part in winning them to the Saviour, endured privations, faced perils, and bore a daily and hourly series of trials so irksome and so repugnant that no motive short of all-absorbing love to Jesus Christ is strong enough to ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... whom the age suits fairly well don't bother—I don't bother; the others do. It is these confounded glaring and unshorn anachronisms that upset everything. They go about flapping their ideals at you, and writing novels with a motive, and starting movements and societies, and generally poking one's epoch to rags, until at last it is worn out and you have to start a new one. My conception of the progress of humanity is something after the Wandering Jew pattern. Your average humanity I figure as a comfortable ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... there, or the head the stone; this at least is their view of the common accidents of life. Moreover, they hold their deities to be quite regardless of motives. With them it is the thing done which is everything, and the motive goes for nothing. ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... was driving at till I remembered that procuring a berth for a sailor is a penal offence under the Act. That clause was directed of course against the swindling practices of the boarding-house crimps. It had never struck me it would apply to everybody alike no matter what the motive, because I believed then that people on shore did their work with ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... "Motive?" repeated Bixiou; "why, this. General Rule: A girl that has once given away her slipper, even if she refused it for ten years, is never married by ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... king, "that is so well known that you might have spared yourself this trouble. You must have had some other motive." ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... was wont to take the air under the escort of Major Bagstock. It is meant for the relief of those who wish to see everything in the Main Building without trudging eleven miles. Given an effective and economical motive-power, the roll-chair system would seem to meet this want. The reader of Dombey and Son will recollect the pictorial effect, in print and etching, of the popping up of the head of the propellent force when Mrs. S. called a halt, and its sudden ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... states. Yet not only was there a greater strength of sentiment against it, but, in England at least, a less amount either of feeling or of interest in favour of it, than of any other of the customary abuses of force: for its motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised; and those who profited by it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigated ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... distinct, shining on the glittering snow-flakes that fell relentlessly: my anxiety was great, and I could not help censuring myself severely for exposing a party to so great danger at such a season. I found comfort in the belief that no idle curiosity had prompted me, and that with a good motive and a strong prestige of success, one can surmount a host of difficulties. Still the snow fell; and my heart sank, as my fire declined, and the flakes sputtered on the blackening embers; my little puppy, who had gambolled all day amongst the drifting white pellets, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... at all resembles your manner of regarding history," said Lucien, "I should dearly like to know the motive of your present act of charity, for such it seems ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... of one so truly noble, is one of the best and most saving of secondary motives. I shall honour you, Gilbert, if you do so use it as to raise and support you, though of course I cannot promise that she can be earned by it, and even that motive will not do alone, however powerful you ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were added the Hamilton and Townley antiquities by purchase, and in 1816 the Elgin Marbles were taken in temporarily. On the death of George III., George IV. presented his splendid library, known as the King's Library, to the Museum, not from any motive of generosity, but because he did not in the least appreciate it. Greville, in his Journal (1823), says: "The King had even a design of selling the library collected by the late King, but this he was ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... steal away your treasure of Time," replied Mr. Learning with a smile. "Think of the pleasure which it will give your mother if she find each of you, on her return six months hence, comfortably settled in a well-furnished house of your own! If any additional motive for exertion be needed, know that when your mother comes back, I will present a beautiful silver crown of Success to whichever of you four shall have best employed your money in furnishing your garden ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... arrival in St. Petersburg, we were not even asked for our passports. Curiosity became restless within us. Was there some sinister motive in this neglect, after the harrowing tales we had heard from a woman lecturer, and read in books which had actually got themselves printed, about gendarmes forcing themselves into people's rooms while they were dressing, demanding their passports, and setting a guard ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... moment. They would rather have gone on, but they waited to see if anything would happen to release them from the spell that they seemed to have laid upon themselves. They were conditional New-Yorkers of long sojourn, and it was from no apparent motive that the son wore evening dress, which his unbuttoned overcoat discovered, and an opera-hat. He would not have dressed so for that problematical French table d'hote; probably he was going on later to some society affair. He now put ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... enough to understand that restless activity was the law of his ally's being. Upon those conditions only was it possible for a cooler, more temperate, and, on some subjects, better instructed politician to steer the tremendous motive power which Mr. Chamberlain's personal force afforded. What was lost to the world when the crippling of Sir Charles disjointed that alliance can never be reckoned. Not only the alliance, but the personal intimacy, was broken when their political ways sundered on the Home Rule division. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... is it going to be self-supporting—I mean in the matter of motive power. Would it run if you and I and Murdoch were ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... conversation had given place easily to another, and there seemed at length little to be said on any subject whatever, when the case of the idiot, which my own troubles had temporarily dismissed from my mind, suddenly occurred to me, and afforded us motive for the prolongation of a discourse, which neither seemed desirous to bring to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the death of weak babes. But times have changed, and ethics has become very different with passing decades. Our civilization has resulted in a development of human sympathy as an emotional outgrowth of necessary altruism; this motive directs us through charitable institutions and hospitals to prolong countless lives which are more or less inefficient, but which do not render the whole body politic incompetent ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... is also desired from the fear of oppression; a very important motive in the eighteenth century, when the great still had the power to be very oppressive at times. We have seen the treatment which Voltaire received at the hands of a member of one of the great families. Outrages still more flagrant appear ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... of short story in periodicals; stories based on oral tradition; the humourist's turn for the terrible; natural terror in tales from Blackwood and in Conrad; use of terror in Stevenson and Kipling; future possibilities of fear as a motive ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... statements as the oracle of God. They were opinions, beliefs, dogmas, the cries of propaganda only—precisely the food needed for developing the mob mind to its full strength. Envy, jealousy, hatred ruled supreme. Liberty was a catchword. Blood lust was the motive power driving each ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... indeed doubtful whether, in the history of mankind, a doctrine was ever taught more impracticable or more false to the principles it professes than this very doctrine of communism. In a world where self-interest is avowedly the ruling motive, it seeks to establish at once an all-reaching and all-controlling altruism. In a world where every man is pushing and fighting to outstrip his fellows, it would make him toil with like vigor for their common welfare. In a world where a man's ...
— The Altruist in Politics • Benjamin Cardozo
... be an almost preposterous ideal. Why should the universe, existing in itself, also exist in copies? How CAN it be copied in the solidity of its objective fulness? And even if it could, what would the motive be? 'Even the hairs of your head are numbered.' Doubtless they are, virtually; but why, as an absolute proposition, OUGHT the number to become copied and known? Surely knowing is only one way of interacting with reality ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... falling like a stone down to the depths of the stock from which she sprang: and his weak and clumsy efforts to stay her only accelerated her downfall. He forced himself to be calm. She, from an unconsciously selfish motive, tried to break down his defenses and make him say violent, brutal, boorish things to her so as to have a reason for despising him. If he gave way to anger, she despised him. If at once he were ashamed and became apologetic, she despised him even more. And if he did not, would ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... rather indeed waxing in it with the gradual years. One may think of him as he marched on expeditions against hostile tribes, dwelling upon these recollections as upon the portrait of an inherited homestead. London, in fact, became to him a living motive, a determining factor in any choice of action. Whatsoever ambitions he nourished presumed London as their starting-point. It was then after all not very singular that on this first night of his return he should make a pilgrimage to the spot whence he had drawn ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... declared McArthur. "Believe me"—he turned to them all—"I had but found the corpse myself when these men rode up. The Indian was cold; he certainly had been dead for hours. Besides," he demanded, "what possible motive ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... on the subject, and wondering why he does not appear," I answered. "My father is as puzzled as I am; but we are certain no unworthy motive keeps him away. I can only conjecture that he has either gone to try and induce Oceola to make such offers to the Government as he thinks will be accepted, or else he has returned to the black fugitives with a view of benefiting ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... "that personal feeling has naught to do with my opinions as to the prosecution of this war. I would despise myself if, in what I have spoken regarding the interests of the emperor, I had been actuated by any secret motive of aversion ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... of Jean Isbel, but with the mysteries of her own soul. Wonder of all wonders was it that such love had been born for her. Shame worse than all other shame was it that she should kill it by a poisoned lie. By what monstrous motive had she done that? To sting Isbel as he had stung her! But that had been base. Never could she have stopped so low except in a moment of tremendous tumult. If she had done sore injury to Isbel what bad she done ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... to explain that, sir. Mr. Fink-Nottle confided to me his motive in visiting the metropolis. He came because ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the side gate, which he felt an almost irresistible impulse to enter. Every detail of the house and garden was familiar; a thousand cords of memory and affection drew him thither; but a stronger counter-motive prevailed. With a great effort he restrained himself, and after a momentary pause, walked slowly on past the house, with a backward glance, which he turned away when he ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... to subdivide the pedagogic view into the pure utilitarian and the moralistico-utilitarian; because those who admit only the individually useful (the desire of the individual), precisely because they are absolute hedonists, have no motive for seeking an ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... myself last night and came upon this pertinent passage. "Sin: its measure, its harm, its scandal. Its quality: how often—how long. The person by whom: his age, condition, state, enlightenment. Its manner, motive, time, and place. The folly of it, the ingratitude of it, the hardness of it, the presumptuousness of it. By heart, by mouth, by deed. Against God, my neighbours, my own body. By knowledge, by ignorance. Willingly and unwillingly. Of old and of ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... view, as its high prerogative, and inseparable attribute, the great purpose of instruction, and will necessarily seek to inculcate some moral maxim, social duty, or political truth. The true Fable, if it rise to its high requirements, ever aims at one great end and purpose representation of human motive, and the improvement of human conduct, and yet it so conceals its design under the disguise of fictitious characters, by clothing with speech the animals of the field, the birds of the air, the trees of the wood, or the beasts of the forest, that the reader shall ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... to the exceedingly corrupt state of the text; further, it is hard to see what interest a satire directed against Domitian would possess centuries after his death, nor is it easy to imagine what motive could have led the supposed forger to attribute his work to Sulpicia. The balance of probability inclines, though very slightly, in favour of the view that the work is genuine. This is unfortunate; for the perusal of this curious satire on the hypothesis ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... party. As the climax of all this, he has appointed the said father Amorin prior of the convent of Tondo, in the sight of all this community. The common people have objected and murmured much, since in that village they have previously had special proofs of our disinterestedness and purity of motive. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... what was the secret of his success. He hoped he was not exaggerating his father's praise when he said that he believed his success was mainly due to his high and honest character; and if he might make one more reference to his father he would say this, that the motive which prompted him to extend his enterprise to the great limits which it ultimately reached was not primarily a love of money—it was the spirit of enterprise, and the ambition to be a constructor of great and noble works. The results which had ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... Motive in Teaching. SECTION 1. Teaching Christian Science shall not be a question of money, but of morals and religion, healing and ...
— Manual of the Mother Church - The First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts • Mary Baker Eddy
... of a parent)—Ver. 448. Colman observes here: "This reflection seems to be rather improper in this place, for the discovery of Philumena's labor betrayed to Pamphilus the real motive of her departure; after which discovery his anxiety proceeds entirely from the supposed injury offered him, and his filial piety is from that period made use of merely as ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... Alf and Emmy shrank now before her increasing skill in argument. How were they shattered! How inept were their feebleness! How splendid Jenny had been, in act, in motive, in speech, in performance! ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... and his motive for doing so may have been the best, but how can anybody conclude from it that he is ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... and done, was the motive to which he, like Marthe, ascribed the incoherent words which Philippe had uttered previous to his appearance before the magistrates; and, without going deeper into the matter, it gave him, on his side, a certain sense of anger, mingled with a mild contempt. Philippe Morestal, old Morestal's ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... to search in my room for any drawings that would give him a dew as to how my machine works. They certainly did not want to burn the shop, for that pile of rags could have smoldered all day on the concrete floor, without doing any harm. Robbery was the motive, I think." ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... was to profit by The moment of the general consternation, To attack the Turk's flotilla, which lay nigh Extremely tranquil, anchored at its station: But a third motive was as probably To frighten them into capitulation;[384] A phantasy which sometimes seizes warriors, Unless they are ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... annals of mankind were not confused by spurious dynasties and fabulous chronologies; but when literary forgeries are published by those whose character hardly admits of a suspicion that they are themselves the impostors, the difficulty of assigning a motive only increases that of forming a decision; to adopt or reject them may be ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable motive, in his youth, at the threshold of his career he chose to disappear from the world—-which is to say, the little Indian station ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... safe for perhaps a year or so. Then just as they had begun to feel secure and had grown careless, the vengeance of their own particular circle had overtaken them. There had been accounts in the newspapers of a mysterious tragedy to which no motive could be assigned, and for which no one could be brought to ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... regrets their escape more than I do; but I am almost equally annoyed by the fact that I cannot reach a satisfactory conclusion as to Pattmore's motive in having his wife's body carried off. Of course, if the coroner's men should have found the body gone, every one would suspect Pattmore of having had it removed. However, I propose to solve the mystery in some way. By ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... all very fine, Mr. Hodder, very altruistic, very Christian, I've no doubt-but the world doesn't work that way." (These were the words borne in on Hodder's consciousness.) "What drives the world is the motive furnished by the right of acquiring and holding property. If we had a division to-day, the able men would come out on top ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... me do her justice) was shocked at my silent emotion. No human lip could utter more tender sympathy, more noble self-reproach; but that was no balm to my wound. So I left the house; so I never returned to the law; so all impetus, all motive for exertion, seemed taken from my being; so I went back into books. And so a moping, despondent, worthless mourner might I have been to the end of my days, but that Heaven, in its mercy, sent thy mother, Pisistratus, across my path; and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... change, however, arose from scientific and mechanical discoveries—the application of heat to the production of motive power. As long as water, which is a non-exhaustive source of motion, was used, the people were scattered over the land; or if segregation took place, it was in the neighborhood of running streams. The application ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... my conjecture that all that was presented, or would be presented to my senses, must originate in some human being gifted by constitution with the power so to present them, and having some motive so to do, I felt an interest in my theory which, in its way, was rather philosophical than superstitious. And I can sincerely say that I was in as tranquil a temper for observation as any practical experimentalist could be in awaiting the effects of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... studies a patient's constitution. What he wanted was to get her thoroughly interested in himself, and to maintain her in a receptive condition until such time as he should be ready for a final move. Any day might furnish the decisive motive; in the mean time he wished only to hold her ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... settlements, as Thucydides tells us, necessity was the ruling motive. Each man devoted his attention to providing the necessaries of life. There was superfluity neither of chattels nor of tilth. Men hesitate to sow when the harvest is to be reaped by their enemies.(193) The flocks and herds of the pastoral tribes could be ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... emotion).—"No man, therefore, has a right to rob another of a forefather, with a stroke of his pen, from any motive, howsoever amiable. In the present instance you will say, perhaps, that the ancestor in question is apocryphal,—it may be the printer, it may be the knight. Granted; but here, where history is in fault, shall a mere sentiment decide? While both are doubtful, my imagination ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is published twice a week; also a Spanish paper, the "Hesperia;" both (especially the last) are well written. There is also the "Mosquito," so called from its stinging sarcasms. Now and then another with a new title appears, like a shooting star, but, from want of support, or from some other motive, is ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the thought of our own advantage provides us with another motive for great joy and gladness, because so powerful a patron, so faithful an advocate has gone before us to the heavenly court.[986] For his most fervent charity cannot forget his sons, and his approved holiness must secure favour with God.[987] For who would dare to suppose that this holy Malachy ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... thus wholly immersed in the acquisition of money, and not knowing his motive, his faithful little friend Joe Tipps one day amazed, and half-offended him, by reminding him that he had a soul to be cared for as well as a body. The arrow was tenderly shot, and with a trembling hand, but Joe prayed that it might be sent home, and it was. From that ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... as if dead. A tumult arose, the multitude thinking that the Spaniards were attacking them. Flower was apprehended, tried, and burned for heresy and sedition, on the spot now called the Broad Sanctuary. His claim to swell Foxe's calendar of "martyrs" rests solely on the motive of his murderous assault, namely, outrage of ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... crew of "horse marines" which I had just left. But it was in no spirit of depreciation of the gallantry of my comrades, for I was quite sure that they would stand to their guns. The wretched "bowl of Gotham" which had no efficient motive power, and which could not even be got under way, when anchored, without slipping the chain cable, caused the misgivings. It is no disparagement to the prowess of the U. S. fleet which passed the forts, to assert, ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... the recruiter, who lavished on him every sort of civility; peaches in brandy, together with the choicest refreshments that a Parisian coffee-house could afford, were offered to him and accepted: but not the smallest hint was dropped of the motive of all this more than friendly attention. At length, the recruiter, thinking that he might venture to break the ice, depicted, in the most glowing colours, the pleasures and advantages of a military life, and declared ingenuously that nothing would make him so happy as to have our ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... others into scrapes, and kept out of them himself. Provided he could say a clever or a spiteful thing, he did not care whether it served or injured the cause. Spleen or the exercise of intellectual power was the motive of his patriotism, rather than principle. He would talk treason with a saving clause; and instil sedition into the public mind, through the medium of a third (who was to be the responsible) party. He made Sir Francis Burdett his spokesman in the House and to the country, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... raised his feeble hands by an effort of firm resolve, burnt his papers, and smiled as the greedy Vulcan licked up every page. The task exhausted his remaining strength, and he soon afterwards expired. The late Mrs. Inchbald had written her life in several volumes; on her death-bed, from a motive perhaps of too much delicacy to admit of any argument, she requested a friend to cut them into pieces before her eyes—not having sufficient strength left herself to perform this funereal office. These are instances of what may be called ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... we obtain a powerful couple that possesses an electro-motive power of 1.5 to 1.8 volts, according to the concentration of the exciting liquid. The internal resistance is extremely feeble. I have obtained with piles arranged like those shown in the figures nearly 0.06 ohm, the measurements having been taken ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... charter. It seems to be this rather than a planned attempt to establish self-government in the New World on a scale that might have been in violation of English law and custom at the time. Whatever the motive, the significance of this meeting in the church at Jamestown remains the same. This body of duly chosen representatives of the people has continued in existence and its evolution leads directly to our State legislatures and to the ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... And even as to the allusion that "we are one body in Christ," though what the apostle here intends is equally true of Christians in all circumstances, and the consideration of it is plainly still an additional motive, over and above moral considerations, to the discharge of the several duties and offices of a Christian, yet it is manifest this allusion must have appeared with much greater force to those who, by the many difficulties they went ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... the other. "Trust me. I will hide my soul and be exquisitely cautious. Her sorrow shall be respected—from no selfish motive only, but because I am a gentleman, as ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... matters. I dare say my Prince of Gruenewald—the name still uncertain—would be good enough for anything if I could but get it done: I believe that to be a really good story. The Vendetta is somewhat cheap in motive; very rum and unlike the present kind of novels both for good and evil in writing; and on the whole, only remarkable for the heroine's character, and that I believe to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conduct in the world. A godly life is wholly free from ostentation; every act is done in purest simplicity and truest sincerity. As God scrutinizes every act by his all-seeing eye, he discovers no impure motive, as vain-glory or lifting up of self; for all ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... according to classes, so that a mischievous fellow, charged full of the rebellious imponderable, should find himself between two non-conductors, in the shape of small boys of studious habits. It was managed quietly enough, in such a plausible sort of way that its motive was not thought of. But its effects were soon felt; and then began a system of correspondence by signs, and the throwing of little scrawls done up in pellets, and announced by preliminary a'h'ms! to call the attention ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... agreement between Henry and the Pope".[833] That idea was sedulously fostered by Henry. Twice he took the Pope's nuncio down in state to Parliament to advertise the excellent terms upon which he stood with the Holy See.[834] In the face of such evidence, what motive was there for prelates and others to reject the demands which Henry was pressing upon them? The Convocations of Canterbury and York repeated the submission of 1532, and approved, by overwhelming majorities, of two propositions: firstly, that, as a matter of law, the Pope ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... when her idea of duty differed from a conventional one, perhaps from that of some of her near friends; but no one ever doubted her strict dealing with herself, or her singleness of motive. She did not feel the need of turning to any other conscience than her own for support or enlightenment, and was inflexible and unwavering in any course she deemed right. She never apologized for herself in any way, or referred ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... reverence of his majesty. "Fear ye not me? saith the Lord; will ye not tremble at my presence?" And then, to engage us in our soul to the duty, he adds one of his wonderful mercies to the world, for a motive, "Fear ye not me?" Why, who are thou? He answers, Even I, "which have" set, or "placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it; and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of Babylon, since the death of Nebuchadnezzar, had been strengthened, and now the work of fortifying was carried on with great vigor. Belshazzar, if from no other motive than fear, gave all encouragement to this kind of improvement, and during his reign prodigious works of this nature were completed. He was well aware that the famous Persian had his eye upon him, and that the besieging of the city was but a question ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... see her without observing her prosperity, but still a hard dry life. Even her neighbours, whose ideas of enjoyment do not soar above the St. Armand level, think that her lot would be softer if she married. Many of the men have offered marriage, not with any disinterested motive, it is true, but with kindly intent. They have been set aside like children who make requests unreasonable, but so natural for them to make that the request is hardly worth noticing. The women relatives of these rejected suitors have boasted to mam'selle of their ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... Though there was some as said he couldn't have stabbed himself and fallen in that position. They said he was murdered. The father died in prison. They tried to fasten the murder on him, but there was no motive, or no evidence, or no ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... sensitive to Booth's persistent though inoffensive scrutiny as time wore on. More than once she had caught him looking at her with a fixedness that betrayed perplexity so plainly that she could not fail to recognise an underlying motive. He was vainly striving to refresh his memory: that was clear to her. There is no mistaking that look in a person's ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... three days after war had been declared, I sailed from Quebec for England on the first ship that put out from Canada. The trip had been long planned—it was not undertaken from any patriotic motive. My family, which included my father, mother, sister and brother, had been living in America for eight years and had never returned to England together. It was the accomplishing of a dream long cherished, which favourable circumstances and a sudden influx ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... had found the ring," replied Wolston, laughing, "I should have no motive for concealing it. Fruit was afterwards placed before Herbert, and, when nobody was looking, he pulled a clasped ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... to which she had already betrayed her disappointment, believed that anxiety for her father's health, which she alleged as the motive of her sudden departure, was an excuse plausible enough to blind her friends to her overpowering reluctance to speak to Agatha or endure her presence; to her fierce shrinking from the sort of pity usually accorded to a jilted woman; and, above all, to her dread ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... as scientific and other tomes, in which his manifold inventions have been recorded, and in no corner of the earth where the steam-engine has been introduced can his name be unknown. After many years' labour to bring the new motive power into practical use, Watt, helped by his friend Dr. Roebuck, took out his first patent in 1769. Roebuck's share was transferred to Matthew Boulton in 1773, and in the following year James Watt came to Birmingham. An Act of Parliament prolonging the patent ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... be emulous in supplying his wants. The younger and more attractive of the two was also an old friend of ours, being no other than Fanny O'Dwyer from South Main Street. Actuated, doubtless, by some important motive she had left her bar at home for one night, having come down to Kanturk by her father's car, with the intention of returning by it in the morning. She was seated as a guest here on the corner of the sofa near the fire, but nevertheless she ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... attacked by a fit of jealousy at Mentz. The young nephew of the Elector Arch-Chancellor, Comte de L——ge, was very assiduous about the Empress, who, herself, at first mistook the motive. Her confidential secretary, Deschamps, however, afterwards informed her that this nobleman wanted to purchase the place of a coadjutor to his uncle, so as to be certain of succeeding him. He obtained, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... fencing and football-playing, with too much of the Orsini blood in his hot veins, with too little of the Medicean craft in his weak head. The Italian despots felt they could not trust Piero, and this want of confidence was probably the first motive that impelled Lodovico Sforza to call Charles ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... If there is no moral defect in him, yet there is want of good taste, want of propriety, want of respect to the taste of others, violence offered to his own natural gifts and acquired abilities. There is a degree of deception and imposture in the action, if not in the motive and the result: an effort to produce an impression contrary to the honest and natural state of the agent. But it is rarely the effort succeeds in attaining its object. Mind is too discerning, too apprehensive, too inquisitive, too susceptible, to allow of imposition ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... here!" cried Miriam, clasping her hands. "And how sweet a toil to bend and adapt my whole nature to do him good! To instruct, to elevate, to enrich his mind with the wealth that would flow in upon me, had I such a motive for acquiring it! Who else can perform the task? Who else has the tender sympathy which he requires? Who else, save only me,—a woman, a sharer in the same dread secret, a partaker in one identical guilt,—could ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... instructions to the minister lately sent to the Court of London as will evince that desire, and if met by a correspondent disposition, which we can not doubt, will put an end to causes of collision which, without advantage to either, tend to estrange from each other two nations who have every motive to preserve not only peace, but an intercourse ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... women who should take the movement out of the hands of the "frumps," as she termed them. Her doubt was whether Joan would prove sufficiently tractable. She intended to offer her remunerative work upon the Nursing News without saying anything about the real motive behind, trusting to gratitude to make ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... boy! Had not this action past without a witness, Duty would ask that thou shouldst rue thy folly— But, for the motive, be ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... far-shooting beams the moral confusion of the tragedy. This is, at any rate, emphatically true of The Ring and the Book. The fulness and variety of creation, the amplitude of the play and shifting of characters and motive and mood, are absolutely unforced, absolutely uninterfered with by the artificial exigencies of ethical or philosophic purpose. There is the purpose, full-grown, clear in outline, unmistakeable in significance. But the just ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... posthumous, and we can prove nothing as to their origin. Were they marks of honor made in some religious rite? Were they openings to allow the spirit of the departed to revisit the body it had abandoned? or, to suggest a far more worldly and revolting motive, were they merely holes through which to pick out the brains of the dead. A missionary, in a letter dated from Fort Pitt (Canada) in 1880, describes the mode of scalping practised by the Redskins, and says that they often take a round piece ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... recognized in both her words and her bearing a curious apathy—a want of the real enthusiasm of affection. Woodroffe, much her senior, was her father's friend, and it therefore seemed to me more than likely that Leithcourt was pressing a matrimonial alliance upon his daughter for some ulterior motive. In the mad hurry for place, power, and wealth, men relentlessly sell their daughters in the matrimonial market, and ambitious mothers scheme and intrigue for their own aggrandizement at sacrifice of their daughter's happiness more ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... wax along the planes of intersection. The bees, of course, no more knowing that they swept their spheres at one particular distance from each other, than they know what are the several angles of the hexagonal prisms and of the basal rhombic plates. The motive power of the process of natural selection having been economy of wax; that individual swarm which wasted least honey in the secretion of wax, having succeeded best, and having transmitted by inheritance its newly acquired economical instinct to new swarms, which ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... to oppose such a wish; nor was there any motive for it. The air was pure, and little need be apprehended from the night, in behalf of Ghita, surrounded as they were by the pure waters of the ocean. Even when the Tramontana came, although it was cool, its coolness was not unpleasant, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... on carrying all before her by sheer force of her powers of self-assertion and the name of the Patriotic Daughters of America. But the commanding general was the most impassive of men, gifted with a keen though little suspected sense of humor, and no little judgment in estimating motive and character. He actually enjoyed the first call made by Miss Perkins, suggested her coming again on the morrow, and summoned his chief surgeon and his provost marshal, another keen humorist, to be present at the interview. It has been asserted that this triumvirate ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... thirsty, or was critical of the manner of presentation, or had apprehensions of our motive, or was seized with desire for exercise in the open air, she gave us no chance to guess. We resolved upon more caution of advance and gentler voice, and so laboriously approached her; for though a pail of water is light for a little way, it gets ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... winter there, living the while in a den much like what you here see; but I am always glad enough to get back again. The salary which I receive from the government does not support me as I live, so you see that is not a motive. But I am perfectly independent, have capital health, lots of adventure, hardship enough (for you must know that, if I do sleep under a sky-blue canopy, I am esteemed one of the most hardy men in all Greenland) to satisfy the most insatiate appetite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... trace is left of "Louise Moreau." Natalie's lip curls as she fathoms the motive of the girl's disappearance. Friends of Marie Berard's have probably secreted her, as a part of the old scheme of blackmail upon her. Did the secret die with her? It is fight now. She muses: "Now they may keep her. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... leisure moment shall occur, I will take the liberty to make and forward you a more circumstantial account of the several actions, and particularly that of the 8th, in doing which my chief motive will be to render justice to those brave men I have the honour to command, and who have so remarkably ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... been a subject of remark that tigers, without any motive that we can even guess at, avoid certain parts of the country which, to us, seem to be equally favourable to them. This is remarkably so in my district in Mysore, parts of which, apparently quite as suitable for tigers as other parts, have never been known to hold ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... her eye would be annoyed by a picture-frame just out of plumb, and she would be excused while she straightened it. Nearly every picture and portrait on the lower floor had been adjusted before she understood the motive of Field's solicitude to see every painting and engraving in the house. Unlike the regulation surprise party of society, we had not provided the refreshments for our own entertainment, and we had Bates under bonds not to give Mrs. Bates an ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... received doctrine that, when two objects impinge upon one another, the momentum lost by the one is equal to that gained by the other. This proposition it was deemed necessary to preserve, not from the motive (which operates in many other cases) that it was firmly fixed in popular belief; for the proposition in question had never been heard of by any but the scientifically instructed. But it was felt to contain a truth; even a superficial observation of the phenomena ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... senseless, an hour later, and never, said Urbana, knew what hit him. Concussion of the brain was feared, for he had evidently been assaulted in the dark from behind and felled to earth by blows of some heavy, blunt instrument. Robbery was evidently the motive, for his little store of money and the beautiful and costly watch presented to his father at the close of the war were gone. Almira had two patients now, and devotedly she attended them. When in a fortnight Percy declared he must return, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... "Whatever my motive in convicting myself has been, let me assure you it has put me so far away from you that I am hardly worthy even to speak to you. But I feared you had been troubled about giving your evidence, and I am glad of this one chance ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... the invitation. Their sympathy was mostly with Shon McGann; their admiration was about equally divided; for Pretty Pierre had the quality of courage in as active a degree as the Irishman, and they knew that some extraordinary motive, promising greater excitement, was behind the Frenchman's refusal to send a bullet through Shon's head ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... progres du libertinage et de la debauche dans cette contree."—Myst. du Pag., tom. ii. p. 91.—St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, lib. vii. c. xxi.) inveighs against the impurity of the ceremonies in Italy of the sacred rites of Bacchus. But even he does not deny that the motive with which they were performed was of a religious, or at least superstitious nature—"Sic videlicet Liber deus placandus fuerat." The propitiation of a deity was certainly ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... question in the form, "Could trade ever have emanated from an intelligent motive of universal love—of deference for the humanity in every man?" you would have replied, "Never!" But you might have consoled yourself with the thought that it is only a small part of our boasted civilization. We have art and education ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... a little upward, it displaced the port safety-valve weight and twisted the lever, leaving the valve partly opened. The steam escaped so rapidly as to reduce the pressure at once to nine pounds, while filling the fire-room and berth-deck. Deprived thus of her motive force, it was found that the Genesee was not able to drag both vessels up against the strong current then running. Commander Alden was therefore compelled to turn down stream, and after some narrow escapes from the fire of his ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... the man has become equal master with the State; they are co-partners. His motive for right living is greater than the letter of the law, for he is the living law, the protest against wrong and ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... rays, in themselves pale and impotent, unite and begin to burn, the artist has to employ the most cunning detail, to complicate and refine upon thought and passion a thousand fold.... Yet, in spite of this intricacy, the poem has the clear ring of a central motive; we receive from it the impression of one imaginative tone, of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... never once "presented" life. My apparently most objective books are criticisms and incitements to change. Such a writer as Mr. Swinnerton, on the contrary, sees life and renders it with a steadiness and detachment and patience quite foreign to my disposition. He has no underlying motive. He sees and tells. His aim is the attainment of that beauty which comes with exquisite presentation. Seen through his art, life is seen as one sees things through a crystal lens, more intensely, more completed, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... of a policy of nettle-grasping, which continued. She always felt happier after defying a difficulty than after flinching. After all, if Gerry's happiness and her own were not motive enough, consider Sally's. If she should really come to know her mother's story, Sally ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Misguided, and misguiding. So I fared, Dragging all precepts, judgments, maxims, creeds, Like culprits to the bar; calling the mind, 295 Suspiciously, to establish in plain day Her titles and her honours; now believing, Now disbelieving; endlessly perplexed With impulse, motive, right and wrong, the ground Of obligation, what the rule and whence 300 The sanction; till, demanding formal proof, And seeking it in every thing, I lost All feeling of conviction, and, in fine, Sick, wearied out with ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... put a good face on the matter. Lauzun knew that he was ardent and skilful in drawing money from people for the building of a church, and had often said he would never fall into his net; he suspected that the worthy cure's assiduities had an interested motive, and laughed at him in giving him only his blessing (which he ought to have received from him), and in perseveringly asking the Duc de la Force for his. The cure, who saw the point of the joke, was much mortified, but, like a sensible man, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... is a plain, matter-of-fact piece of business; sublime, not so much because of the character of the work it does, as because of the constraining love that is the motive and the results flowing from it. The beautiful halo and glamour clinging round our vows and prayers and songs during a Meeting, are gratifying to our senses; but real consecration manifests itself in hard, self-denying labour, when no eye but His sees; often, perhaps, ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... The other Motive is Prevention, which is one of the most usual Foundations of the Beauty of all things, for even as we love the Fashion of the Cloaths which the Courtiers wear, although this mode have no Positive ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... furiously as though impelled by some strange power within them, and it seemed to Philip that they were driven forward by a rage for enjoyment. They were seeking desperately to escape from a world of horror. The desire for pleasure which Cronshaw said was the only motive of human action urged them blindly on, and the very vehemence of the desire seemed to rob it of all pleasure. They were hurried on by a great wind, helplessly, they knew not why and they knew not whither. Fate seemed to tower above them, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... girl had not wholly shaken off the influence of her aunt's opposition, and she shrank with almost morbid dread from being the subject of remark even among those of her own class. The chief and controlling motive for secrecy, however, had been distrust, the fear that the undertaking would not be successful. As the days had passed this fear had been removed. Aun' Sheba did not come to make her returns until after ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... 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 ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... come there to throuble thim with my curosity?" And what right had I to pry into their miseries, unless to relieve them? I confess my object in visiting St. Giles's then, had not arisen from so pure a motive, and I felt the justice of his demand—The miseries of the heart are sacred amongst the rich: why should they not be equally so amongst the poor? Nature has made original feeling alike in all; but the poor ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... intention to treat this subject from a shipwright's point of view. The title of this paper is supposed to indicate a mode of propelling boats by means of electrical energy, and it is to this motive power that I shall have the honor of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... taught, I believe, by most followers of Karl Marx, which is called the materialist theory of history. The theory is, roughly, this: that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive. In short, history is a science; a science ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... absentmindedness of the players, that several hardened scamps indulged in some most unscrupulous "stocking" of the cards without detection. But even one of these, after having dealt himself both bowers and the king, besides two aces, suddenly imagined he had discovered Grump's motive, and so earnest was he in exposing that nefarious wretch, that one of his opponents changed hands with him. Even the barkeeper mixed the bottles badly, and on one occasion, just as the boys were raising their glasses, he metaphorically dashed the cup from their lips by a violent, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... the will. I was present at several of these discussions. The sealed letter written by the dead man was the bone of contention. Then the lawyers came in and the case went into the courts. The world knew but a fragment of the truth. It looked to me at first as if a selfish motive actuated Mr. Bryan, but as I got at the details one after another, details the world can never know, I developed a profound respect for him. He was the only person involved that cared anything for the mind, will or intention of the dead man, and his entire legal battle was not that ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... and interests of particular persons, but in the fatal malignity of their passions. At your accession to the throne the whole system of government was altered, not from wisdom or deliberation, but because it had been adopted by your predecessor. A little personal motive of pique and resentment was sufficient to remove the ablest servants of the Crown; but it is not in this country, Sir, that such men can be dishonoured by the frowns of a king. They were dismissed, ...
— English Satires • Various
... addressed, and the affairs and interests of 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 these two. Riccabocca ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and tother for one. When Noah cust Ham he laid the foundashens uv Dimocrisy. Ham wuz turned into a nigger because Noah got intoxicated. His misfortune originated with wine; and whisky, wich is the modern substitoot therefor, bein the motive power uv Dimocrisy, hez bin persekutin him ever sence. I attriboot the decline uv the Dimocrisy to the bleachin out uv the Afrikin, and that's why I oppose amalgamashen. Yoo can't hate a mulatter only half ez much ez yoo kin a full-blood; and it ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... yet there has been no dominant motive-power, working invisibly towards a definite end, behind the educational ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... these, all the requisite ideas may be conveyed, with sufficient clearness, by the meanest and most negligent expressions; and if magnificence or beauty is ever to be observed in them, it must have been introduced from some other motive than that of adapting the style to the subject. It is in such passages, accordingly, that we are most frequently offended with low and inelegant expressions; and that the language, which was intended ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Hollander, whose households we were guarding, chose to interpret our motive at its most ignoble worth. Our men were receiving in their bodies the wounds which would have been inflicted on Holland, had we elected to stand out. In the light of subsequent events, all the world acknowledges that we were and are fighting for our own households; ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... change, and spouting out torrents of puddled politics from his mouth; dead to all interests but those of the state; seemingly neither older nor wiser for age; unaccountably enthusiastic, stupidly romantic, and actuated by no other motive than the mechanical operations of the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Stevens, in the opening of a speech in a preliminary skirmish between patriotism and usurers, said: "I approach the subject with more depression of spirits than I ever before approached any question. No personal motive or feeling influences me. I hope not, at least. I have a melancholy foreboding that we are about to consummate a cunningly devised scheme, which will carry great injury and great loss to all classes of people throughout the Union, except one." Later he said, ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... She therefore confessed to Pietro first, and he instantly seized the occasion for revenge on Guido, though that was not (or at any rate, according to the Other Half-Rome, may not have been) his only motive. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... returned to India, did not your intimacy with Emma fall off? If your younger sister is not in the room, I know you will own as much to me. I think you are always deceiving yourselves and other people. I think the motive you put forward is very often not the real one; though you will confess, neither to yourself, nor to any human being, what the real motive is. I think that what you desire you pursue, and are as selfish in your way as your bearded fellow-creatures are. And as for the truth being in you, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the time entertained relations with that abandoned, shameless woman; so that, if, as was probably the case, she paid Smollett a sum of money to procure their incorporation in his pages, there could have been no other motive to actuate her conduct than a desire to blazon her own fall or to mortify the feelings of her husband. The latter is the more likely alternative, if we are to believe that Lord Vane himself stooped to employ Dr. Hill to prepare a history of Lady Frail, by way of retorting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... at this time, very fierce civil wars were raging between the Catholics and the Protestants in Germany. Frederic got drawn into these wars on the Protestant side. His motive was not any desire to promote the progress of what he considered the true faith, but only a wish to extend his own dominions, and add to his own power, for he had been promised a kingdom, in addition to his Palatinate, if he would assist the people of the kingdom to gain the victory over ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... understand your motive," she said, looking down at him more pleasantly than she'd ever done, "and it's very good of you and all that. But if you'd only left things as they were, and let us all go, and other ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... much more agreeable to your majesty that he should escape, than that he should be taken; that you would be very much embarrassed, indeed, what to do with him, if any indiscreet person were to stop him in his flight; and that you would not disapprove of that conduct, the first motive of which, I openly confess, was gratitude towards the man ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... brought a firm fist resolutely down upon the table before him. Robespierre paused a while ere he replied; he was eying the other man keenly, trying to read if behind that earnest, frowning brow there did not lurk some selfish, ulterior motive along with that demand ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of the nineteenth century a number of American engineers and mechanics were working diligently to develop a practical self-propelled vehicle employing an internal-combustion engine as the motive force. Among these men were Charles and Frank Duryea, who began work on this type of vehicle about 1892. This carriage was operated on the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1893, where its trials were noted in the newspapers. Now preserved in the Museum of History and Technology, it is ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... he and BELINDA, each with a different motive, take counsel together in reference to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... insists that the motive of all her patriotic labours was not benevolence, but an insatiable and unbounded thirst for fame. "If it were not so, we must charge her with an inconsistency amounting to madness, for undertaking so many immense works ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... right hand know what the left hand doeth. No grasping or seeking, no hungering of the individual, shall give motion to the will; no desire to be conscious of worthiness shall order the life; no ambition whatever shall be a motive of action; no wish to surpass another be allowed a moment's respite from death; no longing after the praise of men influence a single throb of the heart. To deny the self is to shrink from no dispraise or condemnation or contempt of the community, or ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... touched with evil. "Myselfe have seene and observed some little child, who could not speake; and yet he was all in an envious kind of wrath, looking pale with a bitter countenance upon his foster-brother." In an envious kind of wrath! Is it not the motive of half our politics, and too much of our criticism? Such is man's inborn nature, not to be cured by laws or reforms, not to be washed out of his veins, though "blood be shed like rain, and tears like a mist." For "an infant cannot endure a companion ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... child, with all the potentialities of youth. She could not divine Lenore's motive, but she sensed a new and fascinating mode of conduct for herself. She seemed puzzled ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... decency, which bids man remember that he is frail and that it behoves him to be considerate and pitiful and sincere, had been flouted by the arrogant military rulers of Germany. Great Britain had a navy; her army and her air force, for the purposes of a great European war, were yet to make. The motive that was to supply her with millions of volunteers was not only patriotism, though patriotism was strong, but a sense that her cause, in this war, was the cause of humanity. There are many who will gladly fight to raise their country and people in power and prosperity above ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every topick of merriment, or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendships and ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the giant bees of the "L" road. But the answer was obvious. Miss Rolls might be superficial, insincere, and snobbish enough to dislike claiming acquaintance with a girl of the "working classes," but there was no motive strong enough to make her traduce her brother's character. Even untrustworthy people told ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... in the past had served the State with credit in the great public offices that satisfy men's reputable pride and honourable ambition, but none before him had served his fellow creatures during a long life with no other motive than to bind up their wounds and aggravate the mercies ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... when any noble family became extinct? What qualifications were necessary in those who are to be created new lords: whether the humour of the prince, a sum of money to a court lady, or a design of strengthening a party opposite to the public interest, ever happened to be the motive in those advancements? What share of knowledge these lords had in the laws of their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to decide the properties of their fellow-subjects in the last resort? Whether they were always so free from avarice, partialities, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... from anything of the kind. I took steps to insure that any evil which might come should fall on me only, and that"—here he turned and looked at the prisoner—"was the cause of conduct upon my part which has been too harshly judged. My only motive was to screen those who were dear to me from any possible connection with scandal or disgrace. That scandal and disgrace would come with my brother was only to say that what had ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... papers were full of the attempted burglary. Before the magistrates, the man who had been apprehended said not a word. He seemed to accept his position with stolid fatalism. The cross-examination as to his associates, and the motive of the attempted robbery, ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... touching—so touching indeed that Hugh sometimes debated within himself whether he might not so far sacrifice his own bent, which was more and more directed to the maintenance of an independent attitude, in order to give his father so deep and lasting a delight. But he was forced to decide that the motive was not cogent enough, and that to adopt a definite position, involving the suppression of some of his strongest convictions, for the sake of giving one he loved a pleasure, was like exposing the ark to the risks of battle. He knew well enough that if he had declared his full mind on ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... According to the message, the papers hammered the stuffing out of the Crestline road. But you've got to admit that they haven't got either the motive power or the money. The other road saw a great chance to step in and make itself solid with this country over here. It's lending the men and the rolling stock. They're going to open another fellow's road, for the publicity and the ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... continue such liberal forms. During the first Republic, Marathon and Thermopylae saved the principle of Western democracy against Oriental despotism, Salamis and Plataea saved Greek letters and Greek art to the continents that were yet to be. Christianity changed the motive but not the method in evolution; and, finally in the last great Republic, the American Revolution proclaimed liberty of thought, the war of 1812 secured American independence, while, beside the wandering Antietam and on the field of Gettysburg "green regiments went to their graves ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... But the petitioner could not help putting forward the certificates of that marriage, because two of them were written on the back of the certificate of the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland with Olive Wilmot. Men of intelligence could not fail to see the motive for writing the certificates of those two marriages on the same piece of paper. The first claim to the consideration of the royal family put forward by Mrs. Serres was, that she was the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Cumberland by Mrs. Payne—a ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... quick turns to follow the water and the need for speed gave no consideration to the helpless rider. The image of six pairs of snaky black eyes came to help the benumbed brain, and I knew with whom I was again captive. But there was no question about the friendly motive now, for there was no friendly motive now. And as we pushed on east, Jondo and Bill Banney were hurrying toward the northwest, and the space between us widened every minute. A wave of helplessness and despair swept ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... darling! This detective isn't interested in you. What motive could he have in looking you up? Bingle is in the dark, so it's evident he hasn't hired any one to investigate your past. Forget it! That isn't what I want to talk to you about. I've been half-crazy, dear, for the past eight months. Why did you ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... own presidents, and celebrated in common their sacrifices, festivals, and banquets. We have, therefore, good reason for agreeing in the opinion of the celebrated historian, who considers that in the establishment of a corporation "the guild should be to a certain degree the motive power, and the Roman college, with its organization, the material which should be used to bring ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... race prejudice is less strong in the North is another inducement to leave the South, for "Jim Crow" cars and political disfranchisement have irritated many. Finally the dread of lynch law may be mentioned as a motive for migration, though its actual importance may be doubted. Not all the negroes who have moved to the North have remained there. Many do not allow for the higher cost of food and shelter in their new home, and these demands upon the higher wages leave a smaller margin than was expected. ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... of the soul. Layer upon layer, cross-section upon cross-section have been piled before us. And what a melodramatic cinema of thrills and shivers, villains and heroes, heroines and adventuresses have they not unfolded. Each motive, as the stiff psychologist of the nineteenth century, with his plaster-of-Paris categories and pigeon holes and classifications, labelled the teeming creatures of the mind, becomes anon a strutting actor ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... village water-wheel, The motive bullock bows his crest, And signals forth a mute appeal ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... are many who will contend that I have some selfish or spiteful motive in writing thus strongly in condemnation of the waltz. Many will doubtless claim that the waltz is very moral and healthful, is indulged in by the best people of every land, seemingly tolerated by all, and that he who raises his voice ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... Cavalla garrison, whose "treasonable" conduct became likewise the subject of judicial investigation—trial was sedulously deferred by a variety of ingenious contrivances; nothing being more remote from the Government's mind than an intention to draw the truth into the light. The motive of these proceedings doubtless was one of policy chiefly—to ruin the enemies of the regime in public esteem by branding them as traitors, even if no conviction could be obtained. But policy was not the only element. To judge by the harshness displayed, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... given her heart to Jesus; love to him was the ruling motive of her life, and to please and honor him she was ready to do or endure anything. "I will try, mamma," she said, "and you too will ask God to ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... would leave the neighbourhood of so excellent a father. They overwhelmed him with marks of affection, and vowed that the one had left Lepanto, and the other Berat, only in order to share his danger. Ali was by no means duped by these protestations, of which he divined the motive only too well, and though he had never loved his sons, he suffered cruelly in discovering that he was not beloved ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to show that this young lady was not the purely impassive medium in this matter that my learned friend, Mr. Short, would lead the Court to believe. She was acting from motive." ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... not long in perceiving why he was selected for the office of governor; for we find him writing home, "I think I can see the true motive of the expedition, and believe it to be a sham to catch the attention of the English people." With him, however, it was no sham. He was determined to do what he was professedly sent to do, viz.: put down the slave-trade. "I will do it," he said, "for I value my life as naught, and should only ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... made him regard as a safe asylum against all reverses) the immense treasures he had pillaged and collected m Spain, under pretext of sending the sums necessary to sustain the war, and the conquests he intended to make; and this last project was, perhaps, the motive power of all the rest. The madness of these schemes, and his obstinacy in clinging to them, were not discovered until afterwards. The astonishment then was great indeed, upon discovering the poverty of the resources with which he thought ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... grievances, or the proper remedies for them, than the aggregate amount of the actual, dear-bought experience, the honest feelings, and heart-felt wishes of a whole people, informed and directed by the greatest power of understanding in the community, unbiassed by any sinister motive."[21] Hazlitt was not a republican, and he disapproved of the Utopian rhapsodies of Shelley, woven as they seemed of mere moonshine, without applicability to the evils that demanded immediate reform. But he did insist that there was a power in the people to change its government and its governors, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the conduct of Catharine de' Medici herself to any such motive is the extreme of absurdity. Even the author of the "Tocsain contre les massacreurs" rejects the supposition without hesitation. (Original edition, p. 157.) Catharine was certainly a ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... settled at Selsey, King Ethelwalch and Queen Ebba ordered their people to be baptized. I fear I'm too old to believe that a whole nation can change its heart at the King's command, and I had a shrewd suspicion that their real motive was to get a good harvest. No rain had fallen for two or three years, but as soon as we had finished baptizing, it fell heavily, and they all ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... "I believe I've the motive here," I said and thrust the mutilated volume into her hand. "Some one stole these leaves out of Mr. Gilbert's diary. The books are filled with intimate details of the affairs of people—things which people prefer should not be known—names, details and dates written ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... ignorance, and a sordid life hopeless of better fortune, and opening to him the whole realm of mighty possibilities in an American life—did not imply any love for the little individual whom he thus benefited. It had some other motive. ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... adapted to the situation, and the capacity of the soil is such as to feed them fully, profit may be safely calculated upon. Animals are to be looked upon as machines for converting herbage into money. Now it costs a certain amount to keep up the motive power of any machine, and also to make good the wear and tear incident to its working; and in the case of animals it is only so much as is digested and assimilated, in addition to the amount thus ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... dismembered; her extension to the Aegean Sea was seriously obstructed, if not practically blocked; and, bitterest and most tragic of all, the redemption of the Bulgarians in Macedonia, which was the principal object and motive of her war against Turkey in 1912, was frustrated and rendered hopeless by Greek and Servian annexations of Macedonian territory extending from the Mesta to the Drin with the great cities of Saloniki, Kavala, and Monastir, which in the patriotic national consciousness ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... of course, possible that Helm was a natural-born criminal, yet his motive for trying his skill at counterfeiting was revenge ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... infinitely powerful Being exists, and he was the creator of the universe; but to incline him towards the creation there could be no possible motive of happiness to himself, and he must, says King, have either sought his own happiness or that of the universe which he made. Therefore his own ideas must have been the communication of happiness to the creature. ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... discovered? Justice always looks for a motive; how, then could they bring it home to us? They could only find out that a young lady adored by De Breulh had thrown him over in order ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... appointed spot, a house near the railway, was escorted by a brigade with a military band, and accompanied by many officers in "full fig." With one officer, Colonel William Levy, since a member of Congress from Louisiana, I made my appearance on a hand-car, the motive power of which was two negroes. Descendants of the ancient race of Abraham, dealers in cast-off raiment, would have scorned to bargain for our rusty suits of Confederate gray. General Canby met me with much urbanity. We retired to a room, and in a few moments ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... and—for Cheyne could on occasion display a polished wit—light laughter filled the room, until Caroline Schuyler, perhaps not without a motive, suggested a stroll on the lawn. If there was dew upon the grass none of them heeded it, and it was but seldom anyone enjoyed the privilege of pacing that sod when Mr. Schuyler was at home. Every foot had cost him many dollars, and it remained but an imperfect imitation of an ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... rolling mill completes what the puddling hall does in the rough. Five hundred and fifty thousand tons of iron, all shaped, are taken from the forge every day. To reach such a result it requires no less than 3,000 workmen and a motive power of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... 'recreate' (v. sup. Vol. I. p. 471) does not cover a difference in kind.... One feels that Prof. S. is rather sympathetic to that which traditional French criticism regards as essential ... close psychological analysis of motive," etc. And so he even questions whether what I have given, much as he likes and praises it, is "A History of The French Novel." But did I ever undertake to give this from the French point of view, or ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... a piece of paper—a significant document, for it explained the motive for the crime. Kid Wolf read it and understood. It ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... say in Greek, oida, I know, but is-men, we know? Why tetlka, but tetlamen? Why memona, but memamen? There is no recollection in the minds of the Greeks of the motive power that was once at work, and left its traces in these grammatical convulsions; but in Sanskrit we still see, as it were, alower stratum of grammatical growth, and we can there watch the regular working of laws which required these changes, and which have ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Ulysses, our Gascon could not console himself for not having guessed why Aramis had asked Percerin to show him the king's new costumes. "There is not a doubt," he said to himself, "that my friend the bishop of Vannes had some motive in that;" and then he began to rack his brains most uselessly. D'Artagnan, so intimately acquainted with all the court intrigues, who knew the position of Fouquet better than even Fouquet himself did, had conceived the strangest fancies and suspicions at the announcement ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... certain scientific opinions. There is no authority to try them for heresy or to turn them out of your society unless they hold certain scientific ideas. They have no sense of compulsion except to find and accept that which they discover to be true. The one aim of science is the truth. There is no motive ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... business at once," he suggested. "Sooner the better. In a murder, look for the motive. Miss Copley—Mr. Bolt—can either of you tell me who might have wanted ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... stronger than medicine, more tenacious than any other motive that keeps the life-current brisk and vigorous, made Dick's recovery swift and sure. Rosa had no torments for him now. The blood-red rose had proved a magician's amulet to confirm her mind in the sweet teachings of her heart. But the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... retreating footsteps and smiled softly. It was nothing new for Ellen to be sending her to the village to transact the business she no longer felt able to attend to herself, but the subterfuges to which she resorted to conceal her real motive were amusing. Lucy knew well that to-day, if it had not been the cream separator, something else equally important would have furnished the excuse for keeping her aunt at home. It seemed so foolish not to be honest about the matter. To pursue any other method, however, would have ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... I can be rich without money, by endeavoring to be superior to everything poor. I would have my services to my country unstained by any interested motive.—LORD COLLINGWOOD. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... which he had referred to his intention of taking a partner, supposing at the time that you were as firmly and finally settled as St Paul's Cathedral. "Whereas," says he, "Mr Clennam might now believe, if I entertained his proposition, that I had a sinister and designing motive in what was open free speech. Which I can't bear," says he, "which I really ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... than a man. He had hunted with the human pack and he had found selfishness and jealousy and treachery on every hand. He came to look upon these as the essential characteristics of the human race. Even now that he was wounded he saw but one sordid motive of greed under the hesitant offers of help; even now he had been less like a wounded man than a stricken wolf. The wolf would have withdrawn to his hidden lair; he would have contented himself with scant food; he would have licked his wound ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... Don Carlos's motive for telling Tony Standish he was in love with her, and she realised that Tony had been cleverer than he knew. By telling her of Don Carlos's confession and assuring her that he had complete faith in her he had, as it were, placed her on her honour ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... Salvador, its crest topped with the Hermitage, and the pines, the cypresses, and the prickly pears around that rough testimonial of popular piety. The sanctuary seemed to be talking to him like an indiscreet friend, betraying the real motive that had caused him to evade his appointment with his political friends and disobey his ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... customary fires, or because fires had to be less frequently kindled upon them than on the more important stations; or, finally, because these hill-forts, from some disadvantage of situation, were no longer used as places of strength, and so the beacon-keepers had no motive to attempt consolidating them throughout by the piecemeal application of the vitrifying agent. But the old Highland mode of accounting for the present appearance of Knock Farril and its vitrified remains is perhaps, after all, quite as good in its way as any of ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... looked at Bachelder as though expecting commendation for his honorable intention, and, receiving none, went on, dilating on his plans for the child as if resolved to earn it. Yet, setting aside this patent motive, it was easy to see as he warmed to his subject that Andrea had not erred in counting on Lola to bring him back. With her beauty she would do any man proud! The whole United States would not be able to produce ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... excesses had disgusted and deterred him. He shook himself easily free of a habit which had never gained a hold upon him, and had ever since found his abstinence a source both of vanity and of distinction. Nothing annoyed him more than to hear it put down to any ethical motive. "If I liked the beastly stuff, I should swim in it to-morrow," he would say with an angry eye when certain acquaintance—not those he made at Labour Congresses—goaded him on the point. "As it is, why should I make it, or chloral, or morphia, or any other poison, my master! What's ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... piece of bread given to beggars; the Eng. "bribe" has passed through the meanings of alms, blackmail and extortion, to gifts received or given in order to influence corruptly). The public offence of bribery may be defined as the offering or giving of payment in some shape or form that it may be a motive in the performance of functions for which the proper motive ought to be a conscientious sense of duty. When this is superseded by the sordid impulses created by the bribe, a person is said to be corrupted, and thus corruption is a term sometimes held equivalent ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... or to gain your silence, by practising upon your feelings. Be silent. I am not the less ruined, not the less disgraced, not the less utterly undone. Be silent; my honour, all the same, in four-and-twenty hours, has gone for ever. I have no motive, then, to deceive you. You must believe what I speak; even what I speak, the most degraded of men. I say again, never, never, never, never, never was my honour before sullied, though guilty of a ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... been left at our house, and carried them to her own room, where they have laid since. I thought at the time, it was to spare me the pain of coming across them, as she had heard something of our dispute; but now, I recognize the possibility of there having been a more pitiful motive. She never utters his name either. I wonder have I done them both the awful wrong of thrusting myself between their young hearts, and spoiling the happy ambition of their lives—may God help me to repair it if ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... of objectivity—odious word—aiming, on the contrary, at giving us an exact presentment of all that happens in life, carefully avoid all complicated explanations, all disquisitions on motive, and confine themselves to let persons and events pass before our eyes. In their opinion, psychology should be concealed in the book, as it is in reality, under the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... or received, while alone in the forest, his inspirations, which have told him what to do. He takes the objects suggested, and with them performs his wonder works. Sometimes he tells others to do the same with the same things, but in this case he is still the motive force; it is his enchantment. In illustration of this I give ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... views of them; and there is no commoner error in private effort or in legislation than to aim at some obvious good, whilst overlooking other consequences of our action, the evil of which may far outweigh that good. An important consequence of eating is to satisfy hunger, and this is the ordinary motive to eat; but it is a poor account of the physiological consequences. An important consequence of firing a gun is the propulsion of the bullet or shell; but there are many other consequences in the whole effect, and one of them is the heating of the barrel, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... her, almost stupidly. His mind was groping about, trying to find some adequate motive for this new line of duplicity. He kept warning himself that she was not to be trusted. Human beings, all human beings, he had found, moved only by indirection. He was too old a bird to have ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... papers, it was enough. Notices stuck in the Venetian Mirror (the desecration!) for meetings of this and that society, and all of them, so he judged, just excuses for putting unwanted fingers into unwanted, dangerous pies. He thought of it like that—he could not help it; he saw too far into motive and internal action; was too impatient of the little storms, the paltry, tea-cup things. She, with her unique gift of serenity—her place was not among the busybodies grinding axes that were better blunt; interfering with the slow, slow working of the Mills of God. Her gift was example—rare ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Susanna feel herself obliged to caution me as to this Captain De Baron? She had no motive. She is not wicked." ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... sorrow, the Grecian sense of moderation forbids. The deepest anguish must mingle with his consciousness of fame, and punish his insolence. That glorification is the will of Zeus; and in the spirit of the ancient mythus, a motive for it is assigned in a divine legend. The sea-goddess Thetis, who was, according to the Phthiotic mythus, wedded to the mortal Peleus, saved Zeus, by calling up the giant Briareus or AEgaeon to his rescue. Why it was AEgaeon, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... are given in marriage, nor think that self-murder can help a man. What the end of all this tale may be does not yet appear; still I am certain that yonder Caleb will take no gain in hurrying down to death, unless indeed he did it from a nobler motive than he says, as ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... acquaintance. His talk rapt me to far other and earlier scenes, and I seemed to be conversing with him under a Venetian heaven, among objects of art more convincing than the equestrian statue of the late Queen, who had no special motive I could think of for being shown to her rightly loving subjects on horseback. We parted with the expressed hope of seeing each other again, and if this should meet his eye and he can recall the ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... of all relations, consequent upon quantity; as great and small, double and half, and the like; for quantity exists in both extremes: and the same applies to relations consequent upon action and passion, as motive power and the movable thing, father and son, and ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... was far-seeing enough to realise that he would be less the mere creature of the Egyptian ruler with the smaller than with the larger salary, while he could gratify his own inner pride that no one should say that any sordid motive had a part in his working for semi-civilized potentates, whether Chinese ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... eloquent description, "The melody may begin by pressing its way through a sweetly yielding resistance to a gradually foreseen climax; whence again fresh expectation is bred, perhaps for another excursion, as it were, round the same centre but with a bolder and freer sweep,...to a point where again the motive is suspended on another temporary goal; till after a certain number of such involutions and evolutions, and of delicately poised leanings and reluctances and yieldings, the forces so accurately measured just suffice to bring it home, and the sense of potential ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... opening that it could be shot across it at a point corresponding with the height of a tiger's heart from the ground—as well, at least, as that point could be estimated by men who were pretty familiar with tigers. The motive power to propel this spear was derived from a green bamboo, so strong that it required several powerful men to bend it in the form of a bow. A species of trigger was arranged to let the bent bow fly, and a piece of fine cord passed from this across the opening about breast-high ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... me the name of the person to whom you would lead me, your silence can arise from no good motive, and I might be justified in refusing to go with you ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... Lyman's crude persistence with Pearl. He danced with others now only when Pearl was firm in refusals. Wilbur to her jested with venomous sarcasm at the expense of Lyman. Women were difficult to understand, he thought. What could her motive be? ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... politics, which was by no means a part of Hay's plans. He had as much as he could do to overcome domestic friction, and felt no wish to alienate foreign powers. Yet so much could be said in favor of the foreigners that they commonly knew why they made trouble, and were steady to a motive. Cassini had for years pursued, in Peking as in Washington, a policy of his own, never disguised, and as little in harmony with his chief as with Hay; he made his opposition on fixed lines for notorious objects; but Senators could seldom give a reason ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... became noble, wonderful, super-human. So now he did not marvel at a slow stir stealing warmer along his veins, and at the premonition that perhaps he and this man, alone on the desert, driven there by life's mysterious and remorseless motive, were to see each other through ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... no unwholesome motive. As things stood, to delay his ordination would have been a stigma he did not deserve; and though he might have spent a year with advantage in a theological college, pupilage might only have prolonged his boyhood. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... such as no other American has ever received, but he remained from first to last the same quiet, deep-hearted, and unselfish man, whose chief motive was the promotion of human welfare. He had his faults and made his mistakes; but time has sloughed them all away, and there are few sources of inspiration which can compare with the study ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... so astonished and indignant at the suspicion hanging over him that he was almost released. How ever, indications of his guilt kept appearing, and baffled in my mind my first conviction, based on his excellent reputation, on his whole life, on the complete absence of any motive for such ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the aide, and stated the former's motive in making this visit. Cochise sat silent for some moments. At length, ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... know that there's any motive." She met his eyes frankly enough, but with a musing air as if considering a new suggestion. "No; it's just a wish, no more. An hour ago it seemed to me that everyone was eager and happy; that there would ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... account of the place, the master, the regularity of the scholars, of an apartment secured for my reception, and, in short, whatever else might captivate my mother's opinion in favour of his scheme; and indeed, though he acted principally from another motive, as was plain afterwards, I cannot help thinking he believed it to be the best way of disposing of a lad sixteen years old, born to a pretty fortune, and who, at that age, could but just read a chapter in the Testament; for he had before beat my mother quite out of her inclination ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... Esperance's state of mind, but these were futile efforts. Madame Darbois could never approach the burning question; she hovered round it with such uncertainty that Esperance never for an instant suspected her mother's real motive in the long talks ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... a dreary journey. The motive which had sustained the girl in her former trip from the city to her home was lacking. The fatigue incident to travel, the unjust reception of her by her father, with the doubtfulness of his escape, and the uncertainty of what was to become of her mother and herself, now bore upon her with such ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... early days, were formed those vast and prodigious layers of coal, which an ever—increasing consumption must utterly use up in about three centuries more, if people do not find some more economic light than gas, and some cheaper motive power than steam. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... is another motive more evangelical: Let England be humbled even for the mercy, the most admirable mercy which God hath showed upon so undeserving and evil-deserving a kingdom. See it in this same prophecy, "I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... place the half of my father's wealth in your possession. I have read your motive from the beginning, sir, and have only refrained from telling you my mind, because I make it a rule to have the good will of a dog, in preference to his ill will, when I can. But as your conduct to-day has removed the last thin screen from your real character, and revealed your naked depravity ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... these Men to perform them; that whereas Persons naturally Beneficent often mistake Instinct for Virtue, by reason of the Difficulty of distinguishing when one rules them and when the other, Men of the opposite Character may be more certain of the Motive that predominates in every Action. If they cannot confer a Benefit with that Ease and Frankness which are necessary to give it a Grace in the Eye of the World, in requital, the real Merit of what they do is inhanc'd by the Opposition they surmount in doing it. The Strength ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the opposition of electro-motive pairs of plates produces results other than those due to the mere difference of their independent actions (1011. 1045.), I devised another form of apparatus, in which the action of acid and alkali might be more directly compared. ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... at night to go next day; but in the morning, when the soft sunshine comes in at the window, and when we descend and walk in the garden, all our good intentions vanish. It is not simply that we do not go away, but we have lost the motive for those long excursions which we made at first, and which more adventurous travelers indulge in. There are those here who have intended for weeks to spend a day on Capri. Perfect day for the expedition succeeds perfect day, boatload after boatload sails away from the little marina at the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and mortification, I saw the blinds pulled down at every window of the Carlton library, and I felt that by our foolish curiosity we had caused this gathering of political opponents to hold their conference in the dark. It is quite true that neither I nor X. had any ulterior motive in our observation of the meeting at the Carlton Club, but all the same I cannot pretend that the use of the opera-glass was ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... none. And, as Mr. Carmyle was debating within himself whether to kiss her now or wait for a more suitable moment, embarrassment came upon them both like a fog, and the genial smile faded from his face as if the motive-power behind it had ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... two great motives of fear and love. The motive of fear was as great as the motive of love. Christianity accepted crucifixion to escape from fear; "Do your worst to me, that I may have no more fear of the worst." But that which was feared was not necessarily all evil, and ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... weary and anxious, and his anxiety increased. He wondered if he had treated her unfairly. He ate without knowing that he ate, and drank without tasting. As the hours dropped past, as the motive of each act in the long series of bygone days presented itself to his view, he perceived how intimately the notion of having Tess as a dear possession was mixed up with all his ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... it was!" I cried, with heated vehemence. "Be flames everlasting the dwelling of my soul if any other motive drove me to ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... that if to-day a rich man stripped himself of all his possessions and obeyed the doctrines of the Bible by giving them to the poor, the Daily something or other would worry around until they found some interested motive, and the Daily something or other else would succeed in proving the man ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of time that were left free; these Ellen seized for her studies and used most diligently, urged on by a three or fourfold motive. For the love of them, and for her own sake—that John might think she had done well—that she might presently please and satisfy Alice—above all, that her mother's wishes might be answered. This thought, whenever it came, was a spur to her efforts; so was each of the others; and Christian ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... various shops where the different operations are performed will be seen by examination of the plan. The motive power by which all the machinery of the establishment is driven, is furnished by a stationary engine in the very centre of the works, represented in the plan. It stands between two of the principal shops. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... to suspect some sinister motive. He knew something of both the men—of their public character—he could not otherwise, as they were lords paramount of the place. But of their private character, too, he had some knowledge, and that was far from being to their credit. With regard to Roblado, the cibolero had particular ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... to-day make a model steam-engine, and no one will contend that such a model was not made by himself, on the ground that it could not have been made either by him or by anybody unless Watt, with his exceptional genius, had invented steam as a motive-power. One might as well contend that a savage does not really light his own fire, on the ground that the art of kindling wood was found out by Prometheus, and that no one, except for him, would have had any fires at all. The truth is, it will ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... Led by this motive, he left his home in North Carolina to seek his fortune among the forest-clad mountains, whose summits he could see far-away to the west. With no companion but his horse and no protection but his rifle, he slowly and ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... head-shakes, profound winks, unutterable contortions, accompanied this piece of sound advice; and Dent left the shop, having conveyed the impression which he meant to convey—that Scarlett had stolen some Bank of England notes, and that Dent for a private motive of his own, which it did not behove Higgins to inquire into, wanted to get ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... use if she is not coming?' the Dictator suggested—not to disparage the intelligence of To-to, but only to find out, if he could, the motive of that undoubtedly sagacious animal's ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... which the coat was flung. Here sat Gibbes at the head of the table. Those on the left-hand side had their backs to the chair. I, being on the centre to the right, saw the chair, the coat, and the notes, and called attention to them. Now our first duty is to find a motive. If it were a murder, our motive might be hatred, revenge, robbery—what you like. As it is simply the stealing of money, the man must have been either a born thief or else some hitherto innocent person ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... against him, on account of the small sum found in the treasury of the fort, which amounted only to 54,000 Rs. The prince was firmly persuaded that the Company had somewhere concealed a vast treasure, which had been his principal motive to push the attack of the place. He had threatened Mr. Holwell very severely unless this treasure were found, and dismissed him to consult with his fellow-prisoners. This was bad news, for it was evidently impossible to persuade Surajah ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... the way you ask of me; but the regard which I conceived for you the first moment I saw you, and which is grown stronger by the service you have done me, kept me in suspense as to whether I should give you the satisfaction you desire." "What motive can hinder you?" replied the prince; "and what difficulties do you find in so doing?" "I will tell you," replied the dervish; "the danger to which you are going to expose yourself is greater than you may suppose. A number of gentlemen of as much bravery as ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... superstition! It was a flying in the face of Providence! How could they expect to prosper, when they acted with so little foresight, rendering the struggle for existence severer still! They did not reckon what strength the additional motive, what heart the new love, what uplifting the hope of help from on high, kindled by their righteous deed, might give them—for God likes far better to help people from the inside than from the outside. They did not think that this might ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... ambition excited the monks both of Germany and Greece, to visit the tents and huts of the Barbarians: poverty, hardships, and dangers, were the lot of the first missionaries; their courage was active and patient; their motive pure and meritorious; their present reward consisted in the testimony of their conscience and the respect of a grateful people; but the fruitful harvest of their toils was inherited and enjoyed by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... derived from the Aeolipyla (olla animatoria) the invention of Hero Alexandrinus, which showed that the ancient Egyptians could apply the motive ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... tell you not to take any stock in Jim's news! I knowed he was fibbin'. But—say miss. There's this about Jim. He don't ever take the trouble to make up a yam unless he has a motive. Now I'll bet Jim knows something about ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... persuaded that you acted from your best judgment, and believe that your desire to preserve my property, and rescue the buildings from impending danger, was your governing motive; but to go on board their vessels, carry them refreshments, commune with a parcel of plundering scoundrels, and request a favour by asking a surrender of my negroes, was exceedingly ill judged, and, it is to be feared, will be unhappy in its consequences, as it ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... of wrinkles to gather across his forehead, which was always reckoned a sure sign that Thad Stevens was concentrating his brain power upon the solution of a knotty problem. "One thing sure, we can't very well up and inform him of the fact ourselves, or he'd understand the motive right away." ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... their hands behind their heads. "Two," and only their eyes showed that every lax muscle in each body grew taut. "Three," and then they moved, the two men like two pieces of the same machine driven unerringly by the same motive power. ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... would, but suggested that unless he had some higher motive than the fear of being brought into trouble, he would in all probability continue as great a pickle as ever, if he did not go on from bad to worse. Indeed I read my chum a very severe lecture, which he took with perfect composure, feeling at the time that he fully deserved ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... found in the flourishing cycle of stories which, while Bret Harte was celebrating California, grew up about the life of Southern plantations before the war. The mood of most of these was of course elegiac and the motive was to show how much splendor had perished in the downfall of the old regime. Over and over they repeated the same themes: how an irascible planter refuses to allow his daughter to marry the youth of her choice and how true love finds a way; how a beguiling Southern maiden has ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... the humble capacity of a militia officer; but in those days the militia was not taken seriously by the nation, so the officers did not take it seriously either, and, after a brief trial, a great many of them resigned. The recognized motive for going into the militia was a social motive, and as I never had any social ambition it mattered nothing to me that there were a few men of rank in the regiment. I had not any real companions in it, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Barnave, show it still more clearly. The great chemist Lavoisier wrote to Priestley that if there had been some excesses, they were committed for the love of liberty, philosophy, and toleration, and that there was no danger of such things being done in France for an inferior motive. And this is the view of Jefferson on the massacres of September: "Many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent. These I deplore as much as anybody. But—it was necessary ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Primal Forces, who was about to settle her destiny for her; in which she stumbled almost on the truth. Miss Muller was quite aware of the fact of her brother's visits at the book-shop, and their motive. She glanced at her watch: she could give herself half an hour to find out what stuff was in the girl, though it hardly needed so long. "A good type of the Domestic Woman in the raw state," she thought. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... Baker and Cub followed, wondering a little as to the motive of the boy's father. But they were not ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... imperfections are, at least, very convenient. So my theory is this: the people whom the age suits fairly well don't bother—I don't bother; the others do. It is these confounded glaring and unshorn anachronisms that upset everything. They go about flapping their ideals at you, and writing novels with a motive, and starting movements and societies, and generally poking one's epoch to rags, until at last it is worn out and you have to start a new one. My conception of the progress of humanity is something after the Wandering Jew pattern. Your average humanity I figure as a ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... come when the mystery shall be manifest of its furthest north and south, and men resolve the secret of the uttermost parts of the sea: the poles also may find their Columbus. But the limits of that other ocean, the laws of its tides, the motive of its forces, the mystery of its unity and the secret of its change, no seafarer of us all may ever think thoroughly to know. No wind-gauge will help us to the science of its storms, no lead- line sound for us the depth of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... all around; so whatever objects may be served by all the Vedas, may all be had by a Brahmana having knowledge (of self or Brahma).[144] Thy concern is with work only, but not with the fruit (of work). Let not the fruit be thy motive for work; nor let thy inclination be for inaction. Staying in devotion, apply thyself to work, casting off attachment (to it), O Dhananjaya, and being the same in success or unsuccess. This equanimity ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... letter, and which I ever believed you to possess, has alone inspired the desire of calling your attention once more to those circumstances of fact and motive by which I claim to be judged. I hope you will see these intrusions on your time to be, what they really are, proofs of my great, respect for you. I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion, without imputing to them criminality. I know too well the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the elder. "I am not a cultivated man, and I don't even know how to address you properly, but you have been deceived and you have been too good-natured in letting us meet here. All my father wants is a scandal. Why he wants it only he can tell. He always has some motive. But I believe ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... suffering and hardship, and not even the near approach of death itself, could disturb. Here, again, Fielding consciously avows a moral purpose in his art; the merciless scorn of his insight in depicting a vicious man or woman is actuated, he expressly declares, by a motive other than that of 'art for art's sake.' And as this motive is scarce perceptible in the lifelike reality of the figures whom we see breathing in actual flesh and blood in his pages, and yet is of the first importance for understanding ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... whole, so tar as I know, been made matter of special observation, or of historical research, by any scientific inquirer. Indeed, until the influence of geographical conditions upon human life was recognized as a distinct branch of philosophical investigation, there was no motive for the pursuit of such speculations; and it was desirable to inquire how far we have, or can, become the architects of our own abiding place, only when it was known how the mode of our physical, moral, and intellectual being is affected by the character of the home ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... splendid humor for carrying on an argument, not, of course, for the sake of contradicting or conquering or crushing or showing off or for any other vulgar weakness of lower minds, but for the noble and indeed the only motive that should impel a philosopher—that of enlightening and convincing, "In taking the negative side, however, or saying that the Moon is not inhabitable, I shall not be satisfied with merely negative arguments. Many words, however, are not ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... in Louisiana. In popular opinion, there was something traitorous in that unsuccessful venture of his. In 1805 Mr. Burr paid $50,000 for 400,000 acres of land which had been purchased of Spain in 1800, before it passed to France and then to the United States in 1803. Of the motive of Colonel Burr we must always be ignorant; that he was not guilty of any crime in connection therewith we are certain, for the highest tribunal of the land acquitted him. President Jefferson and the entire political force of the administration ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... soul, 'and on what errand, are you sending the body?'—'On no errand whatsoever,' the soul makes answer, 'and to no destination at all. It is just like you to be always on the look-out for some subtle ulterior motive. The body is going out because the mere fact of its doing so is a sure indication of nobility, probity, and rugged grandeur of character.'—'Very well, Vagula, have your own wayula! But I,' says the brain, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of whom felt quite disposed to assume even such equality as might seem to follow from joint membership of the committee. That gentleman had, however, sufficient influence at City Hall to secure appointment, a whim which had seized him to pose as a patron of art being his obvious motive; and neither Mr. Hubbard nor Mr. Calvin was prepared to go quite to the length of declining to serve with ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... mamma feel and see more? We have been just like comfortable passengers on a ship, while papa was facing we knew not what. I may not be of much use, but I feel now as if I wanted to be with him. To stay below with scarcely any other motive than to have a good time, and then to be paralyzed, helpless, when some shock of trouble comes, now seems silly and weak to the last degree. I am only too glad that I came to my senses in time, for if anything should happen to papa, and ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... the hills, and then back into my face, his eyes narrowing, his lips setting firm over the white teeth. I little realized what was taking place in the fellow's brain, what real motive influenced his decision, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... plan, and more out of curiosity than from any other motive, the chums proceeded from one tree to another, examining each as they reached it, and marvelling all the time at what they decided as being one of the most remarkable freaks of Nature that they had ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... weeks. . . . I wish I could bring myself to feel perfectly indifferent to the opinions of others. I believe that there never was a person more dependent on the good and evil opinions of those around than I am. This desire to be loved forms, I fear, the great motive for all my actions. . . . I have been reading carefully the book of Job, and I do not think that it contains the views of God which you presented to me. God seems to have stripped a dependent creature of all ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... rapids on even the smallest streams render their ascent in boats extremely difficult and often impossible. But lakes and canals are the natural highways of the country; rivers are only utilized as a motive power for electricity, manufactories, and for conveying millions of logs of timber yearly from the inland forests to the sea. A curious fact is that, although many parts of the interior are far below the level of the Baltic, the latter is gradually but surely receding ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... being. Was there no one to answer for it? Surely there must be a heart-life somewhere in the universe, to whose will the un-self-willed life could refer for the justification of its existence, for its motive, for the idea of it that should make it seem right to itself—to whom it could cry to have its divergence from that idea rectified! Was she not now, she thought, upon her silent way to her own deathbed, walking, walking, the phantom of herself, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... conversations of brief duration with Miss Hamm. The first meeting was by chance, we merely exchanging commonplaces touching upon our respective fields of activity here at Fernbridge; but the second eventuated through deliberate intent on my part. With premeditation I put myself in her path. My motive for so doing was, I trust, based upon unselfishness entirely. I had formed an early and perhaps a hasty estimate of this young woman's nature. I wished either to convince myself absolutely upon these points or to disabuse my ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... "What motive have you, Lucia, for being anxious to know the person that gives me so much happiness? You care for me, don't you? What feelings should one cherish toward some one who makes a beloved person happy and ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... Through motive of economy no masonry was placed under the base of the three wedged curbs. In fact, by replacing this with a wedged curb of wood traversed by six bolts designed to fix the cast iron curb immediately above, Mr. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... certain point—mild, inoffensive, perhaps, up to the very moment in which he commits some appalling crime. And then people cry out upon the want of prudence, the want of common-sense which allowed such an act to be possible. No, Lady Mary, I understand the benevolence of your motive, but I cannot permit you to run ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... recollect that I did not mention to you the circumstance of ——— having a fortune left to him; nor did a hint of it drop from me when I conversed with my sister; because I knew he had a sufficient motive for concealing it. Last Sunday, when his character was aspersed, as I thought, unjustly, in the heat of vindication I informed ****** that he was now independent; but, at the same time, desired him not to repeat my information ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... This was the motive that kept him at Interlaken, in the same hotel as the Wassiliefs. At his age, with his air of a good papa, he certainly could not dream of making that poor child love him, but he saw her so sweet, so brave, so generous to all the unfortunates of her party, so devoted ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... must have known, even better than she, herself, what a terrific, heart-breaking struggle it would be. Or did he wish to put her to the test, to find out if her professed determination to live a new and cleaner life was genuine and sincere. If that was his motive, surely she had been tried enough. Then, as she gave herself up to reflection, doubts began to creep in, doubts of herself, doubts of him. If he really loved her, truly and unselfishly, would he let her suffer in this way, ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... hand that the first duty of every government is to interpret faithfully popular aspirations. With this motive, although the abnormal circumstances of the war have compelled me to institute this Dictatorial Government which assumes full powers, both civil and military, my constant desire is to surround myself with the most distinguished persons of each Province, those who by their conduct, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... positions which will require not only severe labor, but cordial cooperation. Having no implied engagements to ratify, no rewards to bestow, no resentments to remember, and no personal wishes to consult in selections for official station, I shall fulfill this difficult and delicate trust, admitting no motive as worthy either of my character or position which does not contemplate an efficient discharge of duty and the best interests of my country. I acknowledge my obligations to the masses of my countrymen, and to them alone. Higher objects than personal aggrandizement ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... him. What did he want there? It was surely some sinister motive impelled him. He was probably watching for an opportunity to gobble up the goldfish. We took his part, however, and strenuously defended his moral character, and patronized him in all ways. We gave him the name of Unke, and maintained that he was a well-conducted, philosophical ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... destruction of the old-time life of the Colonial city. William Gilmore Simms was the head and mentor of the brilliant little band, and the much younger men, Paul Hamilton Hayne and Henry Timrod, were the fiery souls that gave it the mental electricity necessary to furnish the motive power. Through all the coming days of trial and hardship, of aspiration and defeat, of watching from the towers of high achievement or lying prone in the valley of failure, not one of that little circle ever lost the golden memory ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... his cigar, lit another one absent-mindedly, and rescued his tie, which was working its slow way around to the side of his collar. There were, he remembered, three classic divisions of any crime: method, motive and opportunity. Maybe thinking ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... over his search for hostile motive in our visit, and we discussed the programme for the morrow. I found that there was a healthy fear of the Prince of Montenegro, for, when I told him that the Prince's little steamer would be waiting ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... a sudden recollection rushed through him of his own thoughts, doubts, conflicts, and final determination of the past twenty-four hours. Did not every one of these concern himself as a primary, if not an only, motive? Was he not exercised, first of all, by a sense of his own importance, so that the wishes of a dying man availed nothing against the preservation of his own dignity? The laugh gave place to a frown as ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... usually the dominating factor in all the boy arguments of their "bunch", which varied in numbers from ten to twenty, according to the motive of interest that drew them together. He seldom started an argument, unless his disposition to "bawl" somebody out for uttering a, to him, foolish opinion, he regarded as a starter. He seldom spoke first, but usually last. One day he "bawled" Tee-hee for the latter's "silly laugh", telling him ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... were the double reflex of their mother's nature, grasping all and giving nothing. Is there no such virtue on earth as pure unselfish Love?—love that gives itself freely, unasked, without hope of advantage or reward—and without any personal motive lurking ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... agree with Mrs. Hornblower's intentions. "Tired, ain't you, Robert?" Her solicitude was so marked as to suggest an ulterior motive. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... you must, in order to prove the crime of murder, be able to show the body of the victim; you must show that murder has really been done. You must show a motive, a reason. You must show, or be prepared to show, when required, a mental responsibility on the part of the accused. All these things you must show by the best possible testimony, not by what you think, or what you have heard, but by direct testimony, produced ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... "What possible motive!"—he said. "For it is evident that the shot was fired of intent, and evident that you yourself think so. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... that is, an heavenly." Whether this faith grasped the doctrine of bodily resurrection, in addition to that of the immortality of the soul, we are not told. It is remarkable that throughout the books of Moses there is an absence of reference to the future life as a motive to holy living. Prosperity and adversity in this life are set forth as the reward or punishment of conduct, leading to the inference, either that retribution in the future life was not revealed, or that it exercised little practical influence. As time passed the doctrine ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... care a fig for justice!" impatiently. "My motive is purely selfish. If I can be instrumental in recovering your diamonds, may I not hope for some ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... demonstration in dealing with a Government so imbecile, and so ignorant of our resources. The places are too far from the capital, and the war party may succeed in persuading the King that in this demonstration we put forth all our strength. I can appreciate your motive—the wish to avoid, if possible, a war of annexation, which a war upon any scale must be. We should have to make use of a vast number of suffering people, whom we could not abandon to the ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... person, that we withhold the truth. We feel sure that the sick person, when he recovers; the insane person when he is restored to reason; the criminal, if he is ever converted to uprightness, will appreciate the kindness of our motive, and thank us for our deed. To the person of sound body, sound mind, and sound moral intent, no conceivable combination of circumstances can ever excuse us from the strict requirement of absolute veracity, or make a lie anything but ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... out on the moor,' grumbled her husband. 'I am sick to death of this ill-advised, unreasonable journey. I am at a loss to imagine your motive in bringing me here. You must ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... wanted them badly. He thereupon conceived the bold idea of getting a reward for his knowledge. He went to the police-station with a merely modest motive in his mind—fifty pounds would carry him to Vienna, where he knew how to dispose of the diamond at once, with no questions asked. But when he found the owners of the diamond and the bank- notes present he decided ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... cannot fail to remark that the cottager who devotes his hours of leisure to the improvement of his garden, is rarely subject to the extreme privations of poverty, and commonly enjoys a character superior to the circumstances of his condition. His taste is a motive to employment, and employment secures him from the temptations to extravagance and the natural consequences of dissipated habits."[1] Further, we learn, one great object of the society is to educate a certain number of young ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... have read has unduly impressed you with the idea that the salesman's motive in his preparation is selfish. So perhaps it is well to pause here for the reminder that your primary salesmanship purpose should be true service. You are preparing yourself thoroughly in knowledge of your full sales value, as a measure of success ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... I have often regretted that my tour in Ireland, chiefly performed in the short days of October in a carriage and four (I was with Mr. Marshall), supplied my memory with so few images that were new and with so little motive to write. The lines, however, in this poem, 'Thou too he heard, lone eagle!' &c., were suggested near the Giant's Causeway, or rather at the promontory of Fairhead, where a pair of eagles wheeled above our heads, and darted off as if to hide themselves ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... The simplicity of motive and directness of execution which had been the strength of the Sung art gradually gave way during the Ming era to complicated conceptions and elaborate effects. The high glow of life faded; the lyrical temper and impassioned work of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... guard against the error, which is frequently made, that, because the classical economists assumed self-interest as the sole motive of economic action, they therefore ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... stir in English politics and write it up for these English papers. To simplify matters I thought it better to use one and the same incident and write it up in three different ways and get paid for it three, times. All of those who write for the Press will understand the motive at once. I waited therefore and watched the papers to see if anything interesting might happen to the Ahkoond of Swat or the Sandjak of Novi Bazar or any other native potentate. Within a couple of days I got what I wanted in the following item, which I need hardly say is ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... if she is not coming?' the Dictator suggested—not to disparage the intelligence of To-to, but only to find out, if he could, the motive of that undoubtedly sagacious animal's taking such a ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... had been her wont before, and, sitting on the little low stool at his feet, she told him the story of her month abroad and the impelling motive of her return. ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... think his own glory a sufficient motive for the invasion of Holland. The czar attacked Charles of Sweden, because he had not been treated with sufficient respect when he made a journey in disguise. The king of Prussia, having an opportunity of attacking his neighbour, was not long without his reasons. On July 30th, he published ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... d'Artagnan, aloud; "I have no motive for defending Monsieur. I saw him today for the first time, and he can tell you on what occasion; he came to demand the rent of my lodging. Is that ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... said Tarling promptly, "but I'm not going to pretend that I understand his mind. These are the facts. The revolver, or rather the pistol, was in my cupboard and the only person who could get at it was Ling Chu. There is the second and more important fact imputing motive, that Ling Chu had every reason to hate Thornton Lyne, the man who had indirectly been responsible for his sister's death. I have been thinking the matter over and I now recall that Ling Chu was unusually silent after he had seen Lyne. He has admitted ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... another motive, however, for the sudden return. From one of the prizes it had been learned that the English thirty-two-gun frigate Carrysford, the twenty-gun sloop Perseus, the sixteen-gun sloop Hinchinbrook, with several privateers, had been cruising off the coast together, and the commander of ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... I reckon it's likely they'll halt to-day and won't be back till to-morrow. I feel oneasy in my mind about the whole affair, for I can't see a single reason for the enemy sending that weak force to Mount Holly, unless it was to draw away the troops from here, and the only motive there could be for that would be because they intended to ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... However, since my return to Port Lincoln, I have learned that both tales run very differently when told according to truth. I address myself, therefore, to you, with the true facts of the transactions, as I have learned them. partly from the settlers themselves, partly from the natives. My motive for so doing is to case my own mind, and to gratify the interest which I know you take in the Aborigines ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... your motive in telling me, especially as I am still to look upon Viola as my half-sister. I have already stated that under no circumstances will I hurt her by raking up that old, infamous story. I find myself ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... brilliant imagery, his splendid scholarship, his fine analytical power, he is not surpassed by Macaulay, while he far exceeds him in impartiality,—that diamond of the historian,—and in his keen comprehension of the great motive-principles of the age which he describes. Neither are Prescott, Bancroft, or Irving inferior to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... be seized. In seizing it, however, the alternatives were difficult. She was without a cent, a shelter, a job, a friend, or the prospect of a meal. It was probable that there was not at that minute in New York a human being so destitute. Before nightfall she would have to find some nominal motive for living or be ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... night with his accustomed honesty, Ishmael came to the conclusion that it was the law of cause and effect, and not the law of reactions, which prompted his new stirrings, and he was as nearly right as any man may be about his own motive power. ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... coupled with the interest which the fragment possesses, as a specimen of the moral poetry of our ancestors, and as throwing light upon the transition of our language from Saxon to English, has been the motive for producing it in a more legible form than that in ...
— The Departing Soul's Address to the Body • Anonymous
... pleasure with which I would put mine at your service!" I exclaimed. I had scarcely said this, however, before I became aware that the speech was in questionable taste and might also do me the injury of making me appear too eager, too possessed of a hidden motive. But the old woman remained impenetrable and her attitude bothered me by suggesting that she had a fuller vision of me than I had of her. She gave me no thanks for my somewhat extravagant offer but remarked that the lady I had seen the day before was her niece; she would presently come in. She ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... every war, a motive of safety or revenge, of honor or zeal, of right or convenience, may be readily found in the jurisprudence of conquerors. No sooner had Timour reunited to the patrimony of Zagatai the dependent countries of Carizme and Candahar, than he turned his eyes towards ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... proposed to fetch a compass towards Prieska, where he hoped to effect a junction with Hertzog, but the driving power of the raid was slowly exhausting itself. The motive energy was stored up in accumulators, and when these were discharged in succession, there was no means of re-charging them. Hertzog and Kritzinger, who had been relied on for this purpose, were not at hand; more than a third of the force with which De Wet had originally left the Doornberg had ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... their way to small, isolated places, change their appearance as much as possible, and each shift for himself. To remain together increases the risk of capture for each and all. There must be some powerful motive to make them take such risks. Such men risk nothing except for money. But there are no banks here to be looted, no strangers to be waylaid in dark alleys, not even a blind beggar to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... electro-motive pairs of plates produces results other than those due to the mere difference of their independent actions (1011. 1045.), I devised another form of apparatus, in which the action of acid and alkali might be more directly compared. A cylindrical glass cup, about two inches deep within, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... its nature a process of continual alteration; hence in the established sciences only written transmission is accepted. Historians have no avowable motive for proceeding differently, at any rate when it is a case of establishing a particular fact. We must therefore search documents for statements derived from oral tradition in order that we may suspect them. We rarely have direct information as ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... work, and in the midst of a job of polishing I fear no increase of wages would induce it to complete its task! If water were plentiful, you might make it pump up a quantity when the wind served, to be used as a motive power when you chose." ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... think of it. This is most unfortunate. I declare solemnly that it was only in so far as the facts we were so anxious to establish might have enabled us to prevent this accursed union, that I myself felt an interest in our success. Miss Gourlay's happiness was my sole motive ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... him down with his strong hand. It may be asked why Captain Monk did not provide the funds himself for this whim. But he would never touch his own pocket for the benefit of the parish if he could help it: and it was thought that his antagonism to the parson was the deterring motive. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... freezing up of his fountain of poetical inspiration, we really take to have been his change of politics. Wordsworth's muse was essentially liberal—one may say, Jacobinical. That he was unconscious of any sordid motive for his change, we sincerely believe; but as certainly his conforming was the result less of reasonable conviction than of willfulness. It was by a determined effort of his will that he brought himself, to believe in the Church-and-State notions which he latterly promulgated. ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... languages and modern history, as well as those physical accomplishments and social graces by which a young man won his way at Court, they trace his evolution up to the time when it had no longer any serious motive; that is, when the chairs of modern history and modern languages were founded at the English universities, and when, with the fall of the Stuarts, the Court ceased to be the arbiter of men's fortunes. In the course of this evolution they show us many phases of continental influence ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... all the plans we made and rejected. Everything seemed impossible. We knew from Castro that O'Brien had gone to Havana, either to take the news of Don Balthasar's death himself, or else to prevent the news spreading there too soon. Whatever his motive for leaving Rio Medio, he had left orders that the house should be respected under the most awful penalties, and that it should be watched so that no one left it. The Englishman was to be killed at sight. Not a hair on anybody else's head ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... but believe them. It is like reading evidence given in a court of justice. So anxious the story-teller seems that the truth should be clearly comprehended that when he has told us a matter of fact or a motive, in a line or two farther down he repeats it with his favorite figure of speech, "I say" so and so, though he had made it abundantly plain before. This is in imitation of the common people's way of speaking, or rather ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... the sighing or sentimental order of swains; he was full of life and adventure and brightness, and his heart was warm and generous. He admired the beautiful girl, but he pitied her still more, and this pity was the real motive which made him yield to the fairy's proposal ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... the fact that he dreaded the conditions and experiences that might await her and her friends in Russia. For these same reasons her mother also desired her return, yet Mildred knew that there was another motive actuating her mother. She might be unconscious of the fact, but if her daughter should reappear in New York society at the present time, because of her war experiences she would become an object of unusual interest ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... insane. I mean that modern doctrine, taught, I believe, by most followers of Karl Marx, which is called the materialist theory of history. The theory is, roughly, this: that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive. In short, history is a science; a science of the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... the crowd to "caress" the Frenchmen with knives and other instruments of torture, the children imitating the barbarity of their elders. I should not repeat such details of this horrible story here except to give background to one moment's act in the midst of it all, illustrative of the motive which was back of this unexampled endurance. While he and his companions were on the scaffold of torture, four Huron prisoners were brought in and put beside the Frenchmen: whereupon Father Jogues began his ministry anew, for when an ear of green corn was thrown ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... he answered, quickly; "there's no motive under Heaven to be imagined if the whole ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Hawlinshed had some very strong motive for continuing the chase a second day. What could he want of him? Dory concluded that he either expected to recover the Goldwing, or that he connected him in some manner with his father. Whatever his motive, Dory did not want to ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... Isaac Goldberg (Brentano's). We have already come to know what a keen analyst America has in Mr. Pinski from the translations of his plays which have been published. Here he is much less interested in the surface movement of plot than in the relentless search for motive. To his Yiddish public he seems perhaps the best of short story writers who write in his tongue, and certainly he can hold his own with the best of his contemporaries in all countries. He has the universal note as few English writers may ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... his rancour; you, because... because having told him that in the King's service he would find his redemption of what was past, you would not afterwards admit to him that he was so redeemed. And this, although concern to rescue you was the chief motive of his ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Zeno. But although you are as keen as a Spartan hound in pursuing the track, you do not fully apprehend the true motive of the composition, which is not really such an artificial work as you imagine; for what you speak of was an accident; there was no pretence of a great purpose; nor any serious intention of deceiving ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... savage flashed his quick eyes upon her and dwelt over her for a space, seeking out, as it were, the motive beneath ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... a driving motive power greater than any campaign-manager ever had or has—a Jesus who sets fire to one's whole being, with a passion of love that burns up every other flame. We need a Church as thoroughly organized, and every man in it with a burning heart ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... by the light of the moon, which was now high in the heavens, that the young fellow looked at me attentively, as though he was trying to read my motive in asking these questions. ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... only be obtained by freedom and by united military training. [Cheers.] What they lacked has been supplied to them, and the Egyptian army, as it has issued from the hands of Sir Evelyn Wood, Sir Francis Grenfell, and the Sirdar, is a magnificent specimen of the motive power of the English leader. [Cheers.] We do not reflect on it, yet if we have any interest in the administrative processes that go on in various parts of the Empire we cannot help being impressed by the fact that numbers ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... religion.[75] In a long document addressed in 1750 to the Colonial Minister at Versailles, Roma, an officer at Louisbourg, testifies thus to the mildness of British rule, though he ascribes it to interested motives. "The fear that the Acadians have of the Indians is the controlling motive which makes them side with the French. The English, having in view the conquest of Canada, wished to give the French of that colony, in their conduct towards the Acadians, a striking example of the mildness of their government. Without raising the fortune of any of the inhabitants, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... condition, however they may doubt the necessity or the duty of giving formal utterance to them in the language of religious worship. But in regard to the fourth, which, if it be not the most sublime or elevated, is yet the most urgent motive to the exercise of devotion, many difficulties have been raised and many objections urged, which do not apply, at least in the same measure, to the other parts of Prayer, and which, in so far as they prevail with reflecting minds, would soon lead to the practical neglect of all religious worship. ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... of Canada during the seven months of the year that the St. Lawrence is not navigable. The communication which the English pretend they require by land between New England and Nova Scotia, along the coast of the Etchemins[29] and the Bay of Fundy, is only a vain pretext to mask their real motive, which is to deprive France of ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... if every event requires a cause, and every volition is guided by motives, what are called the spontaneous acts of the mind must be the necessary result of motives which direct and command its elections. "To say that in our choice we reject the stronger motive, and that we choose a thing merely because we choose it, is sheer nonsense and absurdity. And whoever, with a sound understanding, will fix his mind upon the state of the question, will ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... statement wholly true,—and that this evident freedom from political bias secured perhaps an unusual share of the confidence of the Southern Senators. It will be remembered, also, that in every conversation, however startling the revelation of criminal purpose or absurd motive, the manner of these Senators was always totally devoid of any approach to that vulgar intellectual levity which too often, in treating of public affairs, painfully characterizes the fifth-rate men whom the North sometimes chooses to make its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... strengthen our faith, whose unquestioned beauty should find a home in our hearts, to cheer us in life and death; a music worthy of the fair temples in which we meet, and of the holy words of our liturgy; a music whose expression of the mystery of things unseen never allowed any trifling motive to ruffle the sanctity of its reserve. What power for good such a ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... provisions should be taken off from the allowance of each person who might absent himself from prayers without giving a reasonable excuse. And thus, we may suppose, a better congregation was secured; but, alas! from what a motive were they induced to draw near their God. And how many are there, it is to be feared, in our country parishes in England, whose great inducement to attend their church is the fact that the clergyman generally has certain gifts ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... agree with me that the little girl quite deserved this rebuff, because of the unworthiness of her motive. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... was then made to prove that Lambert had murdered Poindexter; but it entirely failed, there being no evidence that the two men had ever so much as met, and there being no conceivable motive for the murder. Lambert, therefore, was permitted to enter undisturbed upon his inheritance; for he had no difficulty in establishing the fact of the elder Lambert's marriage to an Italian woman twenty-three ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... fear of death, but by the sentiments of religion; a principle which he had before attempted to make the instrument of his ambition, but which now took a more firm hold of his mind, and prevailed over every other motive and consideration. His spiritual directors persuaded him, that he never could obtain the pardon of Heaven, unless he made a full confession of his disloyalty; and he gave in to the council an account of all his criminal design, as well as of his correspondence with the king of Scots. He spared ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... doubtful in that—Undone again—Humph! but that may proceed from his Power to keep her out of her Estate till Twenty Five; I'll try that—Come, Madam, I cannot think you hesitate in this Affair out of any Motive, but your Fortune—Let him keep it till those few Years are expir'd; make me Happy with your Person, let him enjoy your Wealth—(Miran. holds up her Hands.) Why, what Sign is that now? Nay, nay, Madam, except you observe my Lesson, I can't ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... for inexpediency at the same time. Therefore also the mores, if they are affected by asceticism, are inconsistent and contradictory. Nevertheless asceticism is only an aberration which starts from a highly virtuous motive. We must do what is right and virtuous because it is so. It is right and virtuous to fight sensuality in personal character and social action. The fight will often consist in acts which have no further relation to interests. By zeal the work of this ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... not at all inclined to award praise and reputation; it is more disposed to blame and find fault, whereby it indirectly praises itself. If, notwithstanding this, praise is won from mankind, some extraneous motive must prevail. I am not here referring to the disgraceful way in which mutual friends will puff one another into a reputation; outside of that, an effectual motive is supplied by the feeling that next to the merit of doing something oneself, comes that of correctly appreciating and recognizing ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... but you cannot think that I like it or approve of the diplomacy you are compelled to practice, even though your motive be unselfish and filial. I don't think you ought to be placed in such a position, and would that it were in my power to relieve you ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... surmounted every other; to be by her side again and entreat forgiveness was the only thing that had the force of a motive for him, and she had not been seated more than a few minutes when he came and stood humbly before her. But Maggie's bitter rage ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... to understand. It was not from any kindly motive Newall had spoken up for him that morning. The bitterness of his words now told him that, and the vindictiveness in his eyes spoke even plainer than speech. Paul had been deceived, and he had been deceived. Why had he demeaned himself by asking a fellow like Newall to shake ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... turned towards the table, and buried his face in his hands. He did not understand it. He did not know whence came all this opposition. He could not conceive what was the motive power which caused his nephew thus to thwart and throw him over, standing forward as he did with thousands and tens of thousands in his hand. But he knew that his request was refused, and he ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... conceive how some one might speak better of them than they deserved, without any ill intention: for as kings had much in their power to give, those who were favored by them would frequently, from gratitude, exaggerate their praises; and as this proceeded from a good motive, it was certainly excusable as far as ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... fifteen huts. A colony composed of elements altogether heterogeneous perished by degrees. The vagabonds of the Llanos had as little taste for labour as the natives, who were compelled to live within the sound of the bell. The former found a motive in their pride to justify their indolence. In the missions, every mulatto who is not decidedly black as an African, or copper-coloured as an Indian, calls himself a Spaniard; he belongs to the gente de razon—the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... common; and the connection which has been sought with the legend of Holger Danske is equally difficult to establish. The essence of this latter story is the hero's disappearance into fairyland, and the expectation of his return sometime in the future: a motive which has been very fruitful in Irish romance, and in the traditions of Arthur, Tryggvason, and Barbarossa, among countless others. But it is absent from the Helgi poems; and the "old wives' tales" of Helgi's re-birth have nothing to do with his legend, but ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... truly it's not that. I was hurt and—shamed. But even then I divined why you had done it and realized the nobility of your motive." ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... concerning the project as the old man himself, and eagerly aided in his preparations to the full extent of her ability. There was but one point on which they disagreed. When Cap'n Cod had exhausted his own resources, and the motive power of the Whatnot still remained unprovided, Sabella begged that he would draw some of her money from the bank and use it, but this the old man firmly ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... part of the sentence depends on "that:" "His enemies answered that, for the sake of preserving the public peace, they would keep quiet for the present, though he declared that cowardice was the motive of the delay, and that for this reason they would put off the trial to a more ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... have suggested that the expense of running a dry-farm could be materially reduced by using some motive power other than horses. Steam, gasoline, and electricity have all been suggested. The steam traction engine is already a fairly well-developed machine and it has been used for plowing purposes on many dry-farms in nearly all the sections of the dry-farm territory. Unfortunately, ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... among you, and I must go to spare you the odious spectacle of a father bereft of dignity. Do not oppose my departure Adeline. It would only be to load with your own hand the pistol to blow my brains out. Above all, do not seek me in my hiding-place; you would deprive me of the only strong motive remaining in me, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... persons but abstractions. They have just enough character to be male or female, but they cannot move about or act independently of their natural basis; they cannot marry, nor breed scandal, nor make war. Nor can there be any motive for identifying with such beings a great man who has died; where there are no true gods, there cannot be any demi-gods or heroes. Only a very limited power can possibly be put forth by such beings; all they can do is to give or to withhold prosperity, each in the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the assembly which votes the taxes, either general or local, should be elected exclusively by those who pay something towards the taxes imposed. Those who pay no taxes, disposing by their votes of other people's money, have every motive to be lavish and none to economize. As far as money matters are concerned, any power of voting possessed by them is a violation of the fundamental principle of free government, a severance of the power of control from the interest in its ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... recently informed him, to follow the example of his cousin, the Grand Master in Prussia, by converting his bishopric into a temporal princedom, and entering the state of matrimony, and to name, as the chief motive for so doing, the 'hateful and horrible rebellion,' wherewith God's wrath had visited the sins of ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... meet its present and provide for its future necessities, I bore them in silence, lest to vindicate myself should injure the public service by turning the public censure to the generals on whom the hopes of the country rested. That motive no longer exists; and, to justify the faith of those who, without a defense continued to uphold my hands, I propose to set forth the facts by correspondence and otherwise. So far as, in doing this, blame shall be transferred from me to others, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... influence exercised in our rural districts by the cures is great, and this influence is well merited, for it is never abused—and never used unless for the benefit and happiness of the flock confided to their care. Without any motive of a personal nature, without ambition in any sense to which that word can apply, they preach the Catholic religion in all its simplicity, accepting and considering as brothers all those who really desire to follow the example of their Saviour Christ—all those who really love to ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... Regular Army. Their homes and callings and the light amusements of a great city filled their minds in the same way as the Regimental tradition and routine filled those of the old British Regular Army. With a few exceptions, the feeling of duty was a far stronger motive to their soldiering than any love of adventure. These Manchester men had little of the Crusader or Elizabethan but his valour. They were, in fact, almost arrogantly civilian, coming from a country which had dared ineptly to look down on its defenders. The Northerner is not an enthusiast by nature. ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... Davies was found lying in the high-road, senseless, an hour later, and never, said Urbana, knew what hit him. Concussion of the brain was feared, for he had evidently been assaulted in the dark from behind and felled to earth by blows of some heavy, blunt instrument. Robbery was evidently the motive, for his little store of money and the beautiful and costly watch presented to his father at the close of the war were gone. Almira had two patients now, and devotedly she attended them. When in a fortnight Percy declared he must ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... upon which they relied), i.e. north of 41 deg. N. latitude,—is very certain; but that it was of Dutch origin, or based upon motives which are attributed to the Dutch, is clearly erroneous. While the historical facts indicate an utter lack of motive for such an intrigue on the part of the Dutch, either as a government or as individuals, there was no lack of motive on the part of certain others, who, we can but believe, were responsible for the conspiracy. Moreover, the chief conspirators ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... the Biographia imputes the violence and acrimony with which Waller joined Buckingham's faction in the prosecution of Clarendon. The motive was illiberal and dishonest, and showed that more than sixty years had not been able to teach him morality. His accusation is such as conscience can hardly be supposed to dictate, without the help of malice: "We were to be governed by janizaries, instead of parliaments, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... it seemed natural to Randal's estimate of human nature that Harley's more prudish scruples of honour, as regards what is due to women, could not resist a temptation so strong. Mere friendship was not a motive powerful enough to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... extraction, holding her in such light esteem, as not to relish the idea of making any offer for her hand. So if Fu Shih cultivated intimate terms with the Chia household, he, needless to add, did so with an interested motive. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... was rather too much anxiety on the part of a wounded man's comrades to carry him to the rear; but it did not continue for long. The actuating motive is not always kindness and humanity, but a desire to get out of danger. It was soon evident that it was only going from the frying-pan into the fire, as the danger of walking back carrying a wounded ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... power from little machines operating machinery requiring only fractions of a horsepower to great dynamos operating street-car lines and lighting cities; but all are built on the same principle as Faraday's rotating disk. By this discovery the use of electricity as a practical and economical motive power became possible. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Dutch and French Republics in May 1795, and the almost open avowal of the French cause by the Court of Madrid in July, the war entered upon a third phase. Thenceforth the colonial motive was paramount at Westminster, for Pitt and his colleagues questioned the wisdom of holding Corsica. On the other hand they sought to safeguard India by seizing the Cape of Good Hope, and to preserve Hayti from the inroads of the French, to whom Spain handed over her possession, San Domingo. Unfortunately ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... that the forces with which he was dealing were wellnigh infinite; and it was his delight to study them, to combine them, and make them his servants. It was his theory that the energy in nature was like a vast motive power, over which man could throw the belt of his skill and knowledge, and so produce results commensurate with the force of which he availed himself. There was, therefore, an unfailing zest in his work, and the majority of his labors had the character of experiments, which, nevertheless, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... motive that the Count's mother and sisters had been anxious to obtain the earliest possible intelligence of his departure from St Petersburg. The road from that capital to Tobolsk ran through Iroslaw, a town about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... having adopted the proposition of Curee, there was no longer any motive for concealing the overtures of the Senate. Its address to the First Consul was therefore published forty days after its date: the pear was then ripe. This period is so important that I must not omit putting together the most remarkable ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... atoned for by bloody sacrifices, declaring the transgressor worthy of death. Their consciences were educated to the idea of holiness, an idea utterly wanting among the heathen; and the law became a powerful motive power, urging them to higher and holier lives, and preparing them to receive the higher and holier example and ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Sir J. Reynolds and Marlay—which in so small a society is a good number. At first they said, I think, they thought it a respect to Garrick's memory not to elect one for some time in his room—which (in any one's case but my own I should say) was a strange kind of motive—for the more agreeable he was, the more need there is of supplying the want, by some substitute or other. But as I have no pretensions to ground even a hope upon, of being a succedaneum to such a man—the argument was decisive and I could say nothing to it. 'Anticipation' ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... happens? We who are responsible for running the thing, and raising the money and so on—we have to put on a spurt every once in a while, and work up a general state of excitement; and while it's going, don't you see that THAT is the authority, the motive power, whatever you like to call it, by which things are done? Other denominations don't need it. We do, and that's why we've ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... disinterested admiration for him; and it was a not unworthy motive which kept her from looking up to meet his eyes on her. She felt a petulant distaste for the calculating speculations which filled the minds of all her world about his intentions towards her. He was really too fine for that. At least, she owed it to her own ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... "Every motive of justice and policy, of dignity and of prudence, urges you to allay the ferment in America by a removal of your troops from Boston, by a repeal of your Acts of Parliament, and by demonstrating amiable dispositions towards ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Majesty; he confesses he cannot see anything morally wrong in giving aid to an insurrection in the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. But he admits that to do so for the sake of making new acquisitions would be criminal, and that he is not justified in imputing this motive to the King of Sardinia. Count Cavour would probably at once ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... had called on Austin Buckingham, that gentleman tried to return his call. It must be confessed that his motive was not so much a commendable desire to get even socially with his new acquaintance, nor to give him good advice, as it was to get a nearer view of the heroine of his story. Candor compels me to say that every evening for the week past Buckingham had taken ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... like the idea very well. "They must have thought it was like letting a monkey play with a rifle," the doctor afterward put it. But, for lack of a leader with any motive for objecting, and because Estra had no living relatives to claim the library, somehow that incredible collection of intellectual gems got into the possession of the four. Nothing was said about it during the quiet leave-taking, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... his motive, undertook, without solicitation, to rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him from the imputation of favouring fatality or rejecting revelation; and from month to month continued a vindication of the "Essay ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... separation approach one another again, their behaviour cannot be affectionate. No servant is to be seen who is moved (in what he does) by only the desire of benefiting his master. Service proceeds from the motive of doing good to the master as also one's own self. All acts are undertaken from selfish motives. Unselfish acts or motives are very rare. Those kings whose hearts are restless and unquiet cannot acquire a true ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... bidding men to co-operate anxiously for the sake of equalising wealth, He recommends an individualistic freedom from the burden of wealth altogether. But, as always in the Gospel, our Lord looks behind practice to motive; and it is clear that the motive for the abandonment of wealth is not to be a desire to act with a selfish prudence, in order to lay an obligation upon God to repay one generously in the future for present sacrifices, but rather ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... express it more clearly, detailism, is the realizing of the whole subject-matter or motive of a picture in exact detail. Impressionism is the generalizing of the subject-matter as a whole and the expression of only its ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... Parris's statement, as quoted by Hutchinson. What was the real cause or motive of this discrepancy among the witnesses does not appear. The facts, that at first they went into fits in beholding him, were all struck dumb for a while, and Ann Putnam saw him on the beam, were likely to have ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... paying all his debts and being thus left penniless but honest; and paying his creditors nothing, or, at most, a quarter of their dues, and remaining rich enough to indulge in the luxury of a noble son-in-law, the only motive on whose part for such a marriage ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Whatever the motive for their coming, however, they managed to get across the sea. The immigrants set to work with a will. They cut down forests, built houses, and laid out fields. They founded churches, schools, and colleges. They set up forges and workshops. They spun and wove. They fashioned ships and sailed the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... many years humanely supported in Dr. Johnson's house in London, told me, that upon his discovering that Dr. Swinfen had communicated his case, he was so much offended, that he was never afterwards fully reconciled to him. He indeed had good reason to be offended; for though Dr. Swinfen's motive was good, he inconsiderately betrayed a matter deeply interesting and of great delicacy, which had been entrusted to him in confidence; and exposed a complaint of his young friend and patient, which, in the superficial opinion of the ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... a tiffin party of four good men and true on his stern-wheel house-boat, the motive power for which was supplied by half-a-dozen coolies driving the wheel with their feet, on the same principle as the tread-mill, and we were gliding up the Taipa Channel near Macao at about four knots, when suddenly our craft came into a sea ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... matter how fantastic it may be, nevertheless it must not be left unmentioned that his exit out of the Wilson Cabinet was under all circumstances only a question of time. Bryan may want to be a candidate in 1916, a rival of Wilson; there may be a political motive at the bottom of the dramatically staged resignation; the fact remains that two hard heads, Wilson and Bryan, could not permanently agree. One had to yield; one had to go. Just as Bismarck had to go when Wilhelm II. felt himself safe in the saddle, so Bryan ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... neighboring tribe into subjection. Thus began a new era in the history of the Indian, inaugurating a kind of warfare that was cruel, relentless, and demoralizing, since it was based upon the desire to conquer and to despoil the conquered of his possessions—a motive unknown ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... for thought and are excellent tools for the man of initiative. To read means keeping in touch with the big visions. We cherish these dreams and make them real in plans of our own. Aspiration is behind the pages of every worth-while volume. It was the motive power which drove the author to produce it and it should become a part of the forces which drive us on to victory. Without such inspiration we grope as children in the dark. We are without a light to guide ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... Livingstone explained to him Lena's agency in the matter, omitting, this time, to impute to her the same motive which she had done when stating the ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... intellect—a theory conducive to health in peace—and in those ages when men fought hand to hand, and individual strength and skill were the nerves of the army, to success in war; but, 3dly, and principally, its uses were in sustaining and feeding as a passion, as a motive, as an irresistible incentive—the desire of glory! That desire spread through all classes—it animated all tribes—it taught that true rewards are not in gold and gems, but in men's opinions. The ambition ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that in the mind of such early leaders as Champlain the dominant motive of the French colonization was religious; but in the cruel position into which the colony was forced it was almost inevitable that the missions should become political. It was boasted in their behalf that they had ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... could be successfully carried out, and if it did not endanger other Goods, which may be even more important than equality of opportunity. Nor do I hold that in a collectivist state there need be any dangerous relaxation of that motive of self-interest which every reasonable man must admit to be, up to a point, the most potent source of all practical energy. I do not see why the state should not pay its servants according to merit just as ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... exclaimed; "that's an awful thing to say, Parmalee. The idea of a detective suspecting a man, merely because he doesn't admire his personality! And besides, it isn't true. If I suspect Hall, it's because I think he had a strong motive, a possible opportunity, and more than all, because he refuses to tell where ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... that that was his real motive; and he promised his father that he would go on, though it was tiresome. It was not the hard labor of the digging that fatigued him, for, by following Jonas's directions, he found it easy work; but it was the sameness of it. He ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... the motive to exertion. I tell you it is the abnegation of self which has wrought out all that is noble, all that is good, all that is useful, nearly all that is ornamental ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... to hospitality; to disturb the quiet of your fellow-guests, some of them perhaps exhausted by fatigue, some of them invaded by distemper; to interrupt the king's lieges in their course of journeying upon their lawful occasions? Above all, what motive but wanton barbarity could prompt you to violate the apartment, and terrify the tender hearts of two helpless young ladies, travelling, no doubt, upon some cruel emergency, which compels them, unattended, to encounter in the night the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... trying to build an idealistic and serviceable life upon a godless basis. Now, the difficulty with this attitude toward life lies here: it demands a quality of spirit for which it cannot supply the motive. It demands social hope, confidence, enthusiasm and sacrifice, and all the while it cuts their nerves. It tells men that the universe is fundamentally a moral desert, that it never was intended even to have an oasis of civilization in it, that if we ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... out a working copy for you, with marginal notes which give an analysis of each movement (or rather MOTIVE, for I take it the whole will be a continuous progression; and I only use the word "movement" as indicating the entire contrast which I have secured between each two adjacent MOTIVES), and which will, I hope, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... commandment; seeing that the reason for which the command itself was originally given, namely, as a memorial of God's having rested from the creation of the world, cannot be transferred from the seventh day to the first; nor can any new motive be substituted in its place, whether the resurrection of our Lord or any other, without the sanction of a divine commandment."—"Prose Works" (Bohn), ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... bring forth were incalculable; yet he saw with horror that Palmerston neither understood nor cared to understand the niceties of this momentous problem, but rushed on blindly, dealing blows to right and left, quite—so far as he could see—without system, and even without motive—except, indeed, a totally unreasonable distrust ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... privileges of Englishmen at home that had been guaranteed to them in the original Company charter. It seems to be this rather than a planned attempt to establish self-government in the New World on a scale that might have been in violation of English law and custom at the time. Whatever the motive, the significance of this meeting in the church at Jamestown remains the same. This body of duly chosen representatives of the people has continued in existence and its evolution leads directly to our State legislatures and to the Congress ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... said: "I have taken more pains with the Oxford Lectures than with anything else I have ever done": and in the preface to the edition of 1887 he began: "The following lectures were the most important piece of my literary work, done with unabated power, best motive, and happiest concurrence of circumstance." Ruskin took his professorship very seriously. He spent almost infinite labour in composing his more formal lectures, and during the eight years in which he held the chair he published six volumes of them, not to mention three ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... neighborhood had starved the customary fires, or because fires had to be less frequently kindled upon them than on the more important stations; or, finally, because these hill-forts, from some disadvantage of situation, were no longer used as places of strength, and so the beacon-keepers had no motive to attempt consolidating them throughout by the piecemeal application of the vitrifying agent. But the old Highland mode of accounting for the present appearance of Knock Farril and its vitrified remains is perhaps, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... of any outside agent, but was due to the operation of the rose-spirit that it had within it, and which was persistently driving it to bring into actual being that ideal of the rose which was the essence of its spirit. The ideal of the rose was the motive-power of the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... The motive of the Czar in making all these improvements and reforms was his desire to render his own power as the sovereign of the country more compact and efficient, and not any real and heartfelt interest in the welfare and happiness of the people. Still, in the end, very excellent results followed ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... 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
... had not framed itself in her mind before it was answered. Without water they would not be able to exist at Steer Wells for twenty-four hours. A retreat would be equally impracticable. It was all horribly clear. The theft of the water was the first step in a deliberate plan to drive them out. The motive, too, was plain enough in the light of the overheard conversation at the National Hotel. The men who wanted Mr. Bell's mine had waited till he had located it before striking their first blow. What would their ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... construct them that the cost of maintenance will be reduced to the minimum. This will save money and lessen the danger of exhibitions of bad taste and encourage that simplicity which should be the controlling motive of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... Cleek! The knowledge that these would-be murderers, whoever they are, whatever may be their mysterious motive, have grown desperate enough to invade the house itself has driven Lady Chepstow well-nigh frantic. Of course, orders were immediately given to the servants that no stranger, no matter how well dressed, how well seeming, nor what the plea, was, from that moment, to be ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... with a meaningless title is presumptively a fraud. Why a secret if not to permit extravagant, or fraudulent, claims as to therapeutic merit? * * * * * The ruling motive of the secret being essentially false and dishonest, its employment in the interest of any remedy is clearly a sufficient cause for its condemnation ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... European Monarch who has not implored me, with tears in his eyes, to quit his kingdom, and take my fatal charms else- where. As time was getting on it occurred to me that by descending several pegs in the scale of Respectability I might qualify your Majesty for my hand. Actuated by this humane motive and happening to possess Respectability enough for Six, I consented to confer Respectability enough for Four upon your two younger daughters—but although I have, alas, only Respectability enough for Two left, there is still, as I gather from ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... alone Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown: (Nature, whose dictates to no other kind Are given in vain, but what they seek they find) Wise is her present; she connects in this His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss; At once his own bright prospect to be blest, And strongest motive to assist the rest. Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine, Gives thee to make thy neighbour's blessing thine. Is this too little for the boundless heart? Extend it, let thy enemies have part: Grasp the whole worlds of reason, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... at least, hardly ever comes in thunder, but I have to listen with perfect stillness to make it out. It spoke to me, told me what to do, but I argued with it and was lost. I was guiltless of any base motive, but I found the wrong name for what displeased me in Mr. Hexton, and so I deluded myself. I reasoned that his meanness was justifiable economy, and that his dissimilarity from me was perhaps the very thing which ought to induce ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... regard, I do not like the thought of a person in her circumstances going to what to her must be serious trouble and expense on our account. The easiest way to reconcile myself to it would be by believing with you all, that she has some personal motive in it." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... at the beginning of the war and an ardent believer in the prosecution of the war, was deposed early in the reactionary regime and sent as envoy to London. It was suggested that the motive for this was not to honor an anti-German, but to ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... ears particularly open to any answers the Egyptian clergy might please to give. Yet pleasure was not the object of their journey. Science, as themselves said, curiosity, as their enemies alleged, was the motive for their encountering perils by land and water. Indeed we recollect only three travellers, either among the Greeks or Romans, who can properly be considered as journeying for pleasure. These were Herodotus—the prince of ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... or to give him no chance to defend himself; but he had to admit that he was very thankful that it was Michael himself who had insisted that there was to be no recognized engagement between them. Had he at the time had any motive for insisting on the fact? That was an idea; it had ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... desire of most English writers on America, to convey a debasing impression of her people, and seeking, on the contrary, to do justice to their character, as far as the limited field afforded by a work, pre-eminently of fiction, will admit, no interested motive can be ascribed to him. Should these pages prove a means of dissipating the slightest portion of that irritation which has—and naturally—been engendered in every American heart, by the perverted and prejudiced statements of disappointed tourists, whose acerbity of stricture, not even a recollection ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... attention; though she, as well as Carl, was unable to understand any but the most familiar and colloquial English. The case was speedily decided; the few facts presented to the jury appeared to have no necessary connection, and there was no known motive for the deed. The jury unanimously acquitted Carl, and with his wife and boy he left the court-room. The verdict was approved by the spectators, for no man in the neighborhood was more universally loved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... guess his motive. I was certain it was not out of pure love for me or pity for Wallop. Indeed, I was pretty certain there was far more mischief than good in the action. I would sooner have owed Wallop thirty pounds than Hawkesbury ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... practice was a Roman. Rome was his model, her ideals were his ideals. Therefore he built amphitheatres in which men were butchered, to the exquisite delight of vast audiences. Therefore, also, without the excuse of any conscientious motive, however insufficient or unsatisfactory, he persecuted the weak because they were weak and their sufferings would give pleasure to the strong or to those who chanced to be the majority ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... straightest little woman that ever lived! I don't care a damn what one million or eighty million think. Supposing you had received letters from Underwood, supposing you had gone to his rooms to beg him not to kill himself—what of it? It would be for a good motive, wouldn't it? Let them talk all the bad of you they want. I don't believe a word of it—you ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... actions, good or bad, may he resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice. Religion is the best motive of all actions, yet religion is allowed to be the ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... sound of her voice there came within him an extraordinary fusing, at once a pain and a delight . . . fragments of memory . . . a moonbeam . . . tears . . . the crackle of a fire . . . a quarry mist . . . the glory of stars . . . a meaning . . . a motive that ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... skirmish with the revenue officers; that his correspondents in Holland had a vessel on the coast at the time, part of the crew of which were engaged in the affair, and that they brought me off after it was over, from a motive of compassion, as I was left destitute by my father's death. As I grew older there was much of this story seemed inconsistent with my own recollections, but what could I do? I had no means of ascertaining my doubts, nor a single friend with whom I could communicate ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... half so well as yourself. Do not pain me by refusing them. They may be of use to you if you are ever in want of money, being worth, I believe, between three and four hundred pounds. Of course, you cannot misunderstand my motive in mentioning this. No amount of money could in any measure represent the gratitude I owe to the man who risked his life to save my child. May God ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... will be seen that there was already a certain opinion in the neighbourhood as to the Captain's motive for planting himself at Beechdale—so acute is a quiet little community of this kind in divining the intentions ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... political rights for women has come with us. When war broke out, women's suffrage was winning all the time a greater and greater mass of adherents, a majority of the House was pledged to vote for it and had been for years, the Trade Unions and Labour Party stood solid for it, but the motive to act seemed lacking. ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... proposal more exquisitely grotesque. One is glad the proposal was made, however, not only for its own sake, but because it drew an admirable reply from Miss Austen on the nature of her genius. "I could not sit seriously down," she declared, "to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and, if it were indispensable for me to keep it up, and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... induces the female to honour in man her protector and guide,— admiration of his determined heroism, and compassion for the sufferings which he had undergone. With great art it is so contrived, that from the very circumstance that the possibility of a suspicion of her own purity of motive never once enters her mind, she is the less reserved in her solicitations for Cassio, and thereby does but heighten more and more the jealousy of Othello. To throw out still more clearly the angelic purity of Desdemona, Shakspeare has in Emilia associated with her a companion of doubtful virtue. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... coldly conscious of a husband's right, You had faint-drawn me with a form alone, A lawful lump of life by force your own! Then, while your backward will retrenched desire, And unconcurring spirits lent no fire, I had been born your dull, domestic heir, Load of your life, and motive of your care; Perhaps been poorly rich, and meanly great, The slave of pomp, a cipher in the state; Lordly neglectful of a worth unknown, And slumbering in a seat by chance ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... hotel that this was his farewell day with them, and tried to feel that he had thus burned the last bridge between himself and indiscretion. He only succeeded in feeling as you and I—and Garnet—used to feel when we had told our purpose to others and fibbed to ourselves about the motive. But Garnet had ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... "Without going into the question of motive," says he, "that suggestion may be worth ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... impartial judgment, had been moved, not by heroic and stoical justice and the love of souls, but a good deal by prejudice and a good deal by skilful artifice, and very little indeed by that highest motive which she called the glory of God? And it was Jack who had set all this before her clear as daylight. No wonder the excellent woman was disconcerted. She went to bed gloomily with her headache, and would tolerate no ministrations, neither of sal-volatile nor eau-de-Cologne, nor even ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... I heard? Methinks that this same Peter Sanghurst was wooing Mistress Joan himself once. Sure I see another motive in his dastard capture of my brother. Perchance he had in him not only a rival for the lands of Basildene, but for the hand of the lady. Father, I see it all! Would that I had seen it before! It is Peter Sanghurst who has robbed Raymond of his ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Her motive was to gain time, and if possible to obtain the opportunity of shifting the money from the place where she had first put it into another and safer one. "I want to be able," she thought, "to swear that I have no money with me in this house. If I can only get it into my apron I will drop ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... reproaches for Christ, and afflictions with the people of Christ, greater riches than the treasures of Egypt or the honours at Court. And now, Sir, will you have the meaning of all? It is only a Christian motive to you to eye the highest Lord and the best interest with the greatest industry; that his honour, which is best of all, be dearer to you than all country honour: life, world, are not to be named in the day of his glory. Oh mind ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... think on the matter," cried the wilful girl, trying to turn the question off by catching her little favourite. But Emma would not thus be set aside. She was evidently well primed with a stronger and steadier motive than what usually occupied and sufficed ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... swoon, and seemed to be sinking down into the boat. They say that during that fainting-fit I flung myself about and cast bad words at Messer Giovanni Gaddi, to wit, that he came to rob me, and not from any motive of charity, and other insults of the kind, which caused him to be much ashamed. Later on, they say I lay still like one dead; and after waiting by me more than an hour, thinking I was growing cold, they left me for dead. When they returned home, Mattio Franzesi was ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... in their shirt-sleeves looking on at their unfinished houses, planning out tomorrow's work; and we riding onward, high abode them, like a whirl-wind. It was amusing, too, when we had dined, and rattled down a steep pass, having no other motive power than the weight of the carriages themselves, to see the engine released, long after us, come buzzing down alone, like a great insect, its back of green and gold so shining in the sun, that if it had spread a pair of wings and soared away, no one would have had occasion, as I fancied, for ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... want of literature is in some sort supplied by a good understanding, a degree of natural elocution, and that knowledge of the world which is learned in armies and courts. We are not to take the height of his ambition from his soliciting to be general for life:[19] I am persuaded his chief motive was the pay and perquisites, by continuing the war; and that he had then no intentions of settling the crown in his family, his only son having been dead some years before.[20] He is noted to be master of great temper, able to govern or very well to disguise his passions, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... "Justice is the motive power of all my actions, madam," replied the emperor, curtly, "and for that very reason you ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Pike, with an emphasis that told upon his hearer. "I have a different motive, sir; and a good motive. If I were at liberty to tell it—which I'm not—you'd let me in without another word. Lots of people have been seeing him, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Lamb's last letter to Thomas Manning, dated May 10, 1834. Mary has, he says, been ill for nigh twenty weeks; "she is, I hope, recovering." "I struggle to town rarely, and then to see London, with little other motive—for what is left there hardly? The streets and shops entertaining ever, else I feel as in a desert, and get me home to my cave." Once a month, he adds, he passes a day with Cary at the Museum. When ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... men with whom they had hitherto had any intercourse, would not supply them with fire-arms, alleging that, if they were possessed of such weapons, they would only be the more induced to kill one another. The Shoshonees, perhaps, do not perceive that policy is the real motive of the Spaniards; but they clearly see that the plea of humanity is fallacious, and they complain that they are thus left to the mercy of their enemies the Minnetarees, who, having fire-arms, plunder them of their horses, and ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... still be onward! Justice, humanity, patriotism; every high and every holy motive urge us forward, and we dare not refuse to obey. The way of duty lies open before us, and though no pillar of fire be visible to the outward sense, yet an unerring light shall illumine our pathway, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... suspected? My poor husband ... and that dear Edmond who loved me ... and whom I loved! Why should I have killed them? Tell me that! Why don't you answer?" she demanded. "People don't commit murder without a motive.... Well?... Well?... Answer ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... high motive, Kenna was in many ways, the guardian of the child. Coarse, brutish, and fierce among men, he was ever good to the boy and respectful to his mother; and he rounded out his teaching by the doctrine: "If ye give yer word as ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... simply at a want of recognition. Now he began to fret at the darker suspicion of positive inferiority. He fancied he found justifications for his position in Browning, but they vanished on analysis. At last—moved, curiously enough, by exactly the same motive forces that had resulted in his dishonesty—he went to Professor Bindon, and made a clean breast of the whole affair. As Hill was a paid student, Professor Bindon did not ask him to sit down, and he stood before the professor's desk as he made ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... other hand, was momentarily expecting that the bear would come over and bite her. Why else, if not from some such sinister motive, had he come aboard her raft, when he had been traveling on a perfectly good tree? The tree looked so much more interesting than her bare raft, on which she had been voyaging for over an hour, and of which she was now heartily tired. To be sure, the bear was not much bigger than her own Teddy Bear ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... situation very different from that of the Teutonic nations. Italy was, in truth, a part of the empire of Charles the Fifth; and the Court of Rome was, on many important occasions, his tool. He had not, therefore, like the distant princes of the North, a strong selfish motive for attacking the Papacy. In fact, the very measures which provoked the Sovereign of England to renounce all connection with Rome were dictated by the Sovereign of Spain. The feeling of the Spanish people concurred with the interest of the Spanish government. The ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... yet there was something diverting to the enterprising mind in the stolen expedition; and the fellow-feeling which results in honour to contemporaries made him promise not to betray the young man and to shield him from notice as best he might. With Geordie's motive he had no sympathy, having had too many childish squabbles with his cousin for her to be in his eyes a sublime Princess Joanna, ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... patient toiler on this field can know. Yet the inner work is by far the greater. The thought, the cares, the fears, the prayers, the tears, the anguish, the heart-breaking disappointments, and the fiery ordeals of spirit by which alone the motive is kept pure and the flame of a true zeal is fed,—in short, all the lavish expenditure of soul that cannot be spoken, or written, or known, until the Omniscient Recorder, who forgets nothing and repays even the good purpose of the heart, will reveal it at the final award, is by far the most ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... secret passions underlying their union that one should look for the cause of the murderous crime I secretly imagined to be hidden behind this seeming suicide? Or were these parties innocent and old David Moore the one motive power in precipitating a tragedy, the result of which had been to enrich him and impoverish them? Certainly, a most serious and important question, and one which any man might be pardoned for attempting to ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... must be aware of his perilous condition. When in adversity, some of those he has trusted, discuss the bases of reconstruction; and when we are prosperous, others, in similar positions, agitate the question of reorganization—the motive of both being his ruin. But I suppose he has calculated these contingencies, and never anticipated paving a bed of roses to recline upon during the terrible, and sometimes doubtful ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... of these expeditions was communicated by the enemies of Coligny to the court of Spain. Jealousy of the aggrandizement of the French in the New World, mortification for their own unsuccessful efforts in that quarter, and a still stronger motive of hatred to the faith of the Huguenot, induced the bigoted Philip II of Spain to despatch Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a brave, bigoted, and remorseless soldier, to drive out the French colony, and take possession of the country for himself. The compact made between the King and Menendez was, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... most, and was influenced by him most, because of his attitude to a child. He was on the Board to establish schools for children. His motive in every argument, in all the fun and ridicule he indulged in, and in his occasional anger, was the child. He resented the idea that schools were to train either congregations for churches or hands for factories. He was on the Board as a friend of children. What he sought to do for the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... impertinence to utter truths too harsh for you, if he has too often spoken of rare and exceptional facts as universal, if he has omitted the commonplaces which have been employed from time immemorial to offer women the incense of flattery, oh, let him be crucified! But do not impute to him any motive of hostility to the institution itself; he is concerned merely for men and women. He knows that from the moment marriage ceases to defeat the purpose of marriage, it is unassailable; and, after all, if there do arise serious ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... the wild rumors, for he had, in truth, come to England with no deep-laid scheme or motive, but simply because his daughter had ordered his doing so; for while Abraham Windsor ruled the shares market and the world of speculation, a certain young woman ruled him, and the hard-headed man of affairs, ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... be you, Harry,' my aunt Dorothy's reply ran (I had anticipated her line of reasoning, though not her warmth), 'who advise him to this marriage from a motive so inexplicably unworthy? That you will repay her the money, I do not require your promise to assure me. The money is nothing. It is the prospect of her life and fortune which you are consenting, if not urging him, to imperil ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... alone with her behind closed doors, he would thrash her on the slightest pretext. The least thing was sufficient to make him raise his hand, and when he had once begun he did not stop, but he would throw into her face the true motive for his anger. At each blow he would roar: "There, you beggar! There, you wretch! There, you pauper! What a bright thing I did when I rinsed my mouth with your rascal of a father's apology ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... however, in what I saw about me of a character calculated to suggest an explanation of the motive for my seizure. The building was simply one of those low, one-storey adobe structures, thatched with palm leaves, such as then abounded in the lower quarters of Kingston, and which were usually inhabited by the negro or half-breed population of the place. The interior appeared ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... rest, except my motive for not giving my full name. That I scarcely know myself, but suppose shame at the condition in which I found myself led me into the deception, and I adopted the first name that suggested itself. Afterward, an explanation would have ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... say, may prevent this; but nations have no gratitude, they only know their interest, and nothing retrospective is any motive for action. We need not search into remote periods for proofs of this, see Holland, Spain, Russia, &c. during the latter part of the last war. [end ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... gave him some old clothes of mine. He was a great deal taller than myself, and I suggested his trying on the trousers to see if they would fit. I do not know whether I made this suggestion with any ulterior motive or whether I had ever before thought of him in connection with any sexual relations. I only know that once more, as if guided by instinct, I felt he would not rebuff me, although certainly no indecent talk had ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... though Errington allowed Lorimer to tell the story of their trespass in his own fashion without interference. He instinctively felt that the young lady who listened with so demure a smile to that plausible narrative, knew well enough the real motive that had brought them thither though she apparently had her own reasons for keeping silence on the point, as whatever she may have thought, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... idling by any means, since he peers closely at the faces of the men, neglecting the women, and seems to be looking for some one in particular; or, perhaps, he neglects men and {70} women alike, and looks anxiously at the ground, as if he had lost something. Some inner motive shuts him off from most of the stimuli of the street, while making him extra responsive to certain sorts ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Those writers did not consider that actions which are great in themselves, as is the case with the actions of rulers and of States, always seem to bring more glory than blame, of whatever kind they are and whatever the result of them may be. In more than one remarkable and dreadful undertaking the motive assigned by serious writers is the burning desire to achieve something great and memorable. This motive is not a mere extreme case of ordinary vanity, but something demonic, involving a surrender of the will, the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... new mode of philosophising. It seems the fate of all originality of thinking to be immediately opposed; a contemporary is not prepared for its comprehension, and too often cautiously avoids it, from the prudential motive which turns away from a new and solitary path. BACON was not at all understood at home in his own day; his reputation—for it was not celebrity—was confined to his history of Henry VII., and his Essays; it was long after his death before English writers ventured to quote ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... had accidentally fallen in with, and once at a strikers' meeting he had heard rich people denounced with the same frenzy. He had made his own reflections upon the tastelessness of the rhetoric, and the obvious buncombe of the motive, and he had not taken the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... known from some coarse jest by one of the soldiers, or how it came out, I know not. But as time went on, and the hour was long past when any fresh arrivals could be expected, there was no longer motive for secrecy, and the truth was openly told. Each man as he entered was stopped just inside the door. A noose was dropped over his neck, and he was hauled up to a hook over the door. All who entered ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... persuaded that ambition could not altogether be cast out from the spirit of a man, which led me to reflect upon its possible place and purpose if controlled by a master hand beyond the hand of time. I strove to discover my inmost motive, far behind all other aims, and consoled myself with the hope that God might make it the dominant and sovereign one, to which all others might be unconscious ministers, even as all other lesser ones obey ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... of the republic was in the valor and conduct of Aurelian, yet such was the public consternation, when the barbarians were hourly expected at the gates of Rome, that, by a decree of the senate the Sibylline books were consulted. Even the emperor himself from a motive either of religion or of policy, recommended this salutary measure, chided the tardiness of the senate, [38] and offered to supply whatever expense, whatever animals, whatever captives of any nation, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... illumines the expanse of heaven and earth." But commonly he is either spoken of in a more general way, as "the regent of all things," "the establisher of heaven and earth;" or, if special functions are assigned to him, they are connected with his supposed "motive" power, as inspiring warlike thoughts in the minds of the kings, directing and favorably influencing their expeditions; or again, as helping them to discharge any of the other active duties of royalty. San is "the supreme ruler who casts a favorable eye on expeditions," ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... at a query so pointed, and so directly penetrating the proud British reserve about monetary circumstances; but Robert, knowing that the motive was kind-hearted, and the manner just that of a straightforward unconventional settler, replied, 'You are nearly right, Mr. Holt; our capital in cash is very small; but I hope stout bodies and stout hearts are ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... art, still believe that subject is an important factor in a picture or drawing. I am one of the number. The subject need not be literary or historical. After you have discussed in the latest studio jargon its carpentry, valued the tones and toned the values, motive or theme must affect your appreciation of a picture, your desire, or the contrary, to possess it. That the artist is able to endow the unattractive, and woo you to surrender, I admit. Unless, however, you are a pro-Boer in art matters, and hold ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... "As you have some motive above curiosity in asking, I will do so, Harding," and Buffalo Bill told the whole story of Sergeant Weston's escape from execution, and the finding of a body in his uniform upon the desert, and burying it. ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... and nose and the glued points of whose little moustache were extraordinarily uplifted and sustained. I remember taking him at first for a foreigner and for something of a pretender: I scarcely know why, unless because of the motive I felt in the stare he fixed on me when I asked Miss Saunt to come away. He struck me a little as a young man practising the social art of "impertinence"; but it didn't matter, for Flora came away with alacrity, bringing all her ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... say half a dozen German words; but you see I have not had your motive for acquiring it, and cannot very well get promotion. And again, it would not do for me to speak better German than the King of Prussia; who, beyond a few words necessary for animating his troops on ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... of mine in the person of Captain Bayer, an aide—de—camp of Morillo, amongst the company. He was very kind and attentive, and rather startled me by speaking very tolerable English now, from a kindly motive I make no question, whereas, when I had known him before in Kingston, he professed to speak nothing but Spanish or French. He was a German by birth, and lived to rise to the rank of colonel in the Spanish army, where he subsequently greatly ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... will enable us to remain independent of the world, or make it the interest of European powers to court our alliance, and aid in protecting us against the invasion of others. What argument, therefore, do we want to show the equity of our conduct; or motive of interest to recommend it to our prudence? Nature points out the path, and our enemies have obliged us ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... as soon as possible, and scatter in all directions, make their way to small, isolated places, change their appearance as much as possible, and each shift for himself. To remain together increases the risk of capture for each and all. There must be some powerful motive to make them take such risks. Such men risk nothing except for money. But there are no banks here to be looted, no strangers to be waylaid in dark alleys, not even a blind beggar ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... nature made cold by suffering and the constant struggle to keep the secret of her one season of passion from rising again to confront her—a woman of forty, who has no longer any illusions or pleasure, in whose character intense pride is the only motive-power left, and even pride is weary of its loneliness and the assaults made upon it—Nora excites interest, and even pity, by her position and by the aspect of a strong nature under subdued but real suffering. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... applied to the benefit of our bleeding country, that any loyal man would have availed himself of it, at any hazard. The writer found such opportunity, and waiving all personal considerations, undertook the task, trusting in God for success, and conscious that all good men would approve the motive, and that if for a time, reproach and calumny should cloud his reputation, or if perchance the assassin's hand should execute the sworn purpose of the Order, as the penalty for surrendering them to the hands of our Government, the time would ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... mind at least to ask the Captain "his intentions." I was prompted rather by curiosity than by any other motive. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... rather hurried apology. He left with a sense of champagne in his head, which he could not afterwards explain. In the wild events which were to follow this girl had no part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over. And yet, in some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a motive in music through all his mad adventures afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what followed was so improbable, that it might ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... James Van Teyl," he advised, "and listen to me. You've been under obligations to me from the start. I meant you to be. I brought a great business to your firm, and I insisted upon having you interested. I had a motive, as I have for most things I do. You are well placed socially in New York, and I am not. You are also above suspicion, which I am not. It suited me to take this suite in the Plaza, nominally in our joint names, but to pay the whole account myself. It suited me because I required the shelter of ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... meeting with their rivals, and speculated as to when they had come, and the motive that brought them, also, to ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... and drank off his cup and gave the girls to drink; after which he filled again; and, taking the goblet in his hand, signed to the fat girl and bade her sing and play a different motive. So she took the lute and striking a grief- dispelling measure, sang ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... of State, under a Virginian President, were, apparently, at once to recommend himself to their sectional prejudices about the Mississippi, and to injure him in their esteem and favor, for future effect; and that his motive for now abetting Floyd, in his call for these papers as a public document, was to diminish the popularity of Mr. Adams ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... The manly firmness with which the signers of this Address have resisted the 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 delicto, a pestilent and dangerous demagogue.... If his ambition ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Once the motive is found it is not hard to say who it is that broke the peace, whatever the diplomats may put forward in lieu of the ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... pretend that at least all vessels taken in ports and harbours should be condemned as droits to the crown, and not as prize to the captors? Was not this another most pernicious attempt to deprive the imperial squadron not only of its reward for the past but of any adequate motive for the risk of future enterprise? And in effect, were not these successive pretences calculated to operate as invitations to invasions? Did they not tend to encourage the enemy to resume his occupation of the port of Bahia, and generally to renew ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... What a motive will this infatuation supply in the hands of a skilful teacher who has aroused it for the purpose of using it. The child who wants to build a storehouse on his desert island will be more eager to learn than the master to teach. He will want to know all sorts of useful things and nothing else; you ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... grinned, and then winked impudently at Jimmy, while he disposed with all speed of the contents of the plate that Theodore had set before him. Once or twice he cast a puzzled glance at the latter as if trying to discover some hidden motive. ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... up from the street. But there stood the brief paragraph: 'Lord Argentine was found dead this morning by his valet under distressing circumstances. It is stated that there can be no doubt that his lordship committed suicide, though no motive can be assigned for the act. The deceased nobleman was widely known in society, and much liked for his genial manner and sumptuous hospitality. He ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... [26] "The motive which dictated the law of 1872 on school supervision (namely, placing the State in complete control of the supervision of religious as well as other instruction) was, as is well understood, to strengthen the hands of the government in its struggle ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... building, standing alone, measuring 54 X 27 m. (about 100 X 50 Egyptian ells), and built of burned brick. The outside walls were ornamented, as was usual in later Egyptian buildings, with pilasters composed of groups of smaller rectangular pilasters. It is the same motive so often to be observed in the sham doors in tombs of the old kingdom, and is really the most natural facade ornamentation for brick buildings, as it may be made by simply setting every alternate column of bricks forward or backward. The walls were, in addition, plastered. Back of the thick outside ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... resolutions so often and so conscientiously made? How was it that she could not succeed in remembering at the time, the very moment at which she was tempted to be snappish and supercilious, her never-really-forgotten motive for peculiar gentleness and patience with her younger sister, the promise she had made, now so many years ago, to the mother Molly could scarcely even remember, to be kind, very kind, and gentle to the little, flaxen-haired, toddling thing, the "baby" whom that dear mother ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... the prejudice of other individuals; for that is enough to constitute the offence, even if the individuals engaged in this conspiracy had not (as it is imputed to them that they had) any corrupt motive of personal advantage to all or any of themselves to answer; if the criminal artifice operated, or was in all probability likely to operate to the prejudice of the public, and was clearly so intended, we need not go further; when we know that a great amount in the funds ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... hardly to be expected, perhaps, that Dean Richmond and other representatives of a great party would be willing, even if moved by no other motive than a love of country, to abandon a political organisation that had existed for years, and that had already shown its patriotism by the generous enlistment of its members; but it is doubtful if they would have proclaimed, without the guidance of a State convention, such an elaborate ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... only motive influencing the masses of mankind, the evils which we have considered in the preceding chapter would be wholly unbearable. All men would be waging an industrial warfare with each other in their greed for gain, just as the barons of feudal times fought to ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... Philip that possibly the whole story was an elaborate imposture, not told with any base motive, but merely from a wish to impress, startle, and amaze. Athelny had told him that he was at Winchester; but Philip, sensitive to differences of manner, did not feel that his host had the characteristics of a man educated at a great public school. While ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... though something had greatly amused him. Filled with a sickening apprehension that she was the cause of his laughter, Bab stepped from behind the tree unobserved by the two on the step above and walked on down the street assailed by the disquieting suspicion that Mrs. Wilson had had a motive far from disinterested in lending her the fifty dollars. She glanced down at the envelope in her hand. She felt positive that it contained the money, and her woman's intuition told her that Peter Dillon's presence in the house had not been a matter of ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... same end is accomplished, wherefore quarrel over the motive? But when thou speakest of Israel's sake, which, by the testimony of past events, is now the more ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... false, by persecution of the preacher. Kings and nations will restore to the people the immense property and revenue of which they have been plundered, under the hollow knavish pretence of curing souls and forgiving sins. THUS will human laws kill the body of Antichrist. Every motive for professing to believe absurdities and contradictions will be at an end, when neither rule nor honour, nor pelf is to be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sad sooth! in this grim decree Had a motive low and mean;— 'Twas a royal piece of chicanery To harry and spite the Queen; For King though he was, and beyond compare, He had ruled all things save one— Then blamed the Queen that his only heir Was a daughter—not ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... of the extent to which she had already betrayed her disappointment, believed that anxiety for her father's health, which she alleged as the motive of her sudden departure, was an excuse plausible enough to blind her friends to her overpowering reluctance to speak to Agatha or endure her presence; to her fierce shrinking from the sort of pity usually accorded to a jilted ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... add love and wine to the catalogue," said Paul, "you have pretty much the motive powers that have swayed the world since the fall of man. But tell us, friend, how you came to ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... English Earl could then have agreed to a pledge to transfer the kingdom to the very party he had expelled, and expose himself and his party to the vengeance of a foe he had thoroughly crushed for the time, and whom, without any motive or object, he himself agreed to restore to power or his own probable perdition? When examined, this assertion falls to the ground from other causes. It is not among the arguments that William uses in his embassies to Harold; ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flask giving a clue, he guessed all, and faced about to stare at his brother in amaze. He forgot that the motive scheme was against White Fell, demanding derision and resentment from him; that was swept out of remembrance by astonishment and admiration for the feat of speed and endurance. In eagerness to question he inclined ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the committee to examine the manuscripts offered for prizes to the Humane Society, I read the story, I felt that the writer had a higher motive than to compete for a prize; that the story was a stream of sympathy that flowed from the heart; that it was genuine; that it only needed a publisher who should be able to command a wide influence, to make its merits known, to give it a strong ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
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