"Motive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the right shoulders. I seek to make it plain how the country was bamboozled and betrayed by Party machinations such as have not had their parallel in any other period of Irish history. I state nothing in malice or for any ulterior motive, since I have none. But I think it just and right that the chief events of the past twenty years should be set forth in their true character so that impartial inquirers may know to what causes can be traced the overwhelming tragedies ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... up new horizons to the little fellow's suspicions. Suddenly he grasped the prime motive force of our existence, hitherto only conjectured and enveloped in mystery. His godfather had relations with a woman; he was enamored like the heroes of the novels! And the boy recalled many of his Valencian poems, all rhapsodizing a lady—sometimes singing of her great ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... things, and we by him." They make great account of the doctrine of God's paternal character and government, and continually set it forward as the richest source of consolation, and the most powerful motive to repentance ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... that, I have your word; and, in view of the fact, perhaps this analysis of motive, of character, however interesting on general ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... it, the service had a motive somewhat similar to his own, and he was glad to "bow his pride," because he believed that he would have ample chance to raise it up again. As he went about his work singing and whistling softly to himself, he cast many a glance up ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Cons dismissed? This is a more difficult question than is imagined: so difficult that most people set out without waiting for the answer: they travel first and leave to providential contingencies the chance that, on a review of the tour in its course, some adequate motive may suggest itself. Certainly it may be said, that the word Greece already in itself contains an adequate motive; and we do not deny that a young man, full of animal ardor and high classical recollections, may, without blame, give way to the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... large, worked all night by the aid of arc-lights—would seem to suggest that even if practical considerations brought about Mrs. Eddy's change of residence, her extreme impatience may have resulted from a more personal motive. It is, indeed, very probable that Mrs. Eddy left Concord for the same reason that she left Boston years ago: because she felt that malicious animal magnetism was becoming too strong for her there. The action brought ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... his work consists of gossip about people. This growing interest in the individual was leading up to the great eighteenth century novel. It seems to arise out of a growing sense of identity, a stronger interest in oneself; there is a common motive at the root of our observation of other people, of the interest attaching to ordinary actions presented on the stage, and of the fascination of a reflection or a portrait of ourselves; by these means we are enabled to some extent to become detached, and to take an external and ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... position to view it from the outside. After all, he was excusable in seeking to maintain the dignity of his office, but he had departed from one of the fundamental rules of the race, namely: "Let no material gain be the motive or reward of public duty." He had wounded the ideals of his people beyond forgiveness, and he suffered the penalty; yet his courage was not diminished by the mistakes of his past. Like the Sioux chief Little Crow, he was called "the betrayer ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... phrase should end with the breath unexhausted. When the flow of text and music forbid the taking of a full breath, half-breaths must be quietly taken at convenient points. Instead of letting the whole reservoir of motive power exhaust itself and then completely refill it, we should, by taking these half-breaths, maintain a reserve. A notable advocate of the use of the half-breath in singing is that past mistress of sustained and smooth ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... evidence of one prejudiced witness of shady antecedents is quite sufficient to convict the most stainless and irreproachable gentleman of crimes for the committal of which he could have had no possible motive. ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... temporary office, the other rogue incites the man to apply for it, and together they manage to secure his absence every morning in the week. From the time that I heard of the assistant having come for half wages, it was obvious to me that he had some strong motive for ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... his mind when he first sat down to the work; but if so, it was put aside, consciously or unconsciously, after the completion of the first few chapters, in favour of more complex characterisation. Bob Calverley, the young squatter, really holds a third or fourth place in relation to the main motive of the story, and is used rather as a foil than as an exemplar of anything typically Australian. He does not bear any active part in the drama of passion and intrigue; he is not even permitted to be a passive spectator ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the "Fate" motive in Beethoven's fifth symphony undoubtedly lies in the succession of the four notes at equal intervals of time. Beethoven himself marked it So pocht das Schicksal an ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... bourgeois idealists also agree—should be a union that two persons enter into only out of mutual love, in order to accomplish their natural mission. This motive is, however, only rarely present in all its purity. With the large majority of women, matrimony is looked upon as a species of institution for support, which they must enter into at any price. Conversely, a large portion of the men look upon marriage from a ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... bungalow at night on a salary of seven rupees a month, and soon became general. It was the business of the Ramosi watchman to prevent other Ramosis from robbing the house. Apparently this was the common motive for the custom, prevalent up to recent years, of paying a man solely for the purpose of watching the house at night, and it originated, as in Poona, as a form of insurance and an application of the proverb of setting a thief to catch a thief. The selection of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... if he is sovereignly rational, he is bound to make reason reign; that is to say, it is his duty to make all those who are under his authority revere and obey reason religiously. Love is the most potent motive for obedience; and it is impossible that subjects should not love their prince if they know that reason is the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... the arbiters of fashion in dress for the costliness, splendour, or novelty of their toilet. Henry VIII. and George IV. surrounded themselves with the men most distinguished for wit and talent, with a remarkable coincidence of motive, as ministering to their vanity or pleasures; but as soon as they became troublesome or useless, both cast them off with the same careless indifference. Henry VIII., it is true, sacrificed to his own caprices, or to court intrigue, the lives of those whom he had chosen for his social ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar and the motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report here. The first twenty to ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... opinion came to the aid of pontifical opinion, and, in France, the clergy spontaneously became ultramontane because there was no longer any motive for remaining Gallican. Since the Revolution, the Concordat and the Organic Articles, all the sources which maintained in it a national as well as particularist spirit, had dried up; in ceased being a distinct, proprietary and favored body; its members are no longer leagued together by the community ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pride that was become such an essential part of the dear gentleman's character, in this instance of a wife, that although he knew he could not keep it up, if he made me happy, yet it was no small motive of his choosing me, in one respect, because he expected from me more humility, more submission, than he thought would be paid him by a lady equally born and educated; and of this I will send you an instance, in a transcription from that part of my journal you have not seen, of his lessons ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... relinquish his post. Gervaise, who had,—thanks partly to his skill with his weapons, but still more to the temper of the splendid suit of armour presented to him by Genoa,—escaped without a scratch, volunteered to remain with him until next morning, his principal motive for making the request being his desire to escape from further congratulations and praise for the success of his plan. After Caretto's wounds had been dressed by the knights, and he and Gervaise had partaken of some food and wine, which they greatly needed, Caretto ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... from Sinai and saw the Calf fashioned by Aaron, he thought his brother was no better than the rest of the people, and had, like them, devoted himself to idolatry. But God knew that Aaron's participation in the construction of the Calf was merely due to the pious motive of delaying the people until Moses should return, hence He even then said to Aaron: "I am fully aware of they motive, and, as truly as thou livest, I shall appoint thee as warden over the sacrifices that My children offer Me." ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... It may easily be supposed that other rights were as little to his taste as the claim to vote the subsidies, a privilege which was in reality indisputable. Men who stood forth in defence of the provincial constitutions were, in his opinion, mere demagogues and hypocrites; their only motive being to curry favor with the populace. Yet these charters were, after all, sufficiently limited. The natural rights of man were topics which had never been broached. Man had only natural wrongs. None ventured to doubt that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Pursuit after Knowledge, and engage us to search into the Wonders of his Creation; for every new Idea brings such a Pleasure along with it, as rewards any Pains we have taken in its Acquisition, and consequently serves as a Motive to put ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... I had firmly, emphatically, yea, ofttimes passionately declined the proffered lobster, he, having with difficulty mastered his chagrin, would seek to direct my attention to the salmon, his motive for this change in tactics being that salmon, though apparently plentiful, was generally the second most expensive item upon the regular menu. Salmon as served in Paris wears a different aspect from the one commonly worn by it when it ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... in the world a species of mortals who employ themselves in promoting matrimony, and without any visible motive of interest or vanity, without any discoverable impulse of malice or benevolence, without any reason, but that they want objects of attention and topicks of conversation, are incessantly busy in procuring wives and husbands. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Elijah is similarly dissatisfied with another view, which regards evil as a negation. We have heard this opinion before and we know that Maimonides adopted it (p. 288). Its motive as we know is to remove from God the responsibility for evil. If evil is nothing positive it is not caused by the activity of an agent. All essential activity is good, and all the acts of God are good. Evil consists in the absence of good; it is due to matter, and does not come from God. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... with 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 tourists, past, present, or to come,—Paullus ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... "What motive can be strong enough to require you to infringe the order I have given my children never to come to me unless I send for them?" asked the Count of his son as ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... Government, according to the ration of the deposit bill, the sum of $306,122; and similar results would follow the comparison between the small and the large States throughout the Union, thus realizing to the small States an advantage which would be doubtless as unacceptable to them as a motive for incorporating the principle in any system which would produce it as it would be inconsistent with the rights and expectations of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... written of him had he been the victor instead of the defeated. It is generous to give praise to the unfortunate Admiral for whom Nelson had such an aversion and who was constantly threatened by him with vigorous chastisement when he caught him; but generosity was not the motive—it was only part of the loose-lipped, unclean policy of decrying Napoleon. It is horrible, ungrateful, and foul brutishness of the Corsican tyrant to court-martial so amiable and brave a man as Villeneuve because he proceeded ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... he felt compelled to believe the Poulains' version of what had happened. He could think of no motive—in fact there was no motive—which could prompt a false assertion ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... thought, and gradually the perplexity cleared from her mind. Stephen La Mothe was not a fool, that counted for much. He was honest, that counted for much more. The King was notoriously ailing and, being superstitious, might well repent; no high motive, but a probable one. Philip de Commines' visit to Amboise was not by chance, and nothing less than his master's orders would have kept him so long from Valmy. If Stephen La Mothe was right, then these orders must surely have a connection ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... also showed by very carefully conducted experiments that the metallic sulphides are not only better conductors of electricity than has hitherto been supposed, but that when paired they were capable of exhibiting strong electro-motive power. Thus, if galena and zinc blende in acid solutions be connected in the usual manner by a voltaic pair, sulphuretted hydrogen is evolved from the surface of the former, and a current generated which is sufficient to reduce gold, silver or copper ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... or baptism in that name, or miracles in the name of Jesus, or of the Lord's Supper and the conception of the Lord as present with his disciples in the rite? Was this revering of Jesus, which was fast moving toward a worship of him, the inner motive force of the whole construction of the dogma of his person and ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... altogether devoid of conceit, but I could not persuade myself that affection prompted this action. We had met so briefly, always with me in the role of hunted fugitive, that it was impossible to conceive that love was the motive power of control. The thought even was almost preposterous; much as I should have rejoiced to believe it true the very ridiculousness of it caused me to smile bitterly. Perhaps her action had some connection ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... hollowness of this bombastic talk. That man has yet to be born whose practice will be regulated by this insipid theory (dieser grauen theorie). What is the idea of goodness per se? * * * The abstract idea of goodness is not an effectual motive for well-doing" (p. 104). My only comment is c'est ignolile! His Reverence acts the part of Satan in Holy Writ, "Does Job serve God for naught?" Compare this selfish, irreligious, and immoral view with Philo Judaeus (On the Allegory of the Sacred Laws, cap. 1viii.), to measure the extent of the fall ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... is one of the simplest of geniuses, I have always been in the centre of the stage, whilst Webb has been prompting me, invisible, from the side." It was this singular union more than anything else which gave direction and motive force to the propaganda carried on by the Fabian Society for a quarter of a century, whilst to Mr. Shaw personally it gave the consistency of thought and definiteness of aim which underlie all his later work. We cannot, of course, neglect the intellectual ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... told him is not a part of the conspiracy, but from that hour there were two secrets kept in the Franklin dwelling. And when he hurried home each afternoon with The News, that they might carefully examine it for anything bearing on his father's expedition, there was a double motive in the eagerness with which Manuela met him ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... observe that I have been for some years in China, am quite a stranger at home, and have no personal motive or interest in the inquiry I ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... supported in his efforts, but still hopeful and plucky. He could hardly, in 1860, have dreamed that within twenty years, steam presses would be brought into the same village to follow in the wake of the clumsy press whose only motive power was his own strong arm. But few of our citizens can now justly appreciate the obligation the community is under to Mr. Carpenter for the large part of his life-work which he ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... myself find such charges excessive. From a very different motive, Nemours put me as much out of temper as it had done my great predecessor a hundred years before. Will it be believed that a town memorialized by the great, perhaps the greatest, French novelist, could not produce its title ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Vanstone, telling him that I should leave England at the end of February, and that the nature of the business which took me away afforded little hope of my getting back from the West Indies before June. My letter was not written with any special motive. I merely thought it right—seeing that my partners were not admitted to my knowledge of Mr. Vanstone's private affairs—to warn him of my absence, as a measure of formal precaution which it was right to take. At the end of February I left England, without having heard from him. I ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... could not shut himself up while the country was ravaged; and the jay said the ladies would despise them. Kapchack remembered that the fox had always had a character for duplicity, and perhaps had some secret motive for his advice, and just then, in the midst of the uproar, a starling flew into the circle with part of his tail gone and his ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... all; that all law was a convention based on no objective truth; and that the only valid right was the natural right of the strong to rule. It was into this chaos of sceptical opinion that Plato was born; and it was the desire to meet and subdue it that was the motive of his philosophy. Like Aristophanes, he traced the root of the evil to the decay of religious belief; and though no one, as we have seen, was more trenchant than he in his criticism of the popular ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Southern slavery.[2] The recent publication by Mrs. Stowe, entitled "Uncle Tom's Cabin," is a work of that class. I have no wish to write anything harsh or unkind; for however ill-timed, ill-advised, or ill-judged the work may be, if her object was the alleviation of human woe, I can but respect the motive that prompted her to write, though I may differ with her in opinion as to the means most likely to accomplish the proposed object. The fair authoress may have meant well. I shall leave that, however, to the "Searcher of all hearts;" ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... aiding him to get possession of the throne, they should gain an influence in the kingdom which they might afterward turn to account for themselves. The King of France at this time was named Philip. He determined to espouse the cause of young Arthur in this quarrel. His motive for doing this was to have a pretext for making war upon John, and, in the war, of conquering some portion of Normandy and annexing it ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... as to the right disposition of the property of the suppressed establishments: "The simple-minded shudder at this, because they think it not right to change the last will of any body; but a greater fraud lies in this than in other abuses. See: What motive swayed those, who founded the benefices? Nothing else than because they were falsely taught, that the mass is a sacrifice. Therefore they dreamed they were bestowing their possessions on the poor, when they gave to this object. But now, since we are ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... out to him that, as she had her duties and occupations, so ought he to have. It was monstrous his thought of foregoing the shooting that year. Why, if he wanted some additional motive, what did he say to preserving as much grouse-plumage as would trim a cloak for her? It was a great pity that the skins of so beautiful a bird should be thrown away. And she desired him to present her kind regards to ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... and it involved a falsehood. Egremont happened to regard her as she spoke, and at once a blush came to her cheeks. To what was she falling? Why did she tell untruths without the least need? She could not understand the motive which had impelled her ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... therefore profoundly at rest, I will know the cause of my wretched fate, and will be at rest. My pistols lie loaded by my side—I shall die to-night. To-morrow, twelve awestruck and trembling men will come and look at me. They will ask each other: 'What could have been his motive for the rash act.' Rash! my face will be calmer than theirs, for my struggles in this life will be over; and I shall have gained—perhaps knowledge, perhaps oblivion, but certainly victory. And to-night, as the clock ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Respect for the masses he had none; interest in their affairs he had none either. On the other hand, the tone of uninstructed Conservatism—that is to say, of the party so stamped—he altogether despised. The motive which ultimately decided him to declare himself a Liberal was purely of sentiment; he remembered what Mrs. Baxendale had said about the hardships of poor Hood, and consequently allied himself with those who profess to be the special friends of ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... the bed and lay with her face on her arms, shaken by a most desperate weeping. That fatal charity; those fatal five-pound notes. Annalise, panic-stricken lest she who possessed so many should be the next victim, poured out the tale of the missing money, of the plain motive for the murder, with a convincingness, a naked truth, that stabbed Priscilla to the ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... but as you appear to have placed yourselves in my power, and claimed my confidence, I will not betray you. If you are honest, you have my thanks for your indiscreet zeal, in running such a great risk to preserve my life. The motive is laudable, but the means are most dangerous, and I fear you have not well weighed the consequences. Should the sword be once drawn in such a cause, there is no middle course to pursue; the scabberd must be thrown away. The period is not yet come ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... States, but the planters will receive some benefit from it in the protection given to their crops. The steamboats in interior waters will be exchanged for iron whalebacks, and new forces of a new nature, as yet only partly developed, such a electricity, will contest with steam as a motive power. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... had at least one good effect: it took from her the irritation she had so often felt against herself. Losing part of her self-consciousness in the whirl of a new, strong motive, wrought a great change, not only in her appearance, but also in her way of looking at things—herself included. She was almost satisfied with the image her mirror reflected. She might well have been entirely satisfied. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... 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 7,000 horses. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... some difficulty, "that I should thank you. I do. But I do not think that you told me all of this without some motive. I abandon the service of The Master. But what is it that you wish me to do? You know, of course, that I can order both ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... yield a fatherless generation? What is the precise structure of the nuclei of the cells which originate from the nucleus of the egg-cell only, and not from a nucleus formed by the fusion of that with a sperm-cell nucleus? These and similar questions are the motive of further careful ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the words she spoke, Then thus his melancholy silence broke: "Some other motive, goddess! sways thy mind (Some close design, or turn of womankind), Nor my return the end, nor this the way, On a slight raft to pass the swelling sea, Huge, horrid, vast! where scarce in safety sails The best-built ship, though Jove inspires the gales. The bold proposal how shall I fulfil, Dark ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... such postponement, or even a positive rejection; and he treated the menaces of the dissolution of the Union with scorn. He significantly asked, Who will dissolve the government? The opposition majority had no motive for doing it, and he did not believe that the federalists would, at the first failure of their power, revenge themselves by overthrowing the government. He expressed his belief that the people, from one end of the Union to the other, were strongly ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... wife of the governor of one of the chief provinces, she had been from the beginning en rapport with the intrigues, the gossip, and the rumours of a revolution which, for intricacy of plot and hidden motive, is incomparable with any previous national change on record. Her attitude toward education as seen in her relationship with her son educated in England and America reveals the attitude of the average Chinese father and mother if they would allow ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... first victim was now past all suffering, being no more a motive for heroism than so much mutton, the girl's blood was too hot with triumphant indignation to let her think of such an unimportant point as that. She was victor. She had outfaced and routed the foe. She had saved one victim. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... for all these ills culminating in death was the tree of life. When man sinned against his God he was put away from the tree of life. If he had remained with it he would have been beyond the reach of the motive of life, and beyond the restraining power of the fear of death. He would have lived forever, subject, like fallen angels, to mental suffering during the ages to come. But being placed beyond the reach of the tree of life he may be redeemed by ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... fantastic or trivial or even grotesque. In Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli love which cometh by the hearing of the ear (for Rudel is a sun-worshipper who has never seen his sun) is a pure imaginative devotion to the ideal. In Count Gismond love is the deliverer; the motive of the poem is essentially that of the Perseus and Andromeda myth refined upon and mediaevalised. In Cristine love is the interpreter of life; a moment of high passion explains, and explains away, all else ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... imbibe. He now viewed my daring spirit with a mingled pleasure and pain; he dreaded the result of such ardent feelings, because he foresaw that they would lead me into the greatest difficulties and dangers, unless he checked them by timely control. He now freely told me that he was actuated by this motive when he refused to give me his consent to go to Portsmouth, to witness the effects of Lord Howe's brilliant victory over the French fleet. He told me, too, that he had the same object in view, when, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... scarcely a battered tramp on the Seven Seas that was not his on time charter. As usual, his position was, "You've got to come and see me"; which they did, and, to use another of his phrases, they "paid through the nose" for the privilege. And all his venturing and fighting had now but one motive. Some day, as he confided to Hegan, when he'd made a sufficient stake, he was going back to New York and knock the spots out of Messrs. Dowsett, Letton, and Guggenhammer. He'd show them what an all-around general buzz-saw he was and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... reflection. She heard steps approaching the chamber; she drew back, but trembled not. A courage not of herself, never known before, sparkled in her eyes, and dilated her stature. Living or dead, she would be faithful still to Zanoni! There was a new motive to the preservation of honour. The door opened, and the prince entered in the gorgeous and gaudy custume still worn at that ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the party at the water's edge,—square-ended, flat-bottomed punts, sharp-bowed bateaux, long, graceful, dug-out canoes, and a commodious push-boat, with cabin and awning, whose motive power was poles. Elk River craft are as abundant as the log cabins on its banks, and their pilots are as numerous as the inhabitants. Neither sex nor size is a disqualification, for, excepting the trifling matter of being web-toed, all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... course, with them, Lady Jane Grey, who, as will be seen by the table, was the representative of the second sister of Henry VIII., was the only heir. The Earl of Northumberland embraced this view. His motive was to raise Lady Jane Grey to the throne, in order to exclude the Princess Mary, whose accession he knew very well would bring all his greatness to a very ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... with a look of calm consideration; "somebody did it, undoubtedly; and that makes the difficulty of the whole affair. 'Cui bono,' as the lawyers say. Two persons only could have had any motive, so far as wealth and fortune go. The first and most prominent, your father, who, of course, would come into every thing (which made the suspicion so hot and strong); and the other, a very nice gentleman, whom it is ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... to every vice, and one whom his friends had found it out of their power to reclaim. With well-feigned tears of regret, she upbraided herself for having ever allowed him to enter her house—ascribing her motive to humanity, and a desire to reclaim him from his errors; and hinting, when she could, that I had defeated her good intentions, and ruined myself. Alas! how true the latter part has proved to me! I and my husband wrote to her letter after letter, in vain. She refused, in the most ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... population of the Tenth, had secured the services of a primitive Methodist preacher, and was holding nightly meetings in the schoolhouse, where much good was done. But the noisy devotions of the Flats met with little favour in the sight of the Oa. Praying Donald, conscious of the purity of their motive, had visited the Methodists once, and had now little to ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... more detested, hated, feared—no man was ever better loved. That he was a sternly honest, sincere man, singularly pure in motive and abstemious in habit, even his bitterest enemies do not dispute. If Savonarola was God-intoxicated, Garibaldi ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... extends them (Nos. 9 and 54), but often merely repeats passages on the same degrees as those of the first section, or on different ones. He makes use of imitation (Nos. 7 and 36). Sometimes he evolves a phrase from a motive (No. 11). In No. 19 the development assumes a certain importance. It commences, not, as in most cases, with the opening theme or figure of the first section, but with a group of semiquaver notes which appears later in that section. In No. 20 Scarlatti preserves the rhythm, but with total change ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... gleaned from the savages some vague allusions to sources of silver and copper in the far northwest, but that was all. He had not found a northern Eldorado, nor had his quest of a new route to the Indies been a whit more fruitful. Cartier had set out with this as his main motive, but had succeeded only in finding that there was no such route by way of the St. Lawrence. Though the King was much interested in his recital of courage and hardships, he was not fired with zeal for spending ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... angry to remember what she had said to him on the previous night, or he might have guessed at the motive which had led to her departure. "Her father has done with her already," he said; "and I have done with her now." The servants received orders not to admit Miss Henley, if her audacity contemplated a return to ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... rumours likely to be raised after my retreat, by those terrifying watchers of Court transactions who inform the public of their conjectures, I dreaded the probable assertion that I must needs be disgusted or discontented, for health could not be the true motive of my resignation, since I was in public just before it took place. I feared, too, that even those who promoted the enterprise might reproach me with my ability to do what I wished. These considerations determined me to run no voluntary ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... forces, and its dynamical action is equally to be ascribed to the pressure of the Aether." Now I want to put this question to the reader: If light possesses this dynamical action, that is, if it possesses a motive or driving power, what must be the exact effect of the dynamical action of the light waves from the sun upon all the planets and meteors that revolve round it? We know that the sun is 324,000 times the mass of our earth, and that it has a ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... 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 ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... and it made a profound impression on Jack MacRae. He passed over the underlying motive, a man justifying himself to his son for a failure which needed no justifying. He saw now why his father tabooed all things Gower, why indeed he must have hated Gower as a man who does things in the open hates an enemy who strikes ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the Mounted Police all over Canada was opportune is evidenced by the fact that, under the guise of legitimate strikes, movements were begun which led to a sort of reign of terror in some communities, and in connection with which the real motive of some who manipulated them was shown, by evidence convincing to Judges and Juries, to be nothing short of seditious conspiracy to overthrow the constitutional government of this country. Incriminating papers ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... is still another side to the farm life, Mother dear, or to any life for that matter. Your own life has taught me that to work for the love of others is a motive which directs the noblest lives. If agricultural missionaries are needed in India, they are also needed in parts of our own country where farm lands that were once productive are now greatly depleted and in some cases even abandoned for ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... responded to 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 a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that to most people would seem to be magical. I showed it a short time ago to the prior, having explained to him beforehand how I had discovered it. He is above the superstitions of folks in general, and knowing that I could have no motive in deceiving him, was much interested; but he said to me, 'This is one of the things that were best concealed. I can quite understand that there are many things in nature of which we are ignorant. I know that what you say of decayed fish sometimes giving out light like this ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... objective of the armed forces is, therefore, the reduction of the opposing will to resist. It is attained through the use of actual physical violence or the threat thereof (page 7). This fact constitutes the underlying motive of every military plan, whether for the conduct of a minor or contributory operation, or for the prosecution of a major campaign. The final outcome is dependent on ability to isolate, occupy, or otherwise control ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... was plenty of other food for the dog, Edwin ate a portion, but never without feeling confident that he was not robbing his friend. As the dog usually looked very wise, Edwin took it for granted that his motive was understood as right and just, and in this way the child was able to get some of the food that he would otherwise have been denied, and the dog's allowance was still sufficient. Rather than rob the dog, he would always ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... should profit by his mistakes. He never made any mistakes. Now and again he emphasizes some trifling error, but that is "only his fun." (3) A desire that others should profit by the recital of his virtuous sagacity to reach a similar success. The last was undoubtedly his principal motive. Honest fellow, who happened to be a genius! But the point is that his success was in no way the result of his virtuous sagacity. I would go further, and say that his dreadful virtuous sagacity ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... Don, and that it was all going to be an attempt to frighten the tribe he was with. But all the same, the enemy came by degrees nearer and nearer, as they yelled and leaped; and a suspicion suddenly crossed Don's mind that there might be a motive in ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... seemed an illumination of his whole being, as if some lamp had suddenly kindled into flame inside of him, irradiating him from top to toe. Best of all, it was involuntary, born of no external effort or motive, but simply the outflashing of a hidden personality, rare and fine and sweet. With a quick interchange of smiles Anne and Paul were fast friends forever before a word had passed ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... proverb—which pray condemn as a bad one, because the motive offered is wrong—that "honesty is the best policy." Rather say, "Be honest because it is right." Pussy, with her manoeuvres to steal the creams, thought herself very clever, ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... South. One young lady, the daughter of a wealthy planter, was so determined to see her, that she bribed a maid to lend her her cap and apron, and let her carry in Miss Lind's tea. This incident amused Barnum immensely, but Miss Lind was much vexed, declaring the young lady's motive to be curiosity rather than admiration. The voyage from Wilmington to Charleston had been very rough, the trip requiring over thirty-six hours. When they arrived at last, the vessel had been given up for lost and the wreck had been telegraphed all over the country. The voyage to Havana ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... signal was given to change the motive power from the internal combustion engines to electricity, they could see the engine stop, and an attendant shift the clutch which engaged the electric motors. A dial swinging over a card alongside a pair of ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... we find in every form of life? Desire of some sort—some unexplained motive power that impels even the smallest insect on its queer travels. You must have watched some infinitesimal red spider on a fence rail, bustling along—why and whither? Who knows? And when you come to man, what ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... had no great difficulty in the end in arriving at the truth, namely, that his own loyalty was a very secondary object of interest to the minister, and that his real motive in thus apparently opening his mind to him had been, not to gather his own sentiments, but to endeavour to ascertain those of Turenne. From the talk among his officers he had already learned that the general opinion was, that although the queen had always entertained a most favourable ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... Carl: "for I see through your kind motive in asking, that I esteem myself fortunate, if I have been in any way useful to you; but that I cannot, and ought not, to think, of accepting a favour ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... replied J.T. Maston, with fresh vehemence. "There are a thousand reasons for fighting floating about, and still we don't fight! We economise legs and arms, and that to the profit of folks that don't know what to do with them. Look here, without looking any farther for a motive for war, did not North America ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... have here a ploughman out of employ. Given a ploughman out of employ, and a rick burnt. The burning of a rick is an act of vengeance, and a ploughman out of employ is a vengeful animal. The rick and the ploughman are advancing to a juxtaposition. Motive being established, we have only to prove their proximity at a certain hour, and our ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... delicate creatures rose out of the water like silver clouds, and as they passed over our Vessel numbers fell upon our decks. These fish are excellent eating, and of those that fell aboard of us we soon had an ample supply. Hartog, as much to give the crew some novel occupation as from any other motive, set the men to work salting and drying the fish, so that we secured three barrels full, as an addition to our ordinary fare, which was very acceptable. The flying fish were pursued by a shoal of dolphins, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... which many acts can be done which, while politically anti-constitutional, are not juridically unconstitutional. For this reason, the undue dependence upon the judiciary to nullify every law which either in form, necessary operation, or motive transgresses the Constitution has so far lessened the vigilance of the people to protect their own Constitution as to ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... Is not that rather my question than yours? We judge ourselves from within; 'others judge us by what we have done,' says Goethe. The means, ha, and the motive? Why will men seek stumblingly after these, when actually their sole concern is with the thing done? So, you two look at me,—I was but pondering,—putting a case;—so far, the means here have been simple and innocent,—my hand, my eye, my brain, my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... not to prevent him exposing something he knew! It seems explainable only on the hypothesis that a liaison existed between the colored boy and the girl, and the white man knew of it. The press is singularly silent. Has it a motive? We owe it to ourselves ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... undertook his new duties without allowing a murmur to escape his lips, and without even asking additional pay; though, had he but mentioned it, the general could not have well refused the demand. A noble motive engrossed Kit Carson's mind. He has ever labored to win and wear the confidence and respect of his countrymen, being ambitious to leave a name behind him that shall be an honor ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... replied, with more than wonted seriousness. "Your ambition is great enough to render you useless and discontented, but you need something to stimulate your energy, else it will waste itself in idle dreams. Perhaps love may come to be that motive power; perhaps—" and a shade crossed ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... said you! O thy mouth's a Sieve! There's not a secret thou canst keep a moment; Did I not charge thee not to name Gerardo, Till I should speak of it myself to him? Nay, 'tis the greatest motive makes me meet him, For to prevent the mischiefs else may follow; Well, I am curst for sin, and thou art made The cause o' th' sin, and curse that ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... 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 to ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... being overcome by the deities, Danavas, and invincible Rakshasas, capable of splitting mountain summits and sucking the ocean itself and destroying the three worlds, fierce, and looking like Yama himself. The illustrious Kasyapa, seeing him approach and knowing also his motive, spoke unto ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... no persuasive argument to send the searchers off. In their own minds they have enough motive for haste; and, though in each it might be different in kind, as in degree, with all it is sufficiently strong. Not one of them but is willing to risk his life in the pursuit they have entered upon; and at least one would lay it down rather than fail in finding Francesca, and restoring ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... 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
... were to do, or how to do it, even with the means therefor provided. But the South was at last awake! And again the popular voice averred that it was not Congress, or Cabinet; that the President alone was the motive power; that his strong hand had grasped the chaos and reduced it to something like order. Rapidly one needful and pointed law after another emanated from Congress; and what had been a confused mass of weak resolves assumed shape as clear and legible ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... experience if he chose. "There is just one point that we shall have to clear up, however. What was the cause of the death of the deceased? There is no gas in the room. It couldn't have been illuminating gas, then. No, it must have been a poison of some kind. Then as to the motive," he added, trying to look confident but really shooting a tentative remark at Craig and the house detective, who said nothing. "It looks a good deal like that other suicide - at least a suicide which some one has endeavoured to conceal," he added, hastily recollecting the manner in which the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... plan in his head Phil ducked to the left, and started to run. He could have no real motive in choosing this side, because there was no time to take even a quick observation, and form ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... difference of taste, and is alive to the distinction between an original and a copy. In the second act she has got the length of knowing the enormity of taking life, and appreciating the fine distinction between taking it of one's own motive, and taking it for money. Yet the next moment, when Leucippe enters with a fawn he has killed, it appears that she does not realize the difference between man and the brute creation. Thus we are for ever shifting from ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... lures her silly gudgeons. They shall eat, they shall propagate, and for the sake of pleasing themselves they shall hurry down the road which has been laid out for them. But there lurks no bribe in the smell and beauty of the flower. It's charm has no ulterior motive. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... of any Huguenot conspiracy? How, then, could the French envoy go to the same Englishmen to whom he had made known the contents of this despatch, and tell them that the king was the author of the deed he had stigmatized as most detestable, and that the motive that had impelled him reluctantly to order the slaughter of the Huguenots was a conspiracy which he did not discover until a day or two after he gave the order? Yet this was the contradictory story which was ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... compressed air arrangement motive power is furnished the torpedo in transit for its propellers. A gyroscope keeps it on a plane and upright. A striker on the nose of the torpedo is released by a fan which revolves in the water. The nose of the torpedo strikes the side of the battleship and the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran thus: "At the first council, procuration to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... self-chosen path of life could have trained you. And if, as is quite possible, some of you are impatient already for the exercise of your powers in some great work, I will preach patience to you from another motive. It is this: that you are not yet capable of doing much that is useful, from want of training and general ability. I remember Miss Octavia Hill once saying that she could get any quantity of money, and any quantity of enthusiasm, but that her difficulty was to get trained intelligence, ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... or with joy adore. Oh, wondrous scene! most awful! most august! Th' event is certain, and the purpose just. The Judge's eye will pierce the inmost soul, Each hidden record of the past unroll; No word, no motive, no minuter thought Escape exposure, into judgment brought. Oh! that these solemn truths, with equal force, Might rule my soul, throughout its earthly course; That every scene, and every hour, may give True witness then, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... approached, and pressing him to her bosom, silently wept with him. Thaddeus, ashamed of his emotions, yet incapable of dissembling them, struggled a moment to release himself from her arms. The countess, mistaking his motive, said in a melancholy voice, "And do you, my son, despise your mother for the weakness which she has revealed? Is this the reception that I expected from a child on whose affection I reposed ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... 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 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... amongst not a few people the strange delusion that America's entrance into the war was fomented by moneyed men, in part, at least, from the motive and ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... again, beginning to move slowly up and down, like the strong right arm of some automaton giant. Greater and lesser cog-wheels caught up the motive power, revolving slowly and majestically, and with steady, regular rotation, or whirling round so fast you could hardly see that they stirred at all. Of a sudden a soul had been put into that wonderful creature of man's making, that inert mass of wood ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... that a concession would be taken for a confession of weakness, as if they durst not do otherwise; while other some there are who say that it was rather out of arrogance and a willful spirit of contention, to show his own strength, that he took occasion to slight the Lacedaemonians. The worst motive of all, which is confirmed by most witnesses, is to the following effect. Phidias the Molder had, as has before been said, undertaken to make the statue of Minerva. Now he, being admitted to friendship with Pericles, and a great favorite of his, had many enemies upon this account, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... as a state of consciousness, as a spring of feeling, as a motive to exertion, as blessing your country, and as reacting on you. Think of it as it fills your mind and quickens your heart, and as it fills the mind and quickens the heart of millions around you. Instantly, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... her to attend the funeral at Willowmount, would not, if he could help it, suffer her so much as to see the trappings of woe; and in this Dinah acquiesced also, comprehending fully the motive that underlay his wish. She knew that the earthly formalities, though they had to be faced, were to Scott something of the nature of a grim farce in which, while he could not escape it himself, he was determined ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... behind all of it stands one motive which has held back the development of psychotherapy in the medical profession more than anything else. The physician feels instinctively that a real success can be reached in every one of these fields, only if ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... ardor with which this religion was propagated in the first two centuries had no motive but the yearning to make others share in its benefits and hopes; and to this end to accept the belief that Jesus Christ had come in fulfilment of the promise of a Saviour—who should be sent to this world clothed with divine authority ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... a motive, an ulterior motive," he replied. "For days now you have been persecuting me and I am convinced that it is for ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... prepared by Pobedonostzeff to embarrass Germany; that, as Russia was always wretchedly unready with her army, The Hague Conference was simply a trick for gaining time against her rivals who kept up better military preparations. There may have been truth in part of this assertion; but the motive of the great Russian statesman in favoring the conference was probably not so much to gain time for the army as to gain money for the church. With his intense desire to increase the stipends of the Russian orthodox clergy, and thus to raise them somewhat above their present low condition, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... eyes. "You have said you hated her because she ruined your life—because she loved the man you loved. You have refused to tell me the name of that man. You can have but one reason in thus withholding this information—that motive is fear; therefore, I infer that Mona Forester was the first wife of your husband—her child was your ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... "Justice is the motive power of all my actions, madam," replied the emperor, curtly, "and for that very reason you cannot ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the dawn of chivalry, when, every hour and year, men were becoming more gentle and more wise; while, even through their worst cruelty and error, native qualities of noblest cast may be seen asserting themselves for primal motive, and submitting themselves for ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the faithful, is the motive which seemed so strange to your majesty yesterday, and for which I ought to incur your indignation. I ask your pardon once more as your slave, and submit to receive the chastisement I deserve. And if you vouchsafe to pronounce any thing beyond the penance I have imposed upon myself, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... is neither legitimate nor excusable except when it is made in the interests of the majority of the nation. One may be sure that this is the motive which influences him, when he makes use of moral influences only to attain his ends. If the Government have committed so many faults as to render a revolution desirable for the nation, if the Napoleonic cause have left sufficiently ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... forced himself to the safe with all the pain which walking caused him, the wounded man must have been impelled by some strong and unusual motive. It couldn't be that he had suspected Wilson and Jo of theft, because, in the first place, he must have seen at a glance that the safe was undisturbed; and in the second, that they had not taken advantage ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... The single motive which in all probability hindered the head man from acceding at once to their demands was the dread of Oko Sam's displeasure in case that despotic monarch were ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... but in the finer art of inflicting suffering in anticipation they were mere clumsy bunglers, for they lacked that finer sense of dissimulation which endows a man with the power of lying with conviction; they allowed their motive to become apparent; and, seeing this, I disappointed them by laughing in their faces. Besides, whether what they said was truth or falsehood, I was not going to afford a trio of sable outlaws the satisfaction of boasting that they had succeeded in ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... same time will be doubly poor—poor in possession, and dissolute in moral habit; and he will then naturally covet the money which the other has saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the other, and rob him of his well-earned wealth, there is no more any motive for saving, or any reward for good conduct; and all society is thereupon dissolved, or exists only in systems of rapine. Therefore the first necessity of social life is the clearness of national ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... attractive. To be sure, he was vain as well as inventive, and here was an opportunity to attract the attention of his sovereign and increase his own importance by connecting his name with hers in a romantic manner. Still, we believe that the main motive that dictated this epistle was kindness to Pocahontas. The sentence that refers to her heroic act is this: "After some six weeks [he was absent only four weeks] fatting amongst those Salvage Countries, at the minute of my execution she hazarded the beating out of her own braines to save mine, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... skilful in putting the most plausible colour upon his proposals and presents, the King contrived to reconcile the spirit of the proud to their profit, and to hold out to the real or pretended patriot the good of both France and Burgundy as the ostensible motive; whilst the party's own private interest, like the concealed wheel of some machine, worked not the less powerfully that its operations' were kept out of sight. For each man he had a suitable bait, and a proper mode of presenting ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... is the motive of the Crimson Tapestries? I think the tangling robe must have been in the tradition, as the murder in the bath certainly was. One motive, of course, is obvious: Clytemnestra is tempting Agamemnon to sin or "go too far." He tries to resist, but the splendour of an oriental ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... than painting pictures which nobody would buy,—it was only because no third avocation presented itself as a possibility. He is not to be compared for a moment with a true expert like Sheridan, who borrowed for borrowing's sake, and without any sordid motive connected with rents or butchers' bills. Haydon would, indeed, part with his money as readily as if it belonged to him. He would hear an "inward voice" in church, urging him to give his last sovereign; and, having ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... should occur in the meantime which would, in his opinion, justify him in again repudiating her, he would of course take advantage of such circumstance. If asked himself what was his prevailing motive in all that he did or intended to do, he would have declared that it was above all things necessary that he should "put himself right in the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the advent of a leader who should give him the key to the riddle ... he had no time to wait. He was not the kind of man, like his father, to be satisfied with the lifelong search for truth. With or without a motive, he needed always to make up his mind, to act, to turn to account, to use his energy. Traveling, the delight of art, and especially of music, with which he had gorged himself, had at first been to ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... mistress is dear to me; her happiness more sacred to me than my own. If I believed that you would ever play her false, if I believed that a sinister motive led you to accomplish this end, as I stand before you here, I would expose you as you are. I would lay bare to her the secrets of the past. I would warn her to recall the love which she has lavished on ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... get into hot water, and commit suicide upon his domestic happiness; for nothing so effectually disturbs the tranquillity of a family, as open opposition of religious creeds. Women become religious, in the every-day acceptation of the word, from any motive rather than a conviction of the truth or reasonableness of any particular creed. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to define the motive that carries women into the pale of any particular church. I have heard of an old ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... you to point that out." Drew thought that at last he had found a real motive for Topham's services. "I'm likely to be bait, ain't that the ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... Antonio Tiexera than any other woman on earth, for within Baylor's sacred precincts she had been reduced to that condition to which, when a woman arrives, men call her a Magdalene. If this was the motive that prompted his slayer, I ask why he did not appeal to the unwritten law sooner; he who appeals to it must do so at the first information has been conveyed to him that the wrong has been done and he cannot wait for months and then use it as a defense, and I do not hesitate ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... untruth, he nodded to her, saying: 'That was, beyond dispute, a good deed, but it is too small to counterbalance the great weight of your bad deeds. Perhaps it may lighten your punishment. Still great riches were meted out to you on earth, and what were a few nuts to you! The motive that urged you to bestow them is pleasing in the sight of the Lord, I acknowledge; but as I said before, your charity was too paltry for you to be released from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... much pleased, I am much rejoiced." The whole body of warriors now came forward, and our men received the caresses, and no small share of the grease and paint of their new friends. After this fraternal embrace, of which the motive was much more agreeable than the manner, captain Lewis lighted a pipe and offered it to the Indians who had now seated themselves in a circle around the party. But before they would receive this mark of friendship they pulled off their moccasins, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... formation of one party argues the formation of at least another. And this other in the National Assembly was that of the Jacobins, less pure of motive, less restrained in deed, a party in which stood pre-eminent such ruthless, uncompromising men as ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... rid of as inconvenient in the house. In this case he had to pay the penalty, when he emerged from the chest in the carpenter's shop. The men, who had complained terribly of its weight, were not inclined to allow young Astley to get off free. One of Astley's tricks had, however, a good motive, as it was intended to cure an old woman of her besetting sin—a tendency to take a drop too much. In order to cure the old woman of this weakness, he dressed himself as well as he could to represent the sable form of his satanic majesty. Alas! instead of being surprised, the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... General Howard and the aide, and stated the former's motive in making this visit. Cochise sat silent for some moments. At length, pointing to ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... hint which he dropped respecting the daughter of Waldemar Fitzurse, John had more than one motive, each the offspring of a mind which was a strange mixture of carelessness and presumption with low artifice and cunning. He was desirous of conciliating Alicia's father, Waldemar, of whom he stood in awe, and who had more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the engine whose motive power is the soul and the largest quantity of work will not be done by this curious engine for pay, or under pressure, or by the help of any kind of fuel which may be supplied by the cauldron. It will be done only when the will ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... which had been the prime motive that had lured her out of her retreat that afternoon, caught her eye now, and she shivered a little as, from where it lay on the floor, the headlines seemed to leer up at her, and mock, and menace her. "The White Moll....The Saint of the East ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... such as Miss Amedroz, even though she had reached the age of twenty-five for at the time to which I am now alluding she had nearly done so and was not young of her age, had formed for herself no plan of life in which her aunt's money figured as a motive power. She had gone to Perivale when she was very young, because she had been told to do so, and had continued to go, partly from obedience, partly from habit, and partly from affection. An aunt's dominion, when once well established in early years, cannot easily be thrown ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... "On dit qu'il aime la Mere de ce Yarmouth—mais vous Anglais, vous aimez les vielles Femmes," and he laughed very much. He avoided speaking of Maria Louisa, but spoke of Josephine with affection, saying, "Elle etoit une excellente Femme." He said that the motive of his expedition into Russia was, first, that it was necessary to lead the French Army somewhere, and then that he wished to establish Poland as an independent kingdom; for that he had always loved the Poles, and had many obligations ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley |
