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Motive power   /mˈoʊtɪv pˈaʊər/   Listen
Motive power

noun
1.
The power or ability to move.  Synonyms: locomotion, motivity.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Motive power" Quotes from Famous Books



... the middle third of the bomb pointed directly outward, while those in its front portion were inclined forward at a slight angle, and those in the rear portion backward at the same angle. One tube at the end of the bomb, and pointing directly backward, furnished the motive power. ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton

... eloquent speaker of the day of the Baptist people. Our present educated preachers have lost the hold they should have upon the age in the cultivation of the intellectual instead of the emotional. Religion is the motive power in the intellectual guidance of humanity. These Lemens were well balanced in the cultivation of the intellect and the control of the emotions. They were well educated for their day, self-educated, great lovers of poetry, hymnal poetry, having no taste for ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul

... spoke explosively. "That's expansion. That's a tip on their motive power. Expansion of gas. That accounts for the cold and the vapor. Suddenly expanded it would be intensely cold. The moisture of the air would condense, freeze. But how could they carry it? Or"—he frowned for a moment, brows ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... antiquity also experienced this feeling in a peculiar form, and how, afterwards, in the Middle Ages, a special sense of honour became the mark of a particular class. Nor can we here dispute with those who hold that conscience, rather than honour, is the motive power. It would indeed be better and nobler if it were so; but since it must be granted that even our worthier resolutions result from 'a conscience more or less dimmed by selfishness,' it is better to call the mixture by its right name. It is certainly not always easy, in ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... range (4547 ft.). It is a thriving industrial town, devoid of any great antiquarian or architectural interest, though founded by the Moors. It owes its prosperity to its manufacture of linen, woolen goods and paper, especially cigarette paper. Many of the factories derive their motive power from the falls of a mountain torrent, known as the Salto de las Aguas. Labour disturbances are frequent, for, like Barcelona, Alcoy has become one of the centres of socialistic and revolutionary agitation, while preserving many old-fashioned customs and traditions, such as the curious festival ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... will is twofold: one is its immediate act, as it were, elicited by it, namely, "to wish"; the other is an act of the will commanded by it, and put into execution by means of some other power, such as "to walk" and "to speak," which are commanded by the will to be executed by means of the motive power. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... 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

... stern of the boat, paddle in hand. As they expected to drift with the current, always swift in these deep Florida streams, there was no need of additional motive power; though Tony had also picked up another paddle, as if he ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... the British navy, compared with that of the British army and the other elements of Great Britain's government, has taken on magnified dimensions during the last half century. So long as war-ships used sails as their principal motive power, so long were they forced to employ methods of construction and equipment that forbade the efficient employment of high-power guns, the attainment of great speed, and the use of instruments of precision; ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... as I say, are quite as mysterious as his motive power. To fit him into the unrolling chart of American, or even of English fiction is extremely difficult. Save one thinks of H. B. Fuller (whose "With the Procession" and "The Cliff-Dwellers" are still remembered by Huneker, but by whom ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... hitherto taken no interest, with crude engravings of palms and coral reefs, of naked savages and tropical mountains covered with jungle, the adventures, in brief, of one Captain Cook. I also discovered a book by a later traveller. Spurred on by a mysterious motive power, and to the great neglect of the pons asinorum and the staple products of the Southern States, I gathered an amazing amount of information concerning a remote portion of the globe, of head-hunters and poisoned stakes, of typhoons, of queer ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... down to a fine point, Tom," warned Beverly. "Our gas is on its last legs, and any minute now we'll find ourselves without motive power." ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... the farther side of the swimming channel, and fastened our lariats to two long ropes from the end of the tongue. We took a wrap on the pommels of our saddles with the loose end, and when the word was given our eight horses furnished abundant motive power, and the wagon floated across, landing high and dry amid the shoutings ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... had not that courage which can 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 on numbers of educated young men, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... usually about thirty inches long, and something over eleven inches wide; it weighs about sixty pounds. The fore-paws are quite small in comparison with the rest of the body; the hind feet are larger, webbed like a duck's feet, and are the principal motive power in swimming. The most unique feature of the animal's body is the famous mud-plastering tail, which is oft-times a foot long, five inches in width, and an inch in thickness. The colour of the beaver varies; there are ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... those who opposed the policy of Choiseul, especially in the expulsion of the Jesuits; the latter were called the party of the devots and were led by Chancellor Maupeau and the Duc d'Aiguillon. This faction, with the mistress—Mme. du Barry—as the motive power, soon broke up the power of Choiseul. The young and innocent foreign princess, unschooled in intrigue and politics, could not escape both political parties; upon her entrance into the French court, she was immediately ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... upon two things: First, knowledge in general as to how the human mind works; how it receives its knowledge; how it proceeds from facts and motives to conclusions; what its ambitions, desires, and other feelings are; how these may be aroused and, finally, how they may provide the motive power and induce favorable action. Second, knowledge as to how each individual human mind works; what it's particular methods are in the obtaining of information, in reasoning upon that information, and forming its conclusions; ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... a discarded toy, lay amid rubbish the motive power of my passions. My heart was dumb, my hand nerveless, and even need—that last incentive—had ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... seen some of them, [laughter,] wretched, crinkled, scrawled over, blotched, frowsy, and yet those wretched little scraps of paper move great ships laden with thousands of tons of precious cargo from one end of the world to the other. [Applause.] What is the motive power behind them? The honor of commercial men. [Applause.] Treaties are the currency of international statesmanship. [Applause.] Let us be fair—German merchants, German traders, have the reputation of being as upright and straightforward as any traders in the world, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... the Windward Passage, as it was called by the early navigators, and whence one branch of the Gulf Stream finds its way northward. The Gulf Stream! Who can explain the mystery of its motive power; what keeps its tepid waters in a course of thousands of miles from mingling with the rest of the sea; whence does it come? The accepted theories are familiar enough, but we do not believe them. Maury says the Gulf of Mexico ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... much-erring and more-cursed adjuncts to all armies—were not fully aware of what they 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 statutes. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... and, so to speak, intellectualised. But this leaves out of the question a part of our entire mental being so important and so eminent, that if this part be suppressed, the intelligence would cease to work and would have no more utility than a machine without motive power. Our own motive power is the will, the feeling, or the tendency. Will is perhaps the most characteristic psychical function, since, as I have already had occasion to say, nothing analogous to it is met with in the world of nature. Let us therefore not separate the will from the intelligence, let ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... wall. Nor do they constitute a mere excretion, or a mere appetite, which we can control by a crude system of hygiene and dietetics. We better understand the psycho-sexual constitution if we regard the motive power behind it as a dynamic energy, produced and maintained by a complex mechanism at certain inner foci of the body, and realise that whatever periodic explosive manifestations may take place at the surface, the primary ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... got sore, he got a forked stick and used that instead; then he got a larger one and used both hands; then a still larger one, and used oxen as the motive power; and then he fitted handles to it, and other parts till he finally produced a plough. But the principle has not been changed, and the gang-plough is but a multifold forefinger. It is great fun to loose the tether of the mind and let it go racing along, in and out, ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... street trading, the extension of the Borstal prison system, the furtherance of vague talkative religious movements the fostering of inter-racial ententes, all found in him a tireless exponent, a fluent and entertaining, though perhaps not very convincing, advocate. With the real motive power behind these various causes he was not very closely identified; to the spade-workers who carried on the actual labours of each particular movement he bore the relation of a trowel-worker, delving superficially at ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... nervous timidity that marked Mrs. Leatrim's intercourse with her husband in the conduct of her son. His love for his stern father was without fear, it almost amounted to worship; and the hope of deserving his esteem was the motive power that influenced his studies, and gave a colouring to every act ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie

... comprehensively, Miss Benham; but perhaps it would be better to say that I am the advance agent of prosperity—that sounds rather less mercenary. We must not allow the impression to get abroad that mere money is to be the motive power behind ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... right angles, and plunges a hundred and nine feet. I know of no cataract which expresses might in action so eloquently as the Upper Fall of the Yellowstone. Pressed as it is within narrow bounds, it seems to gush with other motive power than merely gravity. Seen from above looking down, seen sideways from below, or looked at straight on from the camp site on the opposite rim, the water appears hurled ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... has taken place in naval vessels and naval warfare since the introduction of steam as a motive power for ships of war demands either a corresponding change in some of our existing navy yards or the establishment of new ones for the construction and necessary repair of modern naval vessels. No inconsiderable embarrassment, delay, and public injury have been experienced ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... nothing; but after a while, when he had tested me and sworn me in with all possible solemnity, he let me understand that there really was a plot to gain command of the vessel. A dozen of the prisoners had hatched it before they came aboard, Prendergast was the leader, and his money was the motive power. ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... fiddlers, the moral and business idiots out of the Temple. I would do it not by being a pure, sterilized, holy-looking person, but by having more imagination in business, by using higher levels and higher voltage of human motive power in business than they can use, by having more brains about human nature than they have, and by my power to get the public to be religious, i.e., my power as a sheer matter of business, to make the public prefer, as a matter ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... William Otto bent down and picked it up. It was a small toy aeroplane, with yellow silk planes, guy-ropes of waxed thread, and a wooden rudder, its motive power vested in a tightly twisted rubber. One of the wings was bent. Ferdinand William Otto straightened it, and ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... is clearly of great importance in production. We build houses and factories upon it, we use it as a basis of transportation, we harness its motive power, and we make extensive use of the innumerable raw materials which it furnishes. Without land there could be no production, in the sense in which the economist understands ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... class was that of the Canopus—the Goliath, Vengeance, Ocean, Albion, and Glory—2,000 tons lighter than the first class named above, but more modern in equipment and construction, having been built between the years 1900 and 1902. Their motive power was heavier, being 13,500 horsepower, and their speed was almost a knot faster. Increase in the power of naval guns had made unnecessary any increase in the thickness of their armor, and consequently ranged from 6 to 12 inches in thickness. Their armament was about the same as that of the older ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... The motive power in all of Moses' later work was that transforming, vivid sense of Jehovah's presence that came to him on the barren ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks

... honorable mention in Alpine journals,—a result which filled their families with joy and pride. These young people knew to a nicety the proper diet and clothing which would best contribute toward endurance. Everything was very fine about them save their motive power. The writer does not refer to the hard-worked men and women who were taking a vacation, but to the leisured young people, to whom this period was the most serious of the year, and filled with the most strenuous exertion. ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... we rose and went out for a view of the town. It was beautifully situated on a gentle rise which swelled up from the water's edge and fell rapidly off in the rear of the town into a deep ravine, where a brawling mountain stream supplied a little flouring-mill with motive power. Beyond the ravine were small fields of grain, beans and lentils on the rolling slopes, and back of these rose the dark, dense vegetation of low hills, while over all were the rough and ragged ridges of mountains closing in all the scene. The town itself, as I have said, was ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... sapiens to distinguish this from that and to make himself the master of their secrets as he has done with Electricity, thereby making it the means of illumination, motive power, and the alleviation ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... voyeurs and are zealous spectators at the voiding of urine and feces of others, After this tendency has been repressed, the curiosity to see the genitals of others (one's own or those of the other sex) remains as a tormenting desire which in some neurotic cases furnishes the strongest motive power ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... in fact, was the head of a man of the sea; a youthful swimmer who had come up on her unseen—behind her till she had put about. The lad was swimming rapidly, though with a curious waste of motive power, and was so close that Miss Heth seemed to herself to be staring full into his face. His course was laid dead across her bows; for other reasons, too, his piratical intentions were instantly obvious to the girl in ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... lungo d'uomini ignoranti. Ordinary people think merely how they shall spend their time; a man of any talent tries to use it. The reason why people of limited intellect are apt to be bored is that their intellect is absolutely nothing more than the means by which the motive power of the will is put into force: and whenever there is nothing particular to set the will in motion, it rests, and their intellect takes a holiday, because, equally with the will, it requires something external to bring it into play. The result is ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... fills. Tunnels will pierce the heights that cannot be scaled by easy grades, and electric power supplied by these mountain streams themselves will take the place of steam made by coal and hauled hundreds of miles to give us costly motive power. You may live, Bucks, to see all of this; I shall not. When it ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... the gun-boats were much smaller than those just mentioned, trusting mainly to their sweeps for motive power, and each relying for offence on one long pivot gun, a 12- or 18-pounder. In the Chesapeake there was a quite a large number of these small gallies, with a few of the larger kind, and here it was thought that by acting together in ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... lived was one of the very oldest of the New England settlements. Its situation is uncommonly beautiful, upon a slope descending from a moderately elevated ridge towards the bank of a noble river, which of late years has furnished more motive power to various manufacturing establishments in the towns and villages, which have sprung up on its borders, than any other stream in the world. At the time of which I write, there was not a mill throughout its whole extent. It is told, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... speck in the horizon. His next-door neighbor is an iron workshop, and is forging an armor of proof for a vessel of war, from which the mightiest balls shall bound as lightly as the arrows from an old-time breastplate. There is another searching for that new motive power which shall keep pace with the telegraph, and hurl the bodies of men through space as fast as their thoughts are hurled; there is another seeking that electro-magnetic battery which shall speak instantly and distinctly to the ends of the earth. The mind of that astronomer is a telescope, through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... with such a refined face as might have belonged to an artist or musician. He had the mellow colour Murillo loved. The mad strain which, in the case of greatly gifted people, has often seemed to be the motive power of genius, in him took the form of a great cleverness,—an esoteric cleverness and ingenuity ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... famous and rich by his own hand. Splendid ability and unquestioned earning power were the result of Templeton Thorpe's faith in the last of his race. But nothing was to come of it. His ability remained but his earning power was gone. He was like a splendid engine from which the motive power has been shut off. ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... actually the motive power was his aunt. People used to say so, but it did not appear on the surface to anyone in close contact with the man; or it appeared only in very small things. We used to work in a tall, dark, pleasant room, book-lined, and giving on to a lawn that was always an asylum for furtive thrushes. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... comes not so much from the tremendous display of physical force they afford—though there is in this something almost appalling—as from the consciousness which everybody begins to have that to put such an engine of destruction as the German army into operation there must be behind it a new kind of motive power. It is easy enough for any government to put its whole male population under arms, or even to lead them on an emergency to the field. But that an army composed in the main of men suddenly taken from civil pursuits should fight and march, as the Prussian ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... controlling cause had passed away—after railroads had been built—after the steam engine had become a motive power for a large part of machinery, the characteristics originally stamped by natural causes continued the diversity of pursuit. Is it fortunate or otherwise? I say it is fortunate. Your interest is to remain a manufacturing and ours ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... miles of 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

... and drinking is a serious one. The stomach is the great motive power of society. It is the true sharpener of human ingenuity, curis acuens mortalia corda. Cookery is the first of arts. Chemistry is a mere subordinate science, whose chief value is that it enables man to impart greater relish and gust to his viands. The greatest poets, such as Homer, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... back to the morning when, at the tender age of ten, she was violently precipitated into our classroom. The motive power, we subsequently learned, was her brother Jacob, slightly older than Katrina, whose nervous system had abruptly refused the ordeal of accompanying her into the presence of the teacher. Pushing the ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... step, rate, pace, tread, stride, gait, port, footfall, cadence, carriage, velocity, angular velocity; clip, progress, locomotion; journey &c 266; voyage &c 267; transit &c 270. restlessness &c (changeableness) 149; mobility; movableness, motive power; laws of motion; mobilization. V. be in motion &c adj.; move, go, hie, gang, budge, stir, pass, flit; hover about, hover round, hover about; shift, slide, glide; roll, roll on; flow, stream, run, drift, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... place. The road of life appeared to lead nowhere, and perhaps our friend missed the constant change and excitement of interest brought to her by living alongside such a busy, inspiriting life as her father's. Here in Tideshead she had to provide her own motive power instead of being ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett

... built in England and brought to New York city in 1829, and in August of that year made a trial trip on the rails of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. The experiment was a failure; and for several years horses were the only motive power in use on the railroads. In 1830, however, the South Carolina Railroad having finished six miles of its road, had a locomotive built in New York city, and in January, 1831, placed it on the tracks at Charleston. Another followed in February, and the era of locomotive ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... entitled to be an unprofitable laborer. He thought within himself, that his prospects in his own galvanized country, that seemed to him, a few years since, to offer such a career for an adventurous young man, conscious of motive power, had nothing so enticing as such a nook as this,—a quiet recess of unchangeable old time, around which the turbulent tide now eddied and rushed, but could not disturb it. Here, to be sure, hope, love, ambition, came not, progress came not; but here ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... air, the latter is set in motion, and we have what are commonly known as winds. It is unnecessary for me to prove that the motion of winds can be transmitted to other matter, as we have numerous examples from our observation and experience, in the case of windmills driven by the motive power of the winds, and also balloons urged along by the same cause; apart from the devastating effect produced in towns and country ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... on 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 ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... her, as though some one else had put it to her, and was waiting for an answer. That, surely, was not her object; and yet, if not, what was? From the hour when she read Sydney's letter at Florence she seemed to have had a new motive power within her. She had acted hitherto from instinct, or from mere feeling; she could scarcely recall a single argument which she had held with herself during the past ten days. She might have been walking in a dream, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... there being forty or more rivers and streams of importance, some of them being navigable for a distance of thirty-five miles from their mouths for deep-draught ships, others forming means of irrigation and motive power throughout the region, whilst numerous lakes and lagoons exist. Among the navigable rivers are those of Coatzacoalcos, San Juan, Tonto, Papaloapam, Tuxpam, Casones. The scenery is extremely picturesque in places, changing to the stupendous as the mountains ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... stimulus of ambition. What he did was done with the spontaneousness of the wind or the sunshine. If he had a vanity, it was to be in all points accoutred for his place in society; but even this was so lightly held that few knew him well enough to see it, and it was never a motive power in him. ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... the notion of the negative and privative character of growth already criticized; hence we shall not repeat the criticisms, but pass on to the evil consequences which flow from putting education on this basis. In the first place, it involves loss of impetus. Motive power is not utilized. Children proverbially live in the present; that is not only a fact not to be evaded, but it is an excellence. The future just as future lacks urgency and body. To get ready for something, one knows not what nor why, is to throw away the leverage that exists, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... the service on board. To work the jangada along the windings of the river and between the hundreds of islands and islets which lay in its course required fully as many as were taken, for if the current furnished the motive power, it had nothing to do with the steering, and the hundred and sixty arms were no more than were necessary to work the long boathooks by which the giant raft was to ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... again, and suddenly her heart began to throb thick and hard, so that she gasped for breath. This was Nick's doing. She was as sure of it as if those brief, bitter sentences had definitely told her so. Nick was the motive power that had compelled Grange to this action. How he had done it, she could not even vaguely surmise. But that he had in some malevolent fashion come between them she did not for an ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... so small a cost, that expense will no longer be matter of consideration. England is to lose her superiority as a manufacturing country, inasmuch as her vast store of coals will no longer avail her as an economical source of motive power. "We," say the German cultivators of this science, "have cheap zinc, and, how small a quantity of this metal is required to turn a lathe, and consequently to give motion to any ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... admiration to see more and more. To her servants, to her neighbours, with her money and her time and her sympathies, for little present interests and for world-wide and everlasting ones, Mrs. Caxton was ever ready, active, watchful; hands full and head full and heart full. That motive power of her one mind and will, Eleanor gradually found, was the centre and spring of a vast machinery of good, working so quietly and so beneficently as proved it had been in operation a long, long time. It was a daily deep lesson to ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... upon the best man within his reach. How ignominously he failed to carry out his wishes in this particular is known to every student of Upper Canadian history; but what is not known, either to students of history or anyone else, is—What was the motive power which directed his choice? By what whimsical combination of circumstances it came about that the appointment was finally offered to, and accepted by, one of the most unlikely men in the three kingdoms, is one of those official riddles which appear to defy solution. The fact remains, that the post ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... statical in our institutions and rational in our law, but to blend into one elemental creed the spiritual aspirations of Aryan and of Semite. Italy was not a pioneer in intellectual progress, nor a motive power in the evolution of thought. The owl of the goddess of Wisdom traversed over the whole land and found nowhere a resting-place. The dove, which is the bird of Christ, flew straight to the city of Rome and the new reign began. It was the fashion of early Italian painters to ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... upon their heads. That all-pervading thought, the roots of which are in the bowels of the people, and which attached them so vehemently to Napoleon (who was personally less to them than he thought he was) and which explains the miracle of his return in 1815,—that desire for land is the sole motive power of the peasant's being. In the eyes of the masses Napoleon, ever one with them through his million of soldiers, is still the king born of the Revolution; the man who gave them possession of the soil and sold to them the national domains. His anointing ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... small, dresses indifferently, has good features in general, but indifferent eyes. She does not brighten up in countenance in conversing. She is so successful that I suppose there must be a hidden fire somewhere, for heat is a motive power, and her cold manners could never move Legislatures. I saw some outburst of fire when Mrs. Hale's book was spoken of. It seems Mrs. Hale wrote to her for permission to publish a notice of her, and was decidedly refused; another letter met with the same answer, yet she wrote a 'Life' which Miss ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... to mankind, namely: Christian morality. Ethical monism has no room for three ethical fundamental views, whose full possession morality owes to Christianity, and which gives to Christian morality its highest motive power. One of these is a deeper conception of evil as a sin, as a positive rebellion against the good; another is faith in a future {385} absolute realization of the highest good in an end sometime to be reached by mankind ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... much emphasized by an ascertainment of the proportion of Federal legislation which either bears upon its face its private character or which upon examination develops such a motive power. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... chemical terms, chlorine gas is formed. It is one of the most poisonous and suffocating of all gases. That is the real danger in submarine boats—suffocation from chlorine. It will remain so until we get a better form of motive power, liquid or compressed air, perhaps. And here"—Ross led them to a valve wheel amidships—"as though to invite such disaster, they've given ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... and Ninth avenue, from the Battery to Thirtieth street. The track of this road is laid on iron posts, at an elevation of about sixteen feet above the street. The cars are so constructed that it would be impossible for one of them to fall from the track. Dummy engines furnish the motive power. The running time from the present southern terminus at Courtlandt street to Thirtieth street, a distance of about three miles, is fifteen minutes. The road is pronounced perfectly safe by competent engineers, but the structure appears so light to the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... only get a brace more," he kept saying; "or even one might do, as Josh eats so little; how nice it would be. Jack, don't you suppose, now, you might creep up behind that island yonder, drop ashore, since the law forbids one to shoot ducks from a craft driven by sails or any motive power except a fellow's muscles, and get a shot into the lovely little bunch that ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... creatures that you are—think not so harshly of a penitent bachelor. You have all read of one of your sex through whom Evil—which takes its name from, her—first came upon earth, and you know the motive power of that act was—curiosity. I plead guilty to that motive power on the present occasion; and, while throwing myself unreservedly on your clemency, I freely offer myself as a target for the censure of each one among you who, in the purity of truth can say, "I never felt such an ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... the most minute details. It was very complex, for it was the working of the factory itself which was involved. The scheme was carefully gone into by the owner, his son, and their assistants together, and it was decided to try it. It was entirely successful; LESS than half the motive power ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... sails, or turning one side of the deck into a rope-walk, where they manufacture a clumsy sort of twine, called spun-yarn. This is spun with a winch; and many an hour the Lancashire boy had to play the part of an engine, and contribute the motive power. For material, they use odds and ends of old rigging called "junk," the yarns of which are picked to pieces, and then twisted into new combinations, something as most books are manufactured. This "junk" is bought at the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... the fluctuations of the ticker tape or glanced at financial scareheads in the evening papers, he smiled knowingly with the memory of a sentence spoken at the breakfast-table or an edict uttered in this library, which had been the motive power behind the news; and which to the world at large ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... sort of cage, and said to Hal, what's that? 'Tis my automaton machine, he said, For brushing thoroughly from heels to head; I will explain: a platform there below On which you step, makes wheels and levers go, In fact, your weight the motive power supplies, On which the action of the whole relies, Those arms with brushes then revolving wheel, And from your clothes the dust adroitly steal, Whilst overhead another like machine Is also placed your hat to smooth and clean; Observe ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... Bolingbroke gave the first impulse to that scepticism which was to wage its destructive war with the faith of the Continent. From the visit of Voltaire to the outbreak of the French Revolution, this intercourse with England remained the chief motive power of French opinion, and told through it on the opinion of the world. In his investigations on the nature of government Montesquieu studied English institutions as closely as he studied the institutions of Rome. Buffon was led by English science into his ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green

... that would cost money, and to import nothing that could be produced on the farm even if it was only a poor makeshift substitute. No part was ever replaced until it had gone hopelessly on strike, and necessity was his only motive power when it came to repairs. The general conditions were suggestive ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... men in each industry where brains were being personally believed in, we would have a list of the leaders of England and America for the next fifty years. Having a soul in business pays, not because it affords a fine motive power, but because it affords a practical and conclusive method of driving the devil out of business. He is being driven out of industry, one industry at a time, by men who get on better without him; and this is going to go on until ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... movements in progress, would have been hazardous. But now, viewing the appended map, it may, I think, be considered as almost established, that volcanoes are often (not necessarily always) present in those areas where the subterranean motive power has lately forced, or is now forcing outwards, the crust of the earth, but that they are invariably absent in those, where the surface has lately subsided or is still subsiding. (We may infer from this rule, that in any old ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... does not by any means argue against the development of muscle; it argues for its proper use. Where is the good of an exquisitely formed machine, if it is to be shattered for want of control of the motive power? ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call

... Christian form of shrewdness—people always talk of their "faith" and act according to their instincts.... In the world of ideas of the Christian there is nothing that so much as touches reality: on the contrary, one recognizes an instinctive hatred of reality as the motive power, the only motive power at the bottom of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That even here, in psychologicis, there is a radical error, which is to say one conditioning fundamentals, which is to say, one in substance. Take ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... for regarding cooking as a menial and vulgar labor; and those who give some thought to their daily food usually gain in vigor and cheerfulness. It is a truism that food is concentrated force. The manipulation of a motive power capable of invigorating both body and mind, is an occupation worthy to employ intelligence and skill. In countries where the people depend upon meagre supplies this art is brought to perfection. The pot-au-feu of France and Switzerland, the olla podrida of Spain, the ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson

... an ancient low-hung "Surrey," a vehicle admirably fitted for an invalid, and in this conveyance with a stout mare as motive power we often drove away into the country of a pleasant afternoon, sometimes into ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... stoutest oak planking, and with timbers upwards of a foot in thickness. All were bolted together with iron pins "as thick as a man's thumb." Forecastle and poop were alike lofty, with a lower waist for the use of sweeps if needful. But this was only exceptional, sails being the usual motive power. And these were constructed chiefly with a view to strength. Instead of canvas, they were formed of untanned hides. And instead of hempen cables the Veneti were so far ahead of their time as to use iron chains with their anchors; an invention which perished with them, not to come in again till the ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... very poet, and that, therefore, to write beautifully is in a deep and true sense to live beautifully. In the volume before us, as in all her previously published writings, we see at its best what Christianity is as the motive power of poetry. The Christian idea is essentially feminine, and of this feminine quality Christina Rossetti’s ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... president, in 1880 owned the original group of Schieffelin claims, of which the Tough Nut was the main property. A stamp mill was built on the San Pedro and a contract entered into with the Mormons to build a dam and ditch, from which it was hoped to secure motive power. Concerning this job, estimated to cost $6000, Merrill later wrote that the contractors found themselves fined $300 for six days' overtime on completion of the job. Joseph McRae's record tells that, in 1879, some of the brethren went up the river, twenty miles above St. David, and ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... Progress as the railway of liberty. It certainly supplied motive power to social ideals which were repugnant and alarming to the authorities of the Catholic Church. At the Vatican it was clearly seen that the idea was a powerful engine driven by an enemy; and in the famous SYLLABUS of errors which Pope ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... power of man over inorganic nature, and it is unprofitable, on the other, to speculate on what may be accomplished by the discovery of now unknown and unimagined natural forces, or even by the invention of new arts and new processes. But since we have seen aerostation, the motive power of elastic vapors, the wonders of modern telegraphy, the destructive explosiveness of gunpowder, of nitro-glycerine, and even of a substance so harmless, unresisting, and inert as cotton, there is little in the way of mechanical achievement which seems hopelessly ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... motive power which works the advancement of the machines precludes the possibility of man's life being rendered miserable as well as enslaved. Slaves are tolerably happy if they have good masters, and the revolution ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... unintelligible to his mind, trained to intuitive reasoning. The very elaborateness and microscopic detail that makes Bergson great is opposed to Judge Troward's method of simplicity. He cared not for complexities, and the intricate minutiae of the process of creation, but was only concerned with its motive power—the spiritual principles upon which it was organized and upon ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... experiments in the direction of economising this source of power, one fatal objection in the majority of cases being the corrosive effects of the gases generated upon the insides of cylinders and other working parts. As soon as the force of the emission jet can be applied as a factor in giving motive power, the fact that no close-fitting parts are required for the places upon which the line of force impinges will alter the conditions of the whole problem. In the centrifugal sand pump, as now largely used for raising silt from rivers and harbours, the serious corrosive ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... to yield, to submit disturbio, disturbance enfurecido, furioso, furious (enfuriated) ensenanza, teaching *escarmentar, to take warning fracaso, failure la fuente, the fountain, source fuerza motriz, motive power fundarse en, to base upon huelga, strike (of workmen) huerta, orchard infinidad (una), an infinite number interior, interior, inland limitar, to confine, to limit mejorar, to improve minero, miner obrero, workman orillas, banks of a river ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... enable it to rise with readiness upon the rollers, which were continually placed before it by laborers just in front, while others following behind gathered them up when the bulky mass had passed over there. The motive power was applied in front by four gangs of men who held on to four large cables, at which they pulled by means of small ropes or straps fastened to them, and passed under one shoulder and over the other—an arrangement ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... and I followed its progress, but only from curiosity, until about 1885 or 1886 when, the steam engine being discarded as the motive power for the carriage that I intended some day to build, I had to look around for another sort of motive power. In 1885 I repaired an Otto engine at the Eagle Iron Works in Detroit. No one in town knew anything about them. There was a rumour ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... railroad engineers provide improved tracks and motive power that will enable them to parallel the feats of the automobile men, if they ever do, the running time for the fastest trains between New York and Chicago will be reduced to seven hours, while San Francisco will be but a day's run ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... him such wages,—he is, by virtue of his very occupation, unfitted for serving the people. He knows how to calculate the highest mathematical arch of a bridge, how to calculate the force and transfer of the motive power, and so on; but he is confounded by the simplest questions of a peasant: how to improve a plough or a cart, or how to make irrigating canals. All this in the conditions of life in which the laboring man finds himself. Of this, he neither knows nor understands any thing,—less, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... country, where it would be absurd to expect the SAVOIR VIVRE of the south, and it would be amusing to see the customs of the land. By suggestion and seeming response, the clever Christina, unsuspected even of Mercy, was the motive power to bring about the acceptance of ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... with the subject or with her presentation of it. The child is as yet too young to command his mental powers and "drive himself on by his own self-determination," and if we enforce an attention which he gives through fear, we lose the motive power of interest which Froebel sought to utilize in the plays ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the Conservation of the Forces gives us a clear explanation of the fact that animals can obtain their food only through the medium of the vegetable kingdom. Plants are stationary mechanisms; they have no need to develop motive power, as animals have, in moving themselves from place to place. Their temperature is, we may say, the same as that of the medium in which they exist. Such beings as plants do not, therefore, require the expenditure ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... content. First, however, I warned him of one or two pitfalls—as, for instance, that he must never stop his engine in an emergency, as one does instinctively in an auto, because the greater the danger the more need he would have of motive power to get him out of it. Also, I told him not to fly above trees or water, where the currents would suck him downward, but to steer over the darkest patches of land, where the heat of the sun is absorbed, and the air in ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... still left to him. He, Orlando Brotherson, despair while his great work lay unfinished! That would be to lay stress on the inevitable pains and fears of commonplace humanity. He was not of that ilk. Intellect was his god; ambition his motive power. What would this casual blight upon his supreme contentment be to him, when with the wings of his air-car spread, he should spurn the earth and soar into the heaven of fame simultaneously with his ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... there will be an increasing formalism, a compromise with evil and with the world spirit. There will be a decrease of warm personal devotion to the Lord Jesus as the controlling motive power. And there will be a growing inclination to make light of, or ignore, or jeer at, the idea of the ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... been the first submarine vessel to sink an enemy ship in time of war, was designed by Horace L. Hundley in 1863. This boat was twenty feet long, three and one-half feet wide, and five feet deep. Her motive power consisted of eight men whose duty it was to turn the crank of the propeller shaft by hand until the target had been reached. When this primitive craft was closed for diving there was only sufficient air to support life for half ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... saw Mrs. Laudersdale for the first time, at a period thirteen years later, would you have imagined her possessed of this little drama? You fancy now that in this flash all the wealth of her soul burned out and left her a mere volition and motive power? You are mistaken, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... the north. We agreed with the supposition that the berg must lie below, and made speedy preparations to pursue, by securing the only boat to be had in the village,—a substantial fishing-barge, laden rather heavily in the stern with at least a cord of cod-seine, but manned by six stalwart men, a motive power, as it turned out, none too large for the occasion. We embarked at the foot of a fish-house ladder, being carefully handed down by the kind-hearted men, and took our seats forward on the little bow-deck. All ready, they pulled away at their long, ponderous oars with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Yard.—The necessities for the Harrison improvements are two-fold: First, as a place to change motive power from steam to electric, and vice versa; second, as a transfer for passengers from trains destined to the new Station at Seventh Avenue and 33d Street, New York City, to steam or rapid transit trains destined to the present Jersey City Station, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • E. B. Temple

... that I was still haunted by a lingering suspicion of the machine and its inventor; but this experiment went far to destroy it. Even if the motive power was derived from a coiled spring, or compressed air, or electricity, in the box, how was it possible to make it act without the resistance offered by the air? Magnetism was equally out of the question, since no conceivable arrangement ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... great big costly engine, built with infinite skill, and you are the engineer. It is a wonderful thing running that engine,—wonderful because it is the motive power to turn many wheels and affect many lives. Rightly understood and properly handled it will produce great values, and be a blessing to the world. Misunderstood and carelessly handled, it will cause loss and suffering to you and perhaps ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... the paper, or else to deprive him of his power, arbitrarily, whenever it suited their purpose to take it. To them Nathan represented a certain amount of talent to use up, a literary force of the motive power of ten pens to employ. Massol, one of those lawyers who mistake the faculty of endless speech for eloquence, who possess the art of boring by diffusiveness, the torment of all meetings and assemblies where they belittle everything, and who desire to become ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... estate, rolling stock, and all other personal property whatsoever (except its franchise and the non taxable shares of stock issued by other corporations) in this State, of each railway corporation, whatever its motive power, now or hereafter liable for taxation upon such property, the canal bed and other real estate, the boats and all other personal property whatsoever (except its franchise and the non taxable shares of stock issued by other corporations) in this State, of each canal corporation, ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox

... visible symbol of the unity of the nation; king and court occupy an immeasurable place in the life and thought of the people; and even within the domain of government, to employ the figure of Lowell, if the crown is no longer the motive power of the ship of state, it is the spar on which the sail is bent, and as such it is not only a useful but an essential part of the vessel.[78] The entire governmental order of Great Britain hinges upon the parliamentary system, and nowhere has that system been reduced to satisfactory ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... his impetuous energy, is typical of a country in which few achievements are impossible. He provided his own motive power and used his hypnotic influence only in one direction—that of progress. Ever faithful to his destiny, he was too busy to have time to suffer, too occupied to waste himself in regrets. Like the rapids themselves, his work moves on, and in its deep rumble may be distinguished ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... trial purposes it had to steam round and about Yokohama Harbour, to the great danger of the foreign warships and merchant steamers there, until the steam was in due course exhausted and the machinery automatically stopped through the lack of any motive power to drive it, as the Japanese engineer in charge did not know how to shut off steam. The Stonewall Jackson, I may observe, did not take part in the now almost forgotten battle of Hakodate, which took place at the time of the Revolution, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... stages of their growth are creatures of the warmth; the heat is the motive power that makes them go; when this fails, they are still. The katydids rasp away in the fall as long as there is warmth enough to keep them going; as the heat fails, they fail, till from the emphatic "Katy did ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... suite converted to bath-rooms, where his masseur, his manicurist and his barber attended him daily. He had conscripted modern science to his service, he had so cunningly disguised its application, that you might never guess the motive power of the old English clock which ticked in the spacious hall, or realize that the soft light which came from the many branched candelabra which hung from the centre of his drawing-room was due to anything ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... teacher, besides the Stoic philosopher, has said, 'He who copies the gods worships them adequately.' One of the prophets lays it down as a standing rule, 'The people will walk every one in the name of his God.' But it is only in the Christian attitude towards God that the motive power is found which makes such imitation more than an impossible duty, even as it is only in the revealed character of God that a pattern is found, to imitate which is to be perfect. Everywhere besides, harmony with the gods meant discord with conscience ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... uttered his face darkened. However, when he heard the young man's description of the love, so true, constant, and passionate, that he felt for Vaninka, and when he heard that this passion had been the motive power of those glorious deeds he had praised so often, he held out his hand to Foedor, almost as moved ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... work to the church she can become a mighty power. Woman's Missionary Societies, Christian Endeavor Societies, Sabbath School work, etc., afford a broad field of labor for our educated women. Her activity in all things pertaining to racial advancement will be the motive power in establishing firmly and intelligently an enlightened racial existence. Thirdly: The educated Negro woman must take her stand among the best and most enlightened women of all races; and in so doing she must seek to be herself. Imitate no one when the imitation destroys the personal identity. Not ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... motive power of his work was enthusiasm. Never was more generous welcome given to a newcomer than Page held out to the successful manuscript of an unknown. I remember, though I heard the news second hand at the time, what a day it was ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... question that presents itself after studying the writings of the Illuminati is: what was the motive power behind the Order? If we admit the possibility that Frederick the Great and the Stricte Observance, working through an inner circle of Freemasons at the Lodge St. Theodore, may have provided the first impetus and ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... that William Longstreet knew that steam could be used as a motive power long before it was so applied; and because he employed a good deal of his time in trying to discover the principle, he was ridiculed by his neighbors and friends, and the more thoughtless among them didn't know whether he was ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... in God. Believe in Christ. Pray. Seek the light. Keep doing right. Get to work for others. All the inventions in creation are not worth anything if your own soul has no motive power and no track to run on. Religion is as natural as eating and drinking. Prayer is as natural as sleep or work. And I believe with all my might that my feelings are as trustworthy as my reason when both are exercised in a healthy, ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... 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. Friendship ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... Wondership having been fully described in the Boy Inventors' Flying Ship, we shall not enter here into any but a brief and general description of the craft. The Wondership, then, was a combination of dirigible balloon, automobile and boat. Her motive power was furnished by engines driven by an explosive volatile gas which was also used when occasion arose to inflate the bag of the balloon feature of her design. The gas was generated in the lower part of the craft's semi-cylindrical ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner

... Marionhill, from the substantial bullock wagons, and the delicate spiders, to the baking of bread, the building of houses, stables, and cattle lairs, the printing of periodicals, and book-binding. Work is the great and leading feature of the Trappist creed. The motive power is religion. Its controlling ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young

... could fashion the human body? What motive power is it, if it is not God, that drives that throbbing engine, the human heart, with ceaseless, tireless stroke, sending the crimson streams of life bounding and circling through every vein and artery? ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... the name produced a sudden and terrible effect upon Doctor Hortebise, who started to his feet as if propelled from his chair by the unexpected application of some hidden motive power, and, fingering the locket that hung from his chain, gazed round upon his associates with wild ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... suddenly descend in an American village with no sign of steam gear, electric motor, compressed air, or any other motive power with which we are familiar, can you imagine that eighty per cent of the population of the village would stand around, begging the inventor to make it fly and alight again, exhibiting all the delight ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... depopulated the globe, there is scarcely one great heresy developed out of the tyranny of the church, that has not been the fruit of institutional religion; while that spirit of humanity which was to give the institution its motive power has to a certain extent died ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... designed. It must not be overlooked that a gun is a machine which has to perform a certain quantity of work of a certain definite kind, and, like all other machines, must be formed specially for its purpose. The motive power is gunpowder, and the article to be produced is perhaps a hole in an armor-plate, perhaps a breach in a concealed escarp, or perhaps destructive effect on troops. These articles are quite distinct, and though all guns are capable of producing them ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... succeed to the representation of an honourable name and the responsibilities of high station. If eldest sons do not often make as great a figure in the world as their younger brothers, it is not because their minds are less cultivated, but because they have less motive power for action. George Belvoir was well read, especially in that sort of reading which befits a future senator,—history, statistics, political economy, so far as that dismal science is compatible with the agricultural ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the applications of rubber, that of packing for the steam engine and connecting machinery appears to have been the most important, as it has been an essential condition of the development and extended use of steam as a motive power." ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company

... out by one of the blockading squadron to patrol the coast and watch for just such vessels as the Hattie was, and although he had steam up all the while, he used his twenty-four muffled oars, twelve on a side, as his motive power; and this enabled him to slip along the coast without making the least sound to betray his presence. As luck would have it, he had not discovered Crooked Inlet. If he had, he would have lifted the buoys, and it might have led to extra watchfulness on the ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon

... cease to be grateful to their first teachers and leave them reluctantly, while other girls never realise that they have anything to be grateful for. When gratitude and affection come they are pleasant to receive. But the motive power of the really conscientious woman is not the expectation of gratitude ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... traffic until May 22, 1830. At first, experiments were made with sails for propelling the cars, but it was soon found that a more effective source of power was supplied by mules and horses. The Flying Dutchman, one of the cars devised to furnish motive power, provided for the horse or mule a treadmill which would revolve the wheels and make the distance of twelve miles in about an hour and a quarter. Steam locomotives at this time were in their infancy and, until the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody

... turning and looking back at Tom, whose turn it now was to furnish motive power to the ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock

... great source of energy in almost all terrestrial phenomena. From the meteorological to the geographical, from the geological to the biological, in the expenditure and conversion of molecular movements, derived from the sun's rays, must be sought the motive power of all ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... cuddling the receiver against his ear. His faith in Mr. Keen was naturally boundless; he believed that whatever the Tracer attempted could not result in failure. He desired nothing in the world so ardently as to see Kerns safely married. His own happiness may have been the motive power which had set him in action in behalf of his friend—that and a certain indefinable desire to practice a species of heavenly revenge, of grateful retaliation upon the prime mover and collaborateur, if not the sole author, ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... was universally exalted above all other forms of life among Christians also at one time, as it continues to be among, perhaps, the majority to-day. And is not the Cross, which is the emblem of self-renunciation and self-effacement, the motive power of our faith, as it is also the embodied ideal of our Life? True; but there is this marked difference between the two faiths. In Christianity the Cross is only a means. The Cross of self-effacement is the pathway of Christ and of the ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... in him much of this mother-quality. Thoreau, you remember, said that genius is essentially feminine; if he had teachers in mind his remark was certainly true. The men of much motive power are not the best teachers—the arbitrary and imperative type that would bend all minds to match its own may build bridges, tunnel mountains, discover continents and capture cities, but it can not teach. In the presence of such a towering ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... motive power of the Ark was developed, and it began to obey its helm. From the shelter of a "captain's bridge," constructed at the forward end of the huge levium dome that covered the vessel, Cosmo Versal, with Captain Arms, a liberally bewhiskered, veteran navigator ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... Stephenson's road and locomotives. The Darlington line was not yet in operation, but the old locomotives were at work at Killingworth. The committee decided that they must have a double track for cars, whatever might be the motive power. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... most charming Parisian woman, and a man of mark, a nobleman of Brabant, was cursed with extreme sensitiveness. From his infancy he had in everything shown a most ardent nature. In him mere desire became a guiding force and the motive power of his whole being, the stimulus to his imagination, the reason of his actions. Notwithstanding the pains taken by a clever mother, who was alarmed when she detected this predisposition, Rodolphe wished for things as a poet imagines, as a mathematician calculates, as a painter sketches, as ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac

... "kill out desire" might be interpreted "transmute desire." Without desire man would be in a deathlike and dangerous condition—a condition in which further progress would be impossible. But by transmuting the lower desires into the higher he moves steadily forward and upward without losing the motive power ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers



Words linked to "Motive power" :   mobility, locomotion, motivity



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