"Motive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Majesty; he confesses he cannot see anything morally wrong in giving aid to an insurrection in the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. But he admits that to do so for the sake of making new acquisitions would be criminal, and that he is not justified in imputing this motive to the King of Sardinia. Count Cavour would probably at once ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... had a motive in asking for Libbie's suitcase. It was much smaller and lighter than any of the others, and he swung it deftly into the rack over the vinegary lady's unsuspecting head. With a deftness, born it must be confessed ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... had called on Austin Buckingham, that gentleman tried to return his call. It must be confessed that his motive was not so much a commendable desire to get even socially with his new acquaintance, nor to give him good advice, as it was to get a nearer view of the heroine of his story. Candor compels me to say that every evening for the week past Buckingham had taken ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... like the idea very well. "They must have thought it was like letting a monkey play with a rifle," the doctor afterward put it. But, for lack of a leader with any motive for objecting, and because Estra had no living relatives to claim the library, somehow that incredible collection of intellectual gems got into the possession of the four. Nothing was said about it during the quiet leave-taking, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... his motive, undertook, without solicitation, to rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him from the imputation of favouring fatality or rejecting revelation; and from month to month continued a vindication of the "Essay ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... separation approach one another again, their behaviour cannot be affectionate. No servant is to be seen who is moved (in what he does) by only the desire of benefiting his master. Service proceeds from the motive of doing good to the master as also one's own self. All acts are undertaken from selfish motives. Unselfish acts or motives are very rare. Those kings whose hearts are restless and unquiet cannot acquire a true ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... bidding men to co-operate anxiously for the sake of equalising wealth, He recommends an individualistic freedom from the burden of wealth altogether. But, as always in the Gospel, our Lord looks behind practice to motive; and it is clear that the motive for the abandonment of wealth is not to be a desire to act with a selfish prudence, in order to lay an obligation upon God to repay one generously in the future for present sacrifices, but rather ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... express it more clearly, detailism, is the realizing of the whole subject-matter or motive of a picture in exact detail. Impressionism is the generalizing of the subject-matter as a whole and the expression of only its ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... Parris's statement, as quoted by Hutchinson. What was the real cause or motive of this discrepancy among the witnesses does not appear. The facts, that at first they went into fits in beholding him, were all struck dumb for a while, and Ann Putnam saw him on the beam, were likely to have ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... paying all his debts and being thus left penniless but honest; and paying his creditors nothing, or, at most, a quarter of their dues, and remaining rich enough to indulge in the luxury of a noble son-in-law, the only motive on whose part for such a marriage ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Whatever the motive for their coming, however, they managed to get across the sea. The immigrants set to work with a will. They cut down forests, built houses, and laid out fields. They founded churches, schools, and colleges. They set up forges and workshops. They spun and wove. They fashioned ships and sailed the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... many years humanely supported in Dr. Johnson's house in London, told me, that upon his discovering that Dr. Swinfen had communicated his case, he was so much offended, that he was never afterwards fully reconciled to him. He indeed had good reason to be offended; for though Dr. Swinfen's motive was good, he inconsiderately betrayed a matter deeply interesting and of great delicacy, which had been entrusted to him in confidence; and exposed a complaint of his young friend and patient, which, in the superficial opinion of the ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... a tiffin party of four good men and true on his stern-wheel house-boat, the motive power for which was supplied by half-a-dozen coolies driving the wheel with their feet, on the same principle as the tread-mill, and we were gliding up the Taipa Channel near Macao at about four knots, when suddenly our craft came into a sea ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... matter how fantastic it may be, nevertheless it must not be left unmentioned that his exit out of the Wilson Cabinet was under all circumstances only a question of time. Bryan may want to be a candidate in 1916, a rival of Wilson; there may be a political motive at the bottom of the dramatically staged resignation; the fact remains that two hard heads, Wilson and Bryan, could not permanently agree. One had to yield; one had to go. Just as Bismarck had to go when Wilhelm II. felt himself safe in the saddle, so Bryan ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... neighboring tribe into subjection. Thus began a new era in the history of the Indian, inaugurating a kind of warfare that was cruel, relentless, and demoralizing, since it was based upon the desire to conquer and to despoil the conquered of his possessions—a motive unknown ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... for thought and are excellent tools for the man of initiative. To read means keeping in touch with the big visions. We cherish these dreams and make them real in plans of our own. Aspiration is behind the pages of every worth-while volume. It was the motive power which drove the author to produce it and it should become a part of the forces which drive us on to victory. Without such inspiration we grope as children in the dark. We are without a light to guide ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... Livingstone explained to him Lena's agency in the matter, omitting, this time, to impute to her the same motive which she had done when stating the ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... intellect—a theory conducive to health in peace—and in those ages when men fought hand to hand, and individual strength and skill were the nerves of the army, to success in war; but, 3dly, and principally, its uses were in sustaining and feeding as a passion, as a motive, as an irresistible incentive—the desire of glory! That desire spread through all classes—it animated all tribes—it taught that true rewards are not in gold and gems, but in men's opinions. The ambition ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that in the mind of such early leaders as Champlain the dominant motive of the French colonization was religious; but in the cruel position into which the colony was forced it was almost inevitable that the missions should become political. It was boasted in their behalf that they had ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... could be successfully carried out, and if it did not endanger other Goods, which may be even more important than equality of opportunity. Nor do I hold that in a collectivist state there need be any dangerous relaxation of that motive of self-interest which every reasonable man must admit to be, up to a point, the most potent source of all practical energy. I do not see why the state should not pay its servants according to merit just as ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... exclaimed; "that's an awful thing to say, Parmalee. The idea of a detective suspecting a man, merely because he doesn't admire his personality! And besides, it isn't true. If I suspect Hall, it's because I think he had a strong motive, a possible opportunity, and more than all, because he refuses to tell where ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... that that was his real motive; and he promised his father that he would go on, though it was tiresome. It was not the hard labor of the digging that fatigued him, for, by following Jonas's directions, he found it easy work; but it was the sameness of it. He ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... the motive to exertion. I tell you it is the abnegation of self which has wrought out all that is noble, all that is good, all that is useful, nearly all that is ornamental ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... to hospitality; to disturb the quiet of your fellow-guests, some of them perhaps exhausted by fatigue, some of them invaded by distemper; to interrupt the king's lieges in their course of journeying upon their lawful occasions? Above all, what motive but wanton barbarity could prompt you to violate the apartment, and terrify the tender hearts of two helpless young ladies, travelling, no doubt, upon some cruel emergency, which compels them, unattended, to encounter in the night the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... trying to build an idealistic and serviceable life upon a godless basis. Now, the difficulty with this attitude toward life lies here: it demands a quality of spirit for which it cannot supply the motive. It demands social hope, confidence, enthusiasm and sacrifice, and all the while it cuts their nerves. It tells men that the universe is fundamentally a moral desert, that it never was intended even to have an oasis of civilization in it, that if we ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... out a working copy for you, with marginal notes which give an analysis of each movement (or rather MOTIVE, for I take it the whole will be a continuous progression; and I only use the word "movement" as indicating the entire contrast which I have secured between each two adjacent MOTIVES), and which will, I hope, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... commandment; seeing that the reason for which the command itself was originally given, namely, as a memorial of God's having rested from the creation of the world, cannot be transferred from the seventh day to the first; nor can any new motive be substituted in its place, whether the resurrection of our Lord or any other, without the sanction of a divine commandment."—"Prose Works" (Bohn), ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... bring forth were incalculable; yet he saw with horror that Palmerston neither understood nor cared to understand the niceties of this momentous problem, but rushed on blindly, dealing blows to right and left, quite—so far as he could see—without system, and even without motive—except, indeed, a totally unreasonable distrust ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... privileges of Englishmen at home that had been guaranteed to them in the original Company charter. It seems to be this rather than a planned attempt to establish self-government in the New World on a scale that might have been in violation of English law and custom at the time. Whatever the motive, the significance of this meeting in the church at Jamestown remains the same. This body of duly chosen representatives of the people has continued in existence and its evolution leads directly to our State legislatures and to the Congress ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... said: "I have taken more pains with the Oxford Lectures than with anything else I have ever done": and in the preface to the edition of 1887 he began: "The following lectures were the most important piece of my literary work, done with unabated power, best motive, and happiest concurrence of circumstance." Ruskin took his professorship very seriously. He spent almost infinite labour in composing his more formal lectures, and during the eight years in which he held the chair he published six volumes of them, not to mention three ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... neighborhood had starved the customary fires, or because fires had to be less frequently kindled upon them than on the more important stations; or, finally, because these hill-forts, from some disadvantage of situation, were no longer used as places of strength, and so the beacon-keepers had no motive to attempt consolidating them throughout by the piecemeal application of the vitrifying agent. But the old Highland mode of accounting for the present appearance of Knock Farril and its vitrified remains is perhaps, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... of any outside agent, but was due to the operation of the rose-spirit that it had within it, and which was persistently driving it to bring into actual being that ideal of the rose which was the essence of its spirit. The ideal of the rose was the motive-power of the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... The motive of the Czar in making all these improvements and reforms was his desire to render his own power as the sovereign of the country more compact and efficient, and not any real and heartfelt interest in the welfare and happiness of the people. Still, in the end, very excellent results followed ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... Mademoiselle de la Valliere), who was visited by Ali-Momajou (the Duc d'Orleans, the regent) in the fortress of Ispahan (the Bastille), in which he had been imprisoned for several years. This visit had probably no other motive than to make sure that this prince was really alive, he having been reputed dead of the plague for over thirty years, and his obsequies having been celebrated in presence ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... had not framed itself in her mind before it was answered. Without water they would not be able to exist at Steer Wells for twenty-four hours. A retreat would be equally impracticable. It was all horribly clear. The theft of the water was the first step in a deliberate plan to drive them out. The motive, too, was plain enough in the light of the overheard conversation at the National Hotel. The men who wanted Mr. Bell's mine had waited till he had located it before striking their first blow. What would their ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... construct them that the cost of maintenance will be reduced to the minimum. This will save money and lessen the danger of exhibitions of bad taste and encourage that simplicity which should be the controlling motive of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... Cleek! The knowledge that these would-be murderers, whoever they are, whatever may be their mysterious motive, have grown desperate enough to invade the house itself has driven Lady Chepstow well-nigh frantic. Of course, orders were immediately given to the servants that no stranger, no matter how well dressed, how well seeming, nor what the plea, was, from that moment, to be ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... with a meaningless title is presumptively a fraud. Why a secret if not to permit extravagant, or fraudulent, claims as to therapeutic merit? * * * * * The ruling motive of the secret being essentially false and dishonest, its employment in the interest of any remedy is clearly a sufficient cause for its condemnation ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... European Monarch who has not implored me, with tears in his eyes, to quit his kingdom, and take my fatal charms else- where. As time was getting on it occurred to me that by descending several pegs in the scale of Respectability I might qualify your Majesty for my hand. Actuated by this humane motive and happening to possess Respectability enough for Six, I consented to confer Respectability enough for Four upon your two younger daughters—but although I have, alas, only Respectability enough for Two left, there is still, as I gather from ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... alone Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown: (Nature, whose dictates to no other kind Are given in vain, but what they seek they find) Wise is her present; she connects in this His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss; At once his own bright prospect to be blest, And strongest motive to assist the rest. Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine, Gives thee to make thy neighbour's blessing thine. Is this too little for the boundless heart? Extend it, let thy enemies have part: Grasp the whole worlds of reason, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... at least, hardly ever comes in thunder, but I have to listen with perfect stillness to make it out. It spoke to me, told me what to do, but I argued with it and was lost. I was guiltless of any base motive, but I found the wrong name for what displeased me in Mr. Hexton, and so I deluded myself. I reasoned that his meanness was justifiable economy, and that his dissimilarity from me was perhaps the very thing which ought to induce ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... regard, I do not like the thought of a person in her circumstances going to what to her must be serious trouble and expense on our account. The easiest way to reconcile myself to it would be by believing with you all, that she has some personal motive in it." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... at the beginning of the war and an ardent believer in the prosecution of the war, was deposed early in the reactionary regime and sent as envoy to London. It was suggested that the motive for this was not to honor an anti-German, but to ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... "What motive," she exclaimed, with a sudden burst of desperate passionate grief, that wrung her like a fit from head to foot, "could any one have for killing Captain Griffiths! He was the gentlest, the kindest—oh, my heart! my heart!" and, hiding ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... ears particularly open to any answers the Egyptian clergy might please to give. Yet pleasure was not the object of their journey. Science, as themselves said, curiosity, as their enemies alleged, was the motive for their encountering perils by land and water. Indeed we recollect only three travellers, either among the Greeks or Romans, who can properly be considered as journeying for pleasure. These were Herodotus—the prince of ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... or to give him no chance to defend himself; but he had to admit that he was very thankful that it was Michael himself who had insisted that there was to be no recognized engagement between them. Had he at the time had any motive for insisting on the fact? That was an idea; it had ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... desire of most English writers on America, to convey a debasing impression of her people, and seeking, on the contrary, to do justice to their character, as far as the limited field afforded by a work, pre-eminently of fiction, will admit, no interested motive can be ascribed to him. Should these pages prove a means of dissipating the slightest portion of that irritation which has—and naturally—been engendered in every American heart, by the perverted and prejudiced statements of disappointed tourists, whose acerbity of stricture, not even a recollection ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... attention; though she, as well as Carl, was unable to understand any but the most familiar and colloquial English. The case was speedily decided; the few facts presented to the jury appeared to have no necessary connection, and there was no known motive for the deed. The jury unanimously acquitted Carl, and with his wife and boy he left the court-room. The verdict was approved by the spectators, for no man in the neighborhood was more universally loved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... guess his motive. I was certain it was not out of pure love for me or pity for Wallop. Indeed, I was pretty certain there was far more mischief than good in the action. I would sooner have owed Wallop thirty pounds than Hawkesbury ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... motive of his antipathy was that he loved Cardinal Guerillot, as was his habit in all things, with passion and with jealousy, and he could not forgive Mademoiselle Hafner for having formed an intimacy with the holy prelate in spite of him, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... practice was a Roman. Rome was his model, her ideals were his ideals. Therefore he built amphitheatres in which men were butchered, to the exquisite delight of vast audiences. Therefore, also, without the excuse of any conscientious motive, however insufficient or unsatisfactory, he persecuted the weak because they were weak and their sufferings would give pleasure to the strong or to those who chanced to be the majority ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... straightest little woman that ever lived! I don't care a damn what one million or eighty million think. Supposing you had received letters from Underwood, supposing you had gone to his rooms to beg him not to kill himself—what of it? It would be for a good motive, wouldn't it? Let them talk all the bad of you they want. I don't believe a word of it—you ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... actions, good or bad, may he resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice. Religion is the best motive of all actions, yet religion is allowed to be the ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... sound of her voice there came within him an extraordinary fusing, at once a pain and a delight . . . fragments of memory . . . a moonbeam . . . tears . . . the crackle of a fire . . . a quarry mist . . . the glory of stars . . . a meaning . . . a motive that ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... skirmish with the revenue officers; that his correspondents in Holland had a vessel on the coast at the time, part of the crew of which were engaged in the affair, and that they brought me off after it was over, from a motive of compassion, as I was left destitute by my father's death. As I grew older there was much of this story seemed inconsistent with my own recollections, but what could I do? I had no means of ascertaining my doubts, nor a single friend with whom I could communicate ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... half so well as yourself. Do not pain me by refusing them. They may be of use to you if you are ever in want of money, being worth, I believe, between three and four hundred pounds. Of course, you cannot misunderstand my motive in mentioning this. No amount of money could in any measure represent the gratitude I owe to the man who risked his life to save my child. May God ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... will be seen that there was already a certain opinion in the neighbourhood as to the Captain's motive for planting himself at Beechdale—so acute is a quiet little community of this kind in divining the intentions ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... political rights for women has come with us. When war broke out, women's suffrage was winning all the time a greater and greater mass of adherents, a majority of the House was pledged to vote for it and had been for years, the Trade Unions and Labour Party stood solid for it, but the motive to act seemed lacking. ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... proposal more exquisitely grotesque. One is glad the proposal was made, however, not only for its own sake, but because it drew an admirable reply from Miss Austen on the nature of her genius. "I could not sit seriously down," she declared, "to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and, if it were indispensable for me to keep it up, and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... induces the female to honour in man her protector and guide,— admiration of his determined heroism, and compassion for the sufferings which he had undergone. With great art it is so contrived, that from the very circumstance that the possibility of a suspicion of her own purity of motive never once enters her mind, she is the less reserved in her solicitations for Cassio, and thereby does but heighten more and more the jealousy of Othello. To throw out still more clearly the angelic purity of Desdemona, Shakspeare has in Emilia associated with her a companion of doubtful virtue. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... coldly conscious of a husband's right, You had faint-drawn me with a form alone, A lawful lump of life by force your own! Then, while your backward will retrenched desire, And unconcurring spirits lent no fire, I had been born your dull, domestic heir, Load of your life, and motive of your care; Perhaps been poorly rich, and meanly great, The slave of pomp, a cipher in the state; Lordly neglectful of a worth unknown, And slumbering in a seat by chance ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... hotel that this was his farewell day with them, and tried to feel that he had thus burned the last bridge between himself and indiscretion. He only succeeded in feeling as you and I—and Garnet—used to feel when we had told our purpose to others and fibbed to ourselves about the motive. But Garnet had ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... "Without going into the question of motive," says he, "that suggestion may be worth ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... impartial judgment, had been moved, not by heroic and stoical justice and the love of souls, but a good deal by prejudice and a good deal by skilful artifice, and very little indeed by that highest motive which she called the glory of God? And it was Jack who had set all this before her clear as daylight. No wonder the excellent woman was disconcerted. She went to bed gloomily with her headache, and would tolerate no ministrations, neither of sal-volatile nor eau-de-Cologne, nor even ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... I heard? Methinks that this same Peter Sanghurst was wooing Mistress Joan himself once. Sure I see another motive in his dastard capture of my brother. Perchance he had in him not only a rival for the lands of Basildene, but for the hand of the lady. Father, I see it all! Would that I had seen it before! It is Peter Sanghurst who has robbed Raymond of his ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Her motive was to gain time, and if possible to obtain the opportunity of shifting the money from the place where she had first put it into another and safer one. "I want to be able," she thought, "to swear that I have no money with me in this house. If I can only get it into my apron I will drop ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... reproaches for Christ, and afflictions with the people of Christ, greater riches than the treasures of Egypt or the honours at Court. And now, Sir, will you have the meaning of all? It is only a Christian motive to you to eye the highest Lord and the best interest with the greatest industry; that his honour, which is best of all, be dearer to you than all country honour: life, world, are not to be named in the day of his glory. Oh mind ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... think on the matter," cried the wilful girl, trying to turn the question off by catching her little favourite. But Emma would not thus be set aside. She was evidently well primed with a stronger and steadier motive than what usually occupied and sufficed ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... swoon, and seemed to be sinking down into the boat. They say that during that fainting-fit I flung myself about and cast bad words at Messer Giovanni Gaddi, to wit, that he came to rob me, and not from any motive of charity, and other insults of the kind, which caused him to be much ashamed. Later on, they say I lay still like one dead; and after waiting by me more than an hour, thinking I was growing cold, they left me for dead. When they returned home, Mattio Franzesi was ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... in their shirt-sleeves looking on at their unfinished houses, planning out tomorrow's work; and we riding onward, high abode them, like a whirl-wind. It was amusing, too, when we had dined, and rattled down a steep pass, having no other motive power than the weight of the carriages themselves, to see the engine released, long after us, come buzzing down alone, like a great insect, its back of green and gold so shining in the sun, that if it had spread a pair of wings and soared away, no one would have had occasion, as I fancied, for ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... want of literature is in some sort supplied by a good understanding, a degree of natural elocution, and that knowledge of the world which is learned in armies and courts. We are not to take the height of his ambition from his soliciting to be general for life:[19] I am persuaded his chief motive was the pay and perquisites, by continuing the war; and that he had then no intentions of settling the crown in his family, his only son having been dead some years before.[20] He is noted to be master of great temper, able to govern or very well to disguise his passions, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... "Justice is the motive power of all my actions, madam," replied the emperor, curtly, "and for that very reason you ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Pike, with an emphasis that told upon his hearer. "I have a different motive, sir; and a good motive. If I were at liberty to tell it—which I'm not—you'd let me in without another word. Lots of people have been seeing him, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Lamb's last letter to Thomas Manning, dated May 10, 1834. Mary has, he says, been ill for nigh twenty weeks; "she is, I hope, recovering." "I struggle to town rarely, and then to see London, with little other motive—for what is left there hardly? The streets and shops entertaining ever, else I feel as in a desert, and get me home to my cave." Once a month, he adds, he passes a day with Cary at the Museum. When ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... men with whom they had hitherto had any intercourse, would not supply them with fire-arms, alleging that, if they were possessed of such weapons, they would only be the more induced to kill one another. The Shoshonees, perhaps, do not perceive that policy is the real motive of the Spaniards; but they clearly see that the plea of humanity is fallacious, and they complain that they are thus left to the mercy of their enemies the Minnetarees, who, having fire-arms, plunder them of their horses, and ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... still be onward! Justice, humanity, patriotism; every high and every holy motive urge us forward, and we dare not refuse to obey. The way of duty lies open before us, and though no pillar of fire be visible to the outward sense, yet an unerring light shall illumine our pathway, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... suspected? My poor husband ... and that dear Edmond who loved me ... and whom I loved! Why should I have killed them? Tell me that! Why don't you answer?" she demanded. "People don't commit murder without a motive.... Well?... Well?... Answer ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... high motive, Kenna was in many ways, the guardian of the child. Coarse, brutish, and fierce among men, he was ever good to the boy and respectful to his mother; and he rounded out his teaching by the doctrine: "If ye give yer word as ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... simply at a want of recognition. Now he began to fret at the darker suspicion of positive inferiority. He fancied he found justifications for his position in Browning, but they vanished on analysis. At last—moved, curiously enough, by exactly the same motive forces that had resulted in his dishonesty—he went to Professor Bindon, and made a clean breast of the whole affair. As Hill was a paid student, Professor Bindon did not ask him to sit down, and he stood before the professor's desk as he made ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... other hand, was momentarily expecting that the bear would come over and bite her. Why else, if not from some such sinister motive, had he come aboard her raft, when he had been traveling on a perfectly good tree? The tree looked so much more interesting than her bare raft, on which she had been voyaging for over an hour, and of which she was now heartily tired. To be sure, the bear was not much bigger than her own Teddy Bear ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... situation very different from that of the Teutonic nations. Italy was, in truth, a part of the empire of Charles the Fifth; and the Court of Rome was, on many important occasions, his tool. He had not, therefore, like the distant princes of the North, a strong selfish motive for attacking the Papacy. In fact, the very measures which provoked the Sovereign of England to renounce all connection with Rome were dictated by the Sovereign of Spain. The feeling of the Spanish people concurred with the interest of the Spanish government. The ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... yet there was something diverting to the enterprising mind in the stolen expedition; and the fellow-feeling which results in honour to contemporaries made him promise not to betray the young man and to shield him from notice as best he might. With Geordie's motive he had no sympathy, having had too many childish squabbles with his cousin for her to be in his eyes a sublime Princess Joanna, ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... patient toiler on this field can know. Yet the inner work is by far the greater. The thought, the cares, the fears, the prayers, the tears, the anguish, the heart-breaking disappointments, and the fiery ordeals of spirit by which alone the motive is kept pure and the flame of a true zeal is fed,—in short, all the lavish expenditure of soul that cannot be spoken, or written, or known, until the Omniscient Recorder, who forgets nothing and repays even the good purpose of the heart, will reveal it at the final award, is by far the most ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... secret passions underlying their union that one should look for the cause of the murderous crime I secretly imagined to be hidden behind this seeming suicide? Or were these parties innocent and old David Moore the one motive power in precipitating a tragedy, the result of which had been to enrich him and impoverish them? Certainly, a most serious and important question, and one which any man might be pardoned for attempting to ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... must be aware of his perilous condition. When in adversity, some of those he has trusted, discuss the bases of reconstruction; and when we are prosperous, others, in similar positions, agitate the question of reorganization—the motive of both being his ruin. But I suppose he has calculated these contingencies, and never anticipated paving a bed of roses to recline upon during the terrible, and sometimes doubtful ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... of these expeditions was communicated by the enemies of Coligny to the court of Spain. Jealousy of the aggrandizement of the French in the New World, mortification for their own unsuccessful efforts in that quarter, and a still stronger motive of hatred to the faith of the Huguenot, induced the bigoted Philip II of Spain to despatch Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a brave, bigoted, and remorseless soldier, to drive out the French colony, and take possession of the country for himself. The compact made between the King and Menendez was, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... most, and was influenced by him most, because of his attitude to a child. He was on the Board to establish schools for children. His motive in every argument, in all the fun and ridicule he indulged in, and in his occasional anger, was the child. He resented the idea that schools were to train either congregations for churches or hands for factories. He was on the Board as a friend of children. What he sought to do for the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... impertinence to utter truths too harsh for you, if he has too often spoken of rare and exceptional facts as universal, if he has omitted the commonplaces which have been employed from time immemorial to offer women the incense of flattery, oh, let him be crucified! But do not impute to him any motive of hostility to the institution itself; he is concerned merely for men and women. He knows that from the moment marriage ceases to defeat the purpose of marriage, it is unassailable; and, after all, if there do arise serious ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... the wild rumors, for he had, in truth, come to England with no deep-laid scheme or motive, but simply because his daughter had ordered his doing so; for while Abraham Windsor ruled the shares market and the world of speculation, a certain young woman ruled him, and the hard-headed man of affairs, ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... be you, Harry,' my aunt Dorothy's reply ran (I had anticipated her line of reasoning, though not her warmth), 'who advise him to this marriage from a motive so inexplicably unworthy? That you will repay her the money, I do not require your promise to assure me. The money is nothing. It is the prospect of her life and fortune which you are consenting, if not urging him, to imperil ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... alone with her behind closed doors, he would thrash her on the slightest pretext. The least thing was sufficient to make him raise his hand, and when he had once begun he did not stop, but he would throw into her face the true motive for his anger. At each blow he would roar: "There, you beggar! There, you wretch! There, you pauper! What a bright thing I did when I rinsed my mouth with your rascal of a father's apology ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... however, in what I saw about me of a character calculated to suggest an explanation of the motive for my seizure. The building was simply one of those low, one-storey adobe structures, thatched with palm leaves, such as then abounded in the lower quarters of Kingston, and which were usually inhabited by the negro or half-breed population of the place. The interior appeared ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... rest, except my motive for not giving my full name. That I scarcely know myself, but suppose shame at the condition in which I found myself led me into the deception, and I adopted the first name that suggested itself. Afterward, an explanation would have ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... say, may prevent this; but nations have no gratitude, they only know their interest, and nothing retrospective is any motive for action. We need not search into remote periods for proofs of this, see Holland, Spain, Russia, &c. during the latter part of the last war. [end ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... gave him some old clothes of mine. He was a great deal taller than myself, and I suggested his trying on the trousers to see if they would fit. I do not know whether I made this suggestion with any ulterior motive or whether I had ever before thought of him in connection with any sexual relations. I only know that once more, as if guided by instinct, I felt he would not rebuff me, although certainly no indecent talk had ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... though Errington allowed Lorimer to tell the story of their trespass in his own fashion without interference. He instinctively felt that the young lady who listened with so demure a smile to that plausible narrative, knew well enough the real motive that had brought them thither though she apparently had her own reasons for keeping silence on the point, as whatever she may have thought, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... idling by any means, since he peers closely at the faces of the men, neglecting the women, and seems to be looking for some one in particular; or, perhaps, he neglects men and {70} women alike, and looks anxiously at the ground, as if he had lost something. Some inner motive shuts him off from most of the stimuli of the street, while making him extra responsive to certain sorts ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Those writers did not consider that actions which are great in themselves, as is the case with the actions of rulers and of States, always seem to bring more glory than blame, of whatever kind they are and whatever the result of them may be. In more than one remarkable and dreadful undertaking the motive assigned by serious writers is the burning desire to achieve something great and memorable. This motive is not a mere extreme case of ordinary vanity, but something demonic, involving a surrender of the will, the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... new mode of philosophising. It seems the fate of all originality of thinking to be immediately opposed; a contemporary is not prepared for its comprehension, and too often cautiously avoids it, from the prudential motive which turns away from a new and solitary path. BACON was not at all understood at home in his own day; his reputation—for it was not celebrity—was confined to his history of Henry VII., and his Essays; it was long after his death before English writers ventured to quote ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... had accidentally fallen in with, and once at a strikers' meeting he had heard rich people denounced with the same frenzy. He had made his own reflections upon the tastelessness of the rhetoric, and the obvious buncombe of the motive, and he had not taken the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... known from some coarse jest by one of the soldiers, or how it came out, I know not. But as time went on, and the hour was long past when any fresh arrivals could be expected, there was no longer motive for secrecy, and the truth was openly told. Each man as he entered was stopped just inside the door. A noose was dropped over his neck, and he was hauled up to a hook over the door. All who entered ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... persuaded that ambition could not altogether be cast out from the spirit of a man, which led me to reflect upon its possible place and purpose if controlled by a master hand beyond the hand of time. I strove to discover my inmost motive, far behind all other aims, and consoled myself with the hope that God might make it the dominant and sovereign one, to which all others might be unconscious ministers, even as all other lesser ones obey ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... of the republic was in the valor and conduct of Aurelian, yet such was the public consternation, when the barbarians were hourly expected at the gates of Rome, that, by a decree of the senate the Sibylline books were consulted. Even the emperor himself from a motive either of religion or of policy, recommended this salutary measure, chided the tardiness of the senate, [38] and offered to supply whatever expense, whatever animals, whatever captives of any nation, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... illumines the expanse of heaven and earth." But commonly he is either spoken of in a more general way, as "the regent of all things," "the establisher of heaven and earth;" or, if special functions are assigned to him, they are connected with his supposed "motive" power, as inspiring warlike thoughts in the minds of the kings, directing and favorably influencing their expeditions; or again, as helping them to discharge any of the other active duties of royalty. San is "the supreme ruler who casts a favorable eye on expeditions," ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... at a query so pointed, and so directly penetrating the proud British reserve about monetary circumstances; but Robert, knowing that the motive was kind-hearted, and the manner just that of a straightforward unconventional settler, replied, 'You are nearly right, Mr. Holt; our capital in cash is very small; but I hope stout bodies and stout hearts are ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... art, still believe that subject is an important factor in a picture or drawing. I am one of the number. The subject need not be literary or historical. After you have discussed in the latest studio jargon its carpentry, valued the tones and toned the values, motive or theme must affect your appreciation of a picture, your desire, or the contrary, to possess it. That the artist is able to endow the unattractive, and woo you to surrender, I admit. Unless, however, you are a pro-Boer in art matters, and hold ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... "As you have some motive above curiosity in asking, I will do so, Harding," and Buffalo Bill told the whole story of Sergeant Weston's escape from execution, and the finding of a body in his uniform upon the desert, and burying it. ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... and nose and the glued points of whose little moustache were extraordinarily uplifted and sustained. I remember taking him at first for a foreigner and for something of a pretender: I scarcely know why, unless because of the motive I felt in the stare he fixed on me when I asked Miss Saunt to come away. He struck me a little as a young man practising the social art of "impertinence"; but it didn't matter, for Flora came away with alacrity, bringing all her ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... say half a dozen German words; but you see I have not had your motive for acquiring it, and cannot very well get promotion. And again, it would not do for me to speak better German than the King of Prussia; who, beyond a few words necessary for animating his troops on ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... of mine in the person of Captain Bayer, an aide—de—camp of Morillo, amongst the company. He was very kind and attentive, and rather startled me by speaking very tolerable English now, from a kindly motive I make no question, whereas, when I had known him before in Kingston, he professed to speak nothing but Spanish or French. He was a German by birth, and lived to rise to the rank of colonel in the Spanish army, where he subsequently greatly ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... will enable us to remain independent of the world, or make it the interest of European powers to court our alliance, and aid in protecting us against the invasion of others. What argument, therefore, do we want to show the equity of our conduct; or motive of interest to recommend it to our prudence? Nature points out the path, and our enemies have obliged us ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... as soon as possible, and scatter in all directions, make their way to small, isolated places, change their appearance as much as possible, and each shift for himself. To remain together increases the risk of capture for each and all. There must be some powerful motive to make them take such risks. Such men risk nothing except for money. But there are no banks here to be looted, no strangers to be waylaid in dark alleys, not even a blind beggar ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... nature made cold by suffering and the constant struggle to keep the secret of her one season of passion from rising again to confront her—a woman of forty, who has no longer any illusions or pleasure, in whose character intense pride is the only motive-power left, and even pride is weary of its loneliness and the assaults made upon it—Nora excites interest, and even pity, by her position and by the aspect of a strong nature under subdued but real suffering. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... motive and the grave of conscience. In woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... applied to the benefit of our bleeding country, that any loyal man would have availed himself of it, at any hazard. The writer found such opportunity, and waiving all personal considerations, undertook the task, trusting in God for success, and conscious that all good men would approve the motive, and that if for a time, reproach and calumny should cloud his reputation, or if perchance the assassin's hand should execute the sworn purpose of the Order, as the penalty for surrendering them to the hands of our Government, the time would ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... mind at least to ask the Captain "his intentions." I was prompted rather by curiosity than by any other motive. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... rather hurried apology. He left with a sense of champagne in his head, which he could not afterwards explain. In the wild events which were to follow this girl had no part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over. And yet, in some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a motive in music through all his mad adventures afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what followed was so improbable, that it might ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... James Van Teyl," he advised, "and listen to me. You've been under obligations to me from the start. I meant you to be. I brought a great business to your firm, and I insisted upon having you interested. I had a motive, as I have for most things I do. You are well placed socially in New York, and I am not. You are also above suspicion, which I am not. It suited me to take this suite in the Plaza, nominally in our joint names, but to pay the whole account myself. It suited me because I required the shelter of ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... meeting with their rivals, and speculated as to when they had come, and the motive that brought them, also, to ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... and drank off his cup and gave the girls to drink; after which he filled again; and, taking the goblet in his hand, signed to the fat girl and bade her sing and play a different motive. So she took the lute and striking a grief- dispelling measure, sang ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... of State, under a Virginian President, were, apparently, at once to recommend himself to their sectional prejudices about the Mississippi, and to injure him in their esteem and favor, for future effect; and that his motive for now abetting Floyd, in his call for these papers as a public document, was to diminish the popularity of Mr. Adams ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... The manly firmness with which the signers of this Address have resisted the cunning wiles of Egerton Ryerson, is a solemn pledge of their love and veneration for the glorious institution of the Empire.... Thus ever thought we of British Wesleyans; and thus thinking was our impelling motive for persevering for the first three years of our editorial career, in one incessant battering of the pernicious, seditious principles of Egerton Ryerson; the very first number of whose paper betrayed him to us, flagrante delicto, a pestilent and dangerous demagogue.... If his ambition ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Once the motive is found it is not hard to say who it is that broke the peace, whatever the diplomats may put forward in lieu of the ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... pretend that at least all vessels taken in ports and harbours should be condemned as droits to the crown, and not as prize to the captors? Was not this another most pernicious attempt to deprive the imperial squadron not only of its reward for the past but of any adequate motive for the risk of future enterprise? And in effect, were not these successive pretences calculated to operate as invitations to invasions? Did they not tend to encourage the enemy to resume his occupation of the port of Bahia, and generally to renew ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... What a motive will this infatuation supply in the hands of a skilful teacher who has aroused it for the purpose of using it. The child who wants to build a storehouse on his desert island will be more eager to learn than the master to teach. He will want to know all sorts of useful things and nothing else; you ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... grinned, and then winked impudently at Jimmy, while he disposed with all speed of the contents of the plate that Theodore had set before him. Once or twice he cast a puzzled glance at the latter as if trying to discover some hidden motive. ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... up from the street. But there stood the brief paragraph: 'Lord Argentine was found dead this morning by his valet under distressing circumstances. It is stated that there can be no doubt that his lordship committed suicide, though no motive can be assigned for the act. The deceased nobleman was widely known in society, and much liked for his genial manner and sumptuous hospitality. He ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... [26] "The motive which dictated the law of 1872 on school supervision (namely, placing the State in complete control of the supervision of religious as well as other instruction) was, as is well understood, to strengthen the hands of the government in its struggle ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... building, standing alone, measuring 54 X 27 m. (about 100 X 50 Egyptian ells), and built of burned brick. The outside walls were ornamented, as was usual in later Egyptian buildings, with pilasters composed of groups of smaller rectangular pilasters. It is the same motive so often to be observed in the sham doors in tombs of the old kingdom, and is really the most natural facade ornamentation for brick buildings, as it may be made by simply setting every alternate column of bricks forward or backward. The walls were, in addition, plastered. Back of the thick outside ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... resolutions so often and so conscientiously made? How was it that she could not succeed in remembering at the time, the very moment at which she was tempted to be snappish and supercilious, her never-really-forgotten motive for peculiar gentleness and patience with her younger sister, the promise she had made, now so many years ago, to the mother Molly could scarcely even remember, to be kind, very kind, and gentle to the little, flaxen-haired, toddling thing, the "baby" whom that dear mother ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... the prejudice of other individuals; for that is enough to constitute the offence, even if the individuals engaged in this conspiracy had not (as it is imputed to them that they had) any corrupt motive of personal advantage to all or any of themselves to answer; if the criminal artifice operated, or was in all probability likely to operate to the prejudice of the public, and was clearly so intended, we need not go further; when we know that a great amount in the funds ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... hardly to be expected, perhaps, that Dean Richmond and other representatives of a great party would be willing, even if moved by no other motive than a love of country, to abandon a political organisation that had existed for years, and that had already shown its patriotism by the generous enlistment of its members; but it is doubtful if they would have proclaimed, without the guidance of a State convention, such an elaborate ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... only motive influencing the masses of mankind, the evils which we have considered in the preceding chapter would be wholly unbearable. All men would be waging an industrial warfare with each other in their greed for gain, just as the barons of feudal times fought to ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... Philip that possibly the whole story was an elaborate imposture, not told with any base motive, but merely from a wish to impress, startle, and amaze. Athelny had told him that he was at Winchester; but Philip, sensitive to differences of manner, did not feel that his host had the characteristics of a man educated at a great public school. While ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... though something had greatly amused him. Filled with a sickening apprehension that she was the cause of his laughter, Bab stepped from behind the tree unobserved by the two on the step above and walked on down the street assailed by the disquieting suspicion that Mrs. Wilson had had a motive far from disinterested in lending her the fifty dollars. She glanced down at the envelope in her hand. She felt positive that it contained the money, and her woman's intuition told her that Peter Dillon's presence in the house had not been a matter of ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... same end is accomplished, wherefore quarrel over the motive? But when thou speakest of Israel's sake, which, by the testimony of past events, is now the more ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... false, by persecution of the preacher. Kings and nations will restore to the people the immense property and revenue of which they have been plundered, under the hollow knavish pretence of curing souls and forgiving sins. THUS will human laws kill the body of Antichrist. Every motive for professing to believe absurdities and contradictions will be at an end, when neither rule nor honour, nor pelf is to be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sad sooth! in this grim decree Had a motive low and mean;— 'Twas a royal piece of chicanery To harry and spite the Queen; For King though he was, and beyond compare, He had ruled all things save one— Then blamed the Queen that his only heir Was a daughter—not ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... of the extent to which she had already betrayed her disappointment, believed that anxiety for her father's health, which she alleged as the motive of her sudden departure, was an excuse plausible enough to blind her friends to her overpowering reluctance to speak to Agatha or endure her presence; to her fierce shrinking from the sort of pity usually accorded to a jilted ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... add love and wine to the catalogue," said Paul, "you have pretty much the motive powers that have swayed the world since the fall of man. But tell us, friend, how you came to ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... English Earl could then have agreed to a pledge to transfer the kingdom to the very party he had expelled, and expose himself and his party to the vengeance of a foe he had thoroughly crushed for the time, and whom, without any motive or object, he himself agreed to restore to power or his own probable perdition? When examined, this assertion falls to the ground from other causes. It is not among the arguments that William uses in his embassies to Harold; ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flask giving a clue, he guessed all, and faced about to stare at his brother in amaze. He forgot that the motive scheme was against White Fell, demanding derision and resentment from him; that was swept out of remembrance by astonishment and admiration for the feat of speed and endurance. In eagerness to question he inclined ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the committee to examine the manuscripts offered for prizes to the Humane Society, I read the story, I felt that the writer had a higher motive than to compete for a prize; that the story was a stream of sympathy that flowed from the heart; that it was genuine; that it only needed a publisher who should be able to command a wide influence, to make its merits known, to give it a strong ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders |
