"Actuate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, is well worth reading by those who wish to learn something of the motives which originally led the Southern States into rebellion, and still actuate them in their obstinate resistance. To any one familiar with the history of the last thirty years, it would almost seem that Mr. Pollard's object had been to expose the futility of the pretences set up by the originators of Secession, so utterly does he fail in showing any adequate ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... three great tenets of a Mason's profession, are Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth. And it is true that a Brotherly affection and kindness should govern us in all our intercourse and relations with our brethren; and a generous and liberal philanthropy actuate us in regard to all men. To relieve the distressed is peculiarly the duty of Masons—a sacred duty, not to be omitted, neglected, or coldly or inefficiently complied with. It is also most true, that Truth ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... "But should I wish to do so, I should hardly be deterred from it by either of the considerations you have just named, I think. And, indeed, if the mercenary and ambitious motives, which you would have actuate me, were alone to be my guide in such a step, I could see but little temptation for the sacrifice in the honors and wealth which are so much to depend on a triumph that, for all your boasts, I believe ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... mental apparatus you think you are as familiar as with your own. In the midst of the most amicable relationships and the best understandings, human beings are, at times, conscious of a cold feeling of strangeness—the friend is actuated by a feeling which never could actuate you, some hitherto unknown part of his character becomes visible, and while at one moment you stood in such close neighbourhood, that you could feel his arm touch your own, in the next there is a feeling of removal, of distance, of empty space betwixt him and you in which the wind is blowing. You ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... find the Aborigines of Australia ordinarily acting under the influence of no worse motives or passions than usually actuate man in a civilised state, we ought in fairness to suppose that sufficient provocative for retaliation has been given in those few instances of revenge, which, our imperfect knowledge of the circumstances attending them does not enable us satisfactorily ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... leaders, whatever their birth or station,—so grandly proven in those terrible days of general sickness and death at New Plymouth,—to be certain that with them, under all circumstances, it was noblesse oblige, and that no self-seeking would actuate them here. It should be remembered that the MAY-FLOWER was primarily a passenger transport, her passengers being her principal freight and occupying the most of the ship, the heavier cargo being chiefly confined to the "hold." As in that day the passenger traffic was, of course, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... as death, and much excited; "you must not go until you have satisfied me on a point of life and death to both of us. Your conduct is a mystery. I cannot explain it. I know not what are the motives which actuate you. These are known to yourself. Let them be so. But I have a question to ask, and you must and shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... act? Certainly we cannot suppose that the divine beings actually and literally turn our bodies and direct our hands and our feet this way or that, to do what is right: it is obvious that they must actuate the practical and elective element of our nature, by certain initial occasions, by images presented to the imagination, and thoughts suggested to the mind, such either as to excite it to, or avert and withhold it from, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and to nourish this spirit, was the great object of all our public and private institutions. The zeal for liberty became predominant and excessive. In forming our confederation, this passion alone seemed to actuate us, and we appear to have had no other view than to secure ourselves from despotism. The object certainly was a valuable one, and deserved our utmost attention. But, sir, there is another object equally important, and which our enthusiasm rendered us little capable of regarding: I mean a principle ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... of propitiating the satanic spirit which seemed to actuate the English against their opponents, from the first moment that they set their foot upon Irish soil; for, when, in the lapse of years, a portion of the inhabitants in the vicinity of the Pale, professed their readiness to conform to the manners, laws and customs of the invader, ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... knowing that his whole heart was bound up in me, knowing that he had but one wish, and it was to spend his whole life with me; you parted us knowing that he could never love another woman as he loved me, knowing that you were destroying his life, even as you have destroyed mine. Did love for your son actuate ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... knit us to our Head; Nourish us, in Christ, and feed; Let us daily growth receive, More and more in Jesus live. Move, and actuate, and guide; Divers gifts to each divide: Placed according to thy will, Let us all ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... so, as among the most valuable materials which exist for illustrating the social condition of the people at the period to which they belong. Executed, as they must be, at moments the most solemn displaying, as we cannot but believe they do, the real feelings which actuate the testators; and having for their object the distribution of existing property, and that of every possible variety of description, it is obvious that they alike call for investigation, and are calculated to repay any labour that may be bestowed upon them. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... know me enough," she continued, "or what I would say is, you yet recollect (do you not, Lord Alfred?) enough of my nature, to know That these pledges of what was perhaps long ago A foolish affection, I do not recall From those motives of prudence which actuate all Or most women when their love ceases. Indeed, If you have such a doubt, to dispel it I need But remind you that ten years these letters have rested Unreclaim'd in your hands." A reproach seem'd suggested By these words. To meet it, Lord Alfred look'd up (His gaze ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... it all, if these things do not make us 'live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world'? What is the good of the sails of a windmill going whirling round, if the machinery has been thrown out of gear, and the great stones which it ought to actuate are not revolving? What is the good of the screw of a steamer revolving, when she pitches, clean above the waves? It does nothing then to drive the vessel onwards, but will only damage the machinery. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... (as its wont is) whispered too a question in my ear, "Is it for her brothers and sisters only that Miss Ethel is sacrificing herself? Is it not for the coronet, and the triumph, and the fine houses?" "When two motives may actuate a friend, we surely may try and believe in the good one," says Laura. "But, but I am glad Clive does not marry her—poor fellow—he would not have been happy with her. She belongs to this great world: she has spent all her life in ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... better instructed, than that we should now have to behold men, of apparently good education, settling their disputes by an appeal to arms. It is difficult to conceive what preposterous principles can actuate men, to induce them to such a mode of decision. Justice is the ultimate wish of every reasonable man in the termination of his casual differences with others, But, in the determination of cases by the sword, the injured man not unfrequently ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... divinity. He made a learned distinction of the several sorts of appetites; of that a man has before he begins to eat, and of those after the second and third service; the means simply to satisfy the first, and then to raise and actuate the other two; the ordering of the sauces, first in general, and then proceeded to the qualities of the ingredients and their effects; the differences of salads according to their seasons, those which ought to be served up hot, and which cold; the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... valley commanded by the heavy guns of Metz and by innumerable nests of German machine guns. The Negroes seemed to realize that here for the first time was the opportunity to show their mettle—that for the first time they were going to battle as a division. A sense of race pride seemed to stir and actuate every man. Here was a chance to show what this great body, composed of cotton-field Negroes, of stevedores, mechanics, general laborers, trades, professional men and those from all walks of civilian life who but recently had taken up the profession of arms, could ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... his admirable Natural History of Religions: "We may conclude, therefore, that in all nations the first ideas of religion arose not from a contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears which actuate the human mind." A century before him Hobbes had written in his terse way: "The natural seed of religion lies in these four things: the fear of spirits, ignorance of secondary causes, the conciliation of those we fear, and the assumption of accidents for omens."[81-1] ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... by the employment of electric and pneumatic auxiliaries. The same is true of organs and organists. The touch of the keys has been greatly lightened by making the keys open air-valves or complete electric circuits which actuate the mechanism for pulling down the pallets. The stops, pedals, and couplers also employ "power." Not only are the performer's muscles spared a lot of heavy work when compressed air and electricity aid him, but he is able to have the console, ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... to forbid wars of cupidity, and offer a high tribunal for the redress of international grievances.... If all parts of a mighty union have their proportionate weight in questions of war and peace, no partial and vicious expediency can actuate them in common. Justice alone is the universal good which can unite their desires and efforts, or make them collectively willing to undergo sacrifice.... The wider the federation, the more benign its aspect on the whole world without, especially if the populations absorbed ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... century witnessed a higher order of travellers, who, from such a mixture of motives as might actuate either a pilgrim or an antiquary, undertook the perilous tour of the Holy Land. Among these, one of the most distinguished was George Sandys, who commenced his peregrinations in the year 1610. He was succeeded ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... objectives are set up in the schools of all countries pupils, teachers, and people will come to think in unison and thus their ways will converge and they will come to act in unison. The same high purposes will actuate and animate society as a whole and this, in turn, will make for a higher type of civilization and accelerate progress toward unity ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... From here it is taken up by two helices, mounted on a vertical shaft traversing the hopper, and forced toward the point where the four moulding wheels meet. The driving pulley of the machine is keyed upon a horizontal shaft which is provided with two endless screws that actuate two gear-wheels, and these latter set in motion the four moulding wheels by means of beveled pinions. The four moulding wheels being accurately adjusted so that their cavities meet each other at every ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... ideas of religion arose, not from a contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears which actuate the human mind ... in order to carry men's attention beyond the present course of things, or lead them into any inference concerning invisible intelligent power, they must be actuated by some passion which prompts their thought and reflection, some motive which urges their first ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... that you could never have been betrayed into such a statement if you had been acquainted with the real motives which actuate the British ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... independence, you have so conducted yourselves, as uniformly to preserve the strictest harmony and good fellowship with the officers of the ships of war of all neutral states. The services you have rendered to Chili will, however, be better appreciated at a future period, when the passions which now actuate individuals shall have ceased to influence those in power, and when your honourable motives shall no longer be felt as a reproach by those whose selfishness has withheld the reward of your fidelity, ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... recognize in this letter a spirit quite different from that which had seemed to actuate some of the foreign aspirants for glory. And by this time they had received an informing letter from Silas Deane; so they hastened to pass a resolution (on July 31, 1777) accepting Lafayette's services and "in consideration of his ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... to hold up the labor unions as offering a model for the spirit which should actuate us or the methods we should follow—because their class-consciousness and the resulting conduct are sometimes extreme and often shortsighted, I would urge upon business men to cultivate and demonstrate but a little of that cohesion and discipline and subordination of self ...
— High Finance • Otto H. Kahn
... great constitutional charter under which you are assembled, and which in defining your powers designates the objects to which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me to substitute in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications, ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... openwork tube a group of nine forces held the field of force rigidly in place in its axis; at the lower extremity were mounted seats for two operators and the control panels necessary for the operation of the intricate system of forces and motors which would actuate and control that gigantic projector. Immense hour and declination circles could be read by optical systems from the operators' seats—circles fully forty feet in diameter, graduated with incredible delicacy ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... course ran to waste and wild entanglement. Excuse me if I am tedious on this point, for I feel solicitous to impress it upon you, being an error extremely prevalent in our country and one into which too many of our youth have fallen. I am happy, however, to observe the zeal which still appears to actuate you for the acquisition of knowledge, and augur every good from the elevated bent of your ambition. May I ask what has been your course of study for the ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... errors, but is excusable when only weak and childish. 'True.' We often say that one man masters, and another is mastered by pleasure and anger. 'Just so.' But no one says that one man masters, and another is mastered by ignorance. 'You are right.' All these motives actuate men and sometimes drive them in different ways. 'That is so.' Now, then, I am in a position to define the nature of just and unjust. By injustice I mean the dominion of anger and fear, pleasure and pain, envy and desire, in the soul, whether doing harm or not: by ...
— Laws • Plato
... prevailing tendencies of thought and the economic teaching of the period were not merely negative and opposed to government regulation; they contained a positive element also. If there was to be no external control, what incentive would actuate men in their industrial existence? What force would hold economic society together? The answer was a plain one. Enlightened self-interest was the incentive, universal free competition was the force. James Anderson, in his Political Economy, published in 1801, says, "Private interest is the great ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... constitutional charter under which you are assembled, and which, in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on one ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... guilt is collective must not actuate me to throw mine upon the shoulders of others, but rather to take upon myself the burden of the guilt of others, the guilt of all men; not to merge and sink my guilt in the total mass of guilt, but ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... intention." He turned again to Rotherby. "Lord Ostermore was a father to you, which he never was to me—knew not that he was. The sentiments you so beautifully expressed to Mr. Templeton are the sentiments that actuate me now, though I shall make no attempt to express them. It is not that my heart stirs much where my Lord Ostermore is concerned. And yet, for the sake of the name that is mine now, I shall leave England as I came—Mr. Justin Caryll, neither more ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... regarded by many Romish priests. He liked to have near him that which was pretty and amusing, but women generally were little more to him than children. He talked to them without putting out all his powers, and listened to them without any idea that what he should hear from them could either actuate his conduct ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the Plan of Redemption; its Continual Progress; Indications of the End towards which it is tending; the End Itself the Chief Object of Interest—Great Crisis in the Church's History—Spirit that should actuate the Interpreter of Prophecy ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... There is ground for believing that Pushkin likewise made this poem the record of his own experience. This has doubtless been the practice of many distinguished authors of fiction whose names will readily occur to the reader. Indeed, as we are never cognizant of the real motives which actuate others, it follows that nowhere can the secret springs of human action be studied to such advantage as within our own breasts. Thus romance is sometimes but the reflection of the writer's own individuality, and he adopts the ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... inform you that the executive government of Venezuela has acknowledged some claims of citizens of the United States which have for many years past been urged by our charge d'affaires at Caracas. It is hoped that the same sense of justice will actuate the Congress of that Republic in providing the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... of social development the economic motives that actuate men remain essentially the same. All men seek to get as much net service from material wealth as they can. The more wealth they have, other things remaining the same, the better off they are, and the more personal sacrifice they are compelled to undergo in the securing of the wealth, ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... the stomach, whatever may occasion them, are a very frequent cause of continued fever with weak pulse; and that these torpid motions of the stomach do not sufficiently excite the sensorial power of association, which contributes in health to actuate the heart and arteries along with the irritation produced by the stimulus of the blood; and hence the actions of these organs are weaker. And lastly, that the accumulation of the sensorial power of association, which ought to be expended on the motions of the heart and arteries, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... which govern the words and actions of the persons who appear in a well-written story are more easily discerned than the motives which actuate the human beings around us. Thus a child who reads intelligently is helped to discover in the words and deeds of the people whom he meets the elements of real character. A study of the heroes of fiction is ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... the electrodes is connected with the diaphragm on which the sound-waves impinge, and the vibration of this diaphragm causes the pressure between the electrodes to be correspondingly varied, and thereby effects a variation in the current, resulting in the production of impulses which actuate the receiving magnet. In other words, with Bell's telephone the sound-waves themselves generate the electric impulses, which are hence extremely faint. With the Edison telephone, the sound-waves actuate an electric valve, so to speak, and permit variations ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... no grounds on which to found a caution, yet Grace felt full of discomfort and distrust, a feeling shared by Alison, who had never forgiven herself for her half confidence, and felt that it would be wiser to tell the rest, but was withheld by knowing that her motive would actuate her sister to a contrary course. That Colin should detach himself from her, love again, and marry, was what Ermine schooled herself to think fitting; but Alison alternated between indignant jealousy for her sister, and the desire to warn Rachel that she might at best win ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yoke on your necks? But I must not too severely blame you for a fault which great souls only can commit. May that magnificence of spirit which scorns the low pursuit of malice; may that generous compassion which often preserves from ruin, even a guilty villain, forever actuate the noble bosoms of Americans! But let not the miscreant host vainly imagine that we feared their arms. No, those we despised; we dread nothing but slavery. Death is the creature of a poltroon's brains; 'tis ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... atrocities of British soldiers contained in that letter are a tissue of falsehoods, and constitute an unfounded calumny which it would be difficult to parallel in the annals of warfare. It is difficult to conceive the motives that actuate the writer, but that they have been violent enough to make him absolutely reckless as to ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle |
