109 Metaphors for motives

vi. 823. 'The noblest motive is the public good.' 201.

Everyone agrees in the judgment that, by rights, things should go well with the virtuous and ill with the wicked, though this must not imply any deduction from the principle previously announced that the least impulse of self-interest causes the maxim to forfeit its worth: the motive of the will must never be happiness, but always the being worthy of happiness.

One motive for delay is an expectation that the message of the President may arrive before the discussion, and that it may contain something to show a strong national feeling on the subject.

The sole moral motive is the consciousness of duty, respect for the moral lazy [Footnote 1: The respect or reverence which the law, and, derivatively, the person in whom it is realized, compel from us, is, as self-produced through a concept of reason and as the only feeling which can be known a priori, specifically different from all feelings of inclination or fear awakened by sensuous influences.

His motive was simplea rock, some trees, a stretch of sandy waste, backed by a rugged hill and a glimpse of sea, all bathed in mist; and his brush moved decisively, heavily at times, lightly, caressingly at others as the sketch grew to completion, while his dark eyes glowed behind their hideous goggles, and the firm lines at his mouth relaxed in a smile.

The ministerial combination which accepted this pact with the immitigable enemy of the unity of Italy, whose sole motive for hostility to Crispi was the latter's invincible antagonism to the temporal power and the immixtion of the Church in civil affairs, comprised a leading Republican and Radical, Nicotera, and Rudiní, the chief of the ultra-Conservative group, beside members of various groups of intervening shades of politics.

Of those features the specimens of quaint Scottish humour still remembered are unlike anything else, but they are fast becoming obsolete, and my motive for this publication has been an endeavour to preserve marks of the past which would of themselves soon become obliterated, and to supply the rising generation with pictures of social life, faded and indistinct to their eyes, but the strong lines of which an older race still remember.

"That is possible; but a good motive is no excuse for a bad means.

We must assume, therefore, that the motive for this step was the abandonment of the tomb.

The motives of mediaeval and more recent conquests were the strangest of all.

It appeared that the motive was, that he might give to it, by his official appearance as the chief servant of the crown in that house, all the opposition in his power.

Our motive to action is never the knowledge of a true proposition, but always simply a wish, affection, or impulse.

That the motive which the Romans had in besieging Syracuse was affection for the Syracusans, and not hatred; for when they heard that the government was usurped by Hippocrates and Epicydes, the creatures first of Hannibal and then of Hieronymus, they took arms and began to besiege the city, in order to reduce not the city itself, but its cruel tyrants.

About the middle of the nineteenth century a large amount of American capital was invested in the whaling industry in Japanese and Chinese waters, and one motive for the sending of Perry's expedition to Japan was the protection of the whalers.

"Well, what would that motive be?" "Money."

The central motive of that belief was not faith in God, but faith in man.

Her motive in coming was not now the impelling thing that had actuated her.

A second motive, not less powerful, is, that we were just at the entrance of the bad season, and that the English settlements, on the river Gambia, (to which, a part of the English, garrison were to go) are extremely unhealthy: diseases that are almost always mortal, prevail during the winter-season, and generally carry off two thirds of the Europeans, who are newly arrived.

Our second motive was that henceforward he who seeks to ignore or belittle the part taken by men and women of Irish birth or blood in promoting the spread of religion, civilization, education, culture, and freedom should sin, not in ignorance, but against the light, and that from a thousand quarters at once champions armed with the panoply of knowledge should be able to spring to his confutation.

In brief, then, the motives of its founders, the professors, were these, the accommodation of their studentsthe accommodation of the public (which means, the whites)and the accommodation of slaveholders who have on their hands disabled slaves, that would make 'interesting cases,' for surgical operation in the presence of the pupilsto these reasons we may add the accommodation of the Medical Institution and the accommodation of themselves!

" "You then fancy, sir, that my motive is no secret to you?"

"The real motive, however, was the longing of the Turkish nation for independence in their own country.

The two strongest human motives are ambition and fear.

But a motive which weighs more with me than either of these, is a desire to make acknowledgment of the debts which my intellectual and moral development owes to other persons; some of them of recognised eminence, others less known than they deserve to be, and the one to whom most of all is due, one whom the world had no opportunity of knowing.

The only motive that ought to have influenced them, was the prospect of obtaining them upon cheap terms; for, my lords, if the troops of Hanover cannot be obtained, but at the same expense with those of Britain, I am not able to discover why they should be preferred.

109 Metaphors for  motives