All 8 Uses of
motive
in
Gulliver's Travels
- For, since the conjunction of male and female is founded upon the great law of nature, in order to propagate and continue the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men and women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the like natural principle: for which reason they will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or to his mother for bringing him into the world; which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts, in their love encounters, were otherwise employed.†
Chpt 1motives = reasons for doing something
- How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.†
Chpt 3 *
- He asked me, "what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another?"†
Chpt 4
- My master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what motives could incite this race of lawyers to perplex, disquiet, and weary themselves, and engage in a confederacy of injustice, merely for the sake of injuring their fellow-animals; neither could he comprehend what I meant in saying, they did it for hire.†
Chpt 4
- And indeed to avoid so monstrous and detestable a sight was one principal motive of my retirement hither.†
Chpt Intr.
- Pray bring to your mind how often I desired you to consider, when you insisted on the motive of public good, that the Yahoos were a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precept or example: and so it has proved; for, instead of seeing a full stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason to expect; behold, after above six months warning, I cannot learn that my book has produced one single effect according to my intentions.†
Chpt Intr.
- What qualifications were necessary in those who are to be created new lords: whether the humour of the prince, a sum of money to a court lady, or a design of strengthening a party opposite to the public interest, ever happened to be the motive in those advancements?†
Chpt 2
- Let me deal so candidly with the reader as to confess that there was yet a much stronger motive for the freedom I took in my representation of things.†
Chpt 4
Definitions:
-
(1)
(motive as in: What is her motive?) a reason for doing something
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Less commonly, motive can refer to something that causes motion in an inanimate object. Even less commonly, it can refer to a distinctive feature in music, art, or literature.