All 6 Uses
motive
in
The Screwtape Letters
(Auto-generated)
- Is he a man of great physical courage—so great that he will have no half-conscious misgivings about the real motives of his pacifism?†
Chpt 7motives = reasons for doing something
- His real motive for fixing on sex as the method of reproduction among humans is only too apparent from the use He has made of it.†
Chpt 18motive = reason (for doing something)
- In the first place, humans who have not the gift of continence can be deterred from seeking marriage as a solution because they do not find themselves "in love", and, thanks to us, the idea of marrying with any other motive seems to them low and cynical.†
Chpt 18
- All His talk about Love must be a disguise for something else-He must have some real motive for creating them and taking so much trouble about them.†
Chpt 19
- The reason one comes to talk as if He really had this impossible Love is our utter failure to out that real motive.†
Chpt 19 *
- This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy's motives for creating a dangerous world-a world in which moral issues really come to the point.†
Chpt 29motives = reasons for doing something
Definitions:
-
(1)
(motive as in: What is her motive?) a reason for doing something
-
(2)
(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.