All 11 Uses
motive
in
Going After Cacciato
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- That was Doc's advice—look for motives, search out the place where fact ended and imagination took over.†
Chpt 2motives = reasons for doing something
- What were his motives, or did he have motives, and did motives matter?†
Chpt 2
- What were his motives, or did he have motives, and did motives matter?†
Chpt 2
- What were his motives, or did he have motives, and did motives matter?†
Chpt 2
- In the purity of your own motives.†
Chpt 33
- Paul Berlin's motives, as shapeless as water, washed through his imagination: a briny, sodden pressure that weighted him like gravity, layers of inclination pressing him deeper and deeper.†
Chpt 33
- Her own motives were secret.†
Chpt 38
- Emotions and beliefs and attitudes, motives and aims, hopes—these were unknown to the men in Alpha Company, and Quang Ngai told nothing.†
Chpt 39
- Lord knows, he had no villainy in his heart, no motive but kindness.†
Chpt 39 *motive = reason (for doing something)
- He didn't know who was right, or what was right; he didn't know if it was a war of self-determination or self-destruction, outright aggression or national liberation; he didn't know which speeches to believe, which books, which politicians; he didn't know if nations would topple like dominoes or stand separate like trees; he didn't know who really started the war, or why, or when, or with what motives; he didn't know if it mattered; he saw sense in both sides of the debate, but he did not know where truth lay; he didn't know if communist tyranny would prove worse in the long run than the tyrannies of Ky or Thieu or Khanh—he simply didn't know.†
Chpt 39motives = reasons for doing something
- It was a fact that one day in the rain, during a bad time, the dummy had packed up and walked away, a poor kid who wanted to see Paris, no mysterious motives or ambitions.†
Chpt 45
Definitions:
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(1)
(motive as in: What is her motive?) a reason for doing something
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(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.