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Incentive   Listen
noun
Incentive  n.  That which moves or influences the mind, or operates on the passions; that which incites, or has a tendency to incite, to determination or action; that which prompts to good or ill; motive; spur; as, the love of money, and the desire of promotion, are two powerful incentives to action. "The greatest obstacles, the greatest terrors that come in their way, are so far from making them quit the work they had begun, that they rather prove incentives to them to go on in it."
Synonyms: Motive; spur; stimulus; incitement; encouragement; inducement; influence.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Incentive" Quotes from Famous Books



... write," she affirmed, taking up her pencil with the impetus of an incentive. Under the inspiration of the beads around her neck, ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... a gentle young athlete weather this? To a perky little man of more wits than muscle, or to a gay old Lothario, it would have been an incentive to the chase, but I feared Dawn was too horribly, uncompromisingly given to speaking what she felt, irrespective of grace, to expand this young Romeo to love; but much merciless fire will be stood from beauty, and he made ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... and so doubtless he had. In the complex tangle of motives that actuated the mediaeval Spaniard—and in his peninsula we may apply the term mediaeval to later dates than would be proper in France or Italy—the desire of extending the dominion of the Church was a very real and powerful incentive to action. The strength of the missionary and crusading spirit in Cortes is seen in the fact that where it was concerned, and there only, was he liable to ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... determined, and well known as such, both in and out of the service. The commanders of the different vessels were likewise men of elevated character, zealous in performing their duty, and honorably ambitious of distinction. If the incentive of gain be reckoned stronger than considerations of duty and honor, it was not wanting; for, besides half the value of the vessel, each liberated slave would have been worth twenty-five dollars to the captors—a ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... you did land it—your sort can't. You know how it went before—the women and the sharks got it. There'd be always that same incentive to pull off just one more to keep you going—until you'd pulled yourself behind bars, and stayed there. And there's the drug-danger, too. If you escaped so far, it was because so far you had the strength to let drugs alone. But the drugs get you, sooner ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... the incentive for active service in the army of musicians. The President often sends me the ci-devant Imperial loge at the Conservatoire. In old times I used to think how splendid it would be to sit here! Now I have the twelve seats to dispose of—six large gilded Empire ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... stolen securities through people who would undertake the dangerous business without asking awkward questions, if the profit were high enough. Still he thought Graham knew, and this would give him an incentive stronger than his wish to save the money for trying to get the letters back. Indeed, Foster imagined that he was now in serious danger. Graham's run to ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... her by the Duke and his mother and go forth into a life of adventure, freedom, and love. The delicate, flower-like Pompilia in The Ring and the Book has also power to initiate and carry through a plan of escape, but her incentive is no call to romantic freedom. Her passive endurance changes to active revolt only when motive and energy are supplied by her love for her child. Or take Pippa and Phene in Pippa Passes, two beautiful young girls ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... spoke low and gently to the merchant captain; and even smiled kindly upon his remarks to her, of whatever nature they might be. Doubtless, from the moment of their introduction, a vague suspicion of his true character crossed the English officer's thoughts, but now he needed no other incentive, than the fact that Miss Huntington received and entertained his addresses so agreeably, and with such evident pleasure, to make him more than watchful, and resolved ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... been often found adequate, with instances of which the Greek and Latin authors everywhere abound. May not a Christian, therefore, be well ashamed of making a stumbling- block of a precept, which is not only consistent with his worldly interest, but to which so noble an incentive is proposed?" ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... so much importance because it has terrified Mindanao and Jolo, and has been a strong incentive to the resumption of peace. The day when the fleet sailed, there was a juanga of Joloans at Sanboangan which was seen going out, and a little while afterward another was seen entering which came from Zibu, carrying Captain Becerra; the rest of his company, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... two. He had only just found it in a corner of a cupboard where it had lain for years and years. But oh, the strength of that cigarette! It took me hours to get through, for it would not draw a bit. Nevertheless, with the incentive of a shilling to urge me on, I continued "faint but pursuing" and eventually won the bet. I would not do it again for ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren

... who decided to take a gentleman's collegiate course. Not only my financial pressure seemed to direct toward that more southern field, but the cause of those who were thirsting for liberty, and were almost daily leaving boats or crossing the river, was also a strong incentive to occupy a post near the Southern end of the road whose Northern terminus ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... Renaissance" has been applied to their work, which glows with spiritual emotion and discloses a world of dreams, fairies, and romantic aspiration. As Richard Wagner received from the Scandinavian folk-lore the inspiration for his great music, as Tennyson found the incentive for The Idylls of the Kings in Malory's Morte d'Arthur, so the modern Celtic poets turned back to the primitive legends of their country for tales of Cuchulain who fought the sea, Caolte who besieged the castle of the gods, Oisin, who ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... religious loyalty of its great towns. Such a calamity is unknown to the Catholicism of Dublin, Cork, Belfast, and the other cities of Ireland; for, to say nothing of higher and more religious causes of the difference, the very presence of a rival religion is a perpetual incentive to faith and devotion in men who, from the circumstances of the case, would be in danger of becoming worse than lax Catholics, unless they resolved ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... culture extended itself much more slowly over the rural districts, the inhabitants of which, in addition to being much more conservative and passionately attached to their native institutions and language, lacked the incentive of ambition and of commercial and trade necessity. A powerful Druidical priesthood held the rural Celts together and set their faces against Roman culture and religion. But even in the rural districts Latin ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... The incentive to undertake the work now offered to the public was the desire to correct misapprehensions created by industriously circulated misrepresentations as to the acts and purposes of the people and the General Government of the Confederate States. By the reiteration of such unappropriate ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... logical outcome of his conclusions. The partition of his estates between his wife and children, shortly before the outbreak of the great famine in 1892, served to relieve his mind partially; and the writings of Henry George, with which he became acquainted at this critical time, were an additional incentive to concentrate his thoughts on the land question. He began by reading the American propagandist's "Social Problems," which arrested his attention by its main principles and by the clearness and novelty of his arguments. Deeply impressed by the ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... a constant discussion of the virtues and abilities of all the male members of the clan, from boyhood to old age. He is most successful in obtaining clan and tribal promotion who is most useful to the clan and the tribe. In this manner all of the ambitious are stimulated, and this incentive to industry ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... of this subject of incentive taken by your contemporaries seems, in fact, to have been based upon the crude and childish theory that the main factor in diligence or execution of any kind is external, whereas it is wholly internal. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... as his return greeting, the minister's telegram to his congregation, but I did not justify his high opinion of my Biblical knowledge. I was obliged to search the Scriptures to unravel the enigma. As there may be others like me, but who have not the incentive I had to look up the reference, I quote from God's word the message I received: "Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink; but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... casualties were particularly heavy among Officers and N.C.O.s, and gives trenchant evidence of their self-sacrificing gallantry in seeking by utter disregard for danger to turn a forlorn hope into victory, and by personal example and incentive to make still richer the honourable traditions of the 17th in the face of such overwhelming odds, and amidst such overaweing devastation. In this action seven officers were killed and five wounded. Of other ranks 41 were killed, 130 ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various

... the incentive and the Musee Oceanographique of Monaco his inspiration, limitless wealth supplied ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... felt, lived. She fascinated him, as often over the books they would stop to talk, talk of things the most irrelevant, yet to him the most interesting, until she would bring him back inevitably to the point of their work and start him again with a new power and incentive toward the ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... Helen May who was every day proving her efficiency and her strength of character anew. If Helen May went the way her mother had gone, Peter felt that he would be alone, and that life would be quite bare and bleak and empty of every incentive toward bearing the little daily ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... and a serious interruption in the racing fixtures of the late summer and early autumn. The jury took note that on one occasion the prisoner in the guise of a young man had personally carried out the rescue of two endangered horses; and added a faintly-worded recommendation to mercy, seeing that the incentive to the crimes was ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... should never have struck any one till Dr Vigfusson noticed them less than twenty years ago. But the fact seems to be so; and nothing could better prove the rarity of that comparative study of literature to which this series aims at being a modest contribution and incentive.] ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... were to win admiration that was all but dead, and give sodden women an incentive ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... About Woman. I wish to take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude for the generous interest and sympathy with which my work has been received. Such kindness is very imperfectly repaid by an author's thanks; it is certainly the best incentive to ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... after him. Instead of being rebuffed by Raven's attitude, he seemed to be exhilarated. Raven concluded, as he saw the light of a perhaps fanatical zeal playing over his face, that the fellow took it for a challenge, an incentive to bring one more into the fold. It was something in the nature ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... same time the girl had broken her own heart. He found that out afterward. And Bewsher eliminated himself more thoroughly than necessary. I suppose the shame of the thing was to him like a blow to a thoroughbred, instead of an incentive, as it would have been to a man of coarser fibre. He went from bad to worse, resigned from his regiment, finally disappeared. Personally, I had hoped that he had begun again somewhere on the outskirts of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... system falls to pieces, because it is the profit incentive that has always been considered as the binder that holds the capitalist world together. Hence the abandonment of the profit incentive is the surrender of the citadel of capitalism. While profit remains, exploitation persists, and while there is exploitation of one man ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... stately courtesy) Welcome joy, adieu to sadness! As Aurora gilds the day, So those eyes, twin orbs of gladness, Chase the clouds of care away. Irresistible incentive Bids me humbly kiss your hand; I'm your service most attentive— ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... fame above mentioned, was a powerful incentive, and is avowed both by Virgil and Horace. The former, in the third book of his Georgics, announces a resolution of rendering himself celebrated, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... they may compete with the hand brake. Hemp-breaking machines are being improved and their use is increasing. The hemp-growing industry can increase in this country only as machine brakes are developed to prepare the fiber. A profitable use for the hurds will add an incentive to the ...
— Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material - United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 404 • Lyster H. Dewey and Jason L. Merrill

... she is likewise put to shame. The men emulate the deeds of their fathers in order that they may take part in the sun dance. And thus this wonderful dance becomes a school for patriotism among the tribes and a stimulus to deeds of valour as well as an incentive to virtue. I do not think that anything has ever made a stronger impression upon me than the sun dance. It was always held in May, a beautiful time of the year, and as we young people watched the various phases of the ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... one hand will be shown the waste products in all the industrial processes included in the forthcoming Exhibition; on the other hand, the useful products which have been obtained from such wastes since 1851. This is intended to serve as an incentive to further researches in ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... trade in discouraging legitimate commerce. None of these causes is necessarily permanent, that most difficult to remove being the third; the negro races finding the means of existence easy have little incentive to toil. The first drawback has almost disappeared, and the building of railways and the placing of steamers on the rivers and lakes—a work continually progressing —renders it year by year easier for producer and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... story tells, being asked what manner of poet he thought Tyrtaeus, replied, "Good to whet young men's courage;" for being filled with a divine fury by his poems, they rushed into any danger. And so the stoic philosophy is a dangerous incentive to strong and fiery dispositions, but where it combines with a grave and gentle temper, is most successful in leading it ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... their own poor." Jones then fell a-laughing, and asked Partridge, "if he was not ashamed, with so much charity in his mouth, to have no charity in his heart. Your religion," says he, "serves you only for an excuse for your faults, but is no incentive to your virtue. Can any man who is really a Christian abstain from relieving one of his brethren in such a miserable condition?" And at the same time, putting his hand in his pocket, he gave the poor object ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... for the dawn. The man who never let go had let go something this time, and that something was nothing less than his whole life. He never believed it would hurt him like it did. For the past three years he had been restless. The soul and mind of him ached for expansion. The chief incentive to work had gone. He had more money than he could spend—in the West. Yonder was New York, Paris, London. Alluring visions of civilization flashed through his brain. What was the use of money if not to burn, ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... enormous forcing influence upon the science of aviation. In times of peace the old game of private enterprise and official neglect would possibly have been carried on in well-marked stages. But with the terrific incentive of victory before them, all Governments fostered the growth of the new arm by all the means in their power. It became a race between Allied and enemy countries as to who first should attain the mastery of the air. The British nation, as usual, ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... spent a most interesting and instructive day within the Fortress of Haudiomont. He really did not want to go. The visit bored him. The world was at peace, and there was no incentive to espionage as there had been ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux

... now opening and Sheridan's army marched eastward. Men and horses were covered with mud, but they still had the flush of victories won, and the incentive of others expected. They were even yet worn by hard marching and some fighting, but it was a healthy leanness, making their muscles as tough as whipcord, while their eyes were keen like those ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... arose. During the latter years of the war, when Union troops occupied the courthouse, the jail offered its facilities as a storehouse as well as a place of detention for military prisoners. But the Army of the Potomac had little time or incentive to keep the jail in good repair, and so, like the courthouse, it suffered extensively ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton

... queens in perspective, were not so plentiful in Queen Victoria's young days as to leave any doubt of their hands and hearts proving in great request when the proper time came. Therefore there was no necessity to hold before the little girl, as an incentive to good penmanship, the example of her excellent grandmother, Queen Charlotte, who wrote so fair a letter, expressed with such correctness and judiciousness, at the early age of fifteen, that when the said letter fell, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... back to me that, in a past existence unbrightened by Nell Van Buren and Phyllis Rivers, I came to Holland with the object of painting pictures. Never, since my arrival in the bright little country of wide spaces, have I had a keener incentive to improve the shining hours; but how can a man remember that he's an artist when the girl he loves has engaged herself to another man, and one of the few girls he never could love is rapidly engaging ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... material, spiritual, was gone now, and where it had glimmered for a night, the old accustomed twilit doubt crept in—the same dull acquiescence—the same uncertainty of self, the familiar lack of will, of incentive, the congenial tendency to drift; and with it came weariness—perhaps reaction from the recent skirmishes with ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... that obedience to the will of man," Marcia was saying, "has robbed woman of all initiative, all incentive to achievement, all creative faculty, and that only by renouncing man and all his works will she ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... volunteer. Enthusiasm in the cause was fast diminishing when Lincoln, purely on his own initiative, proclaimed emancipation, and, investing the war with the dignity of a crusade, inspired the soldier with a new incentive, and appealed to a feeling which had not yet been stirred. Many Northerners had not thought it worth while to fight for the re-establishment of the Union on the basis of the Constitution. If slavery was to be permitted to continue they preferred separation; ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... at her, felt his senses stir. At sound of her words his secret craving for success quickened to stronger life. The man whose sole incentive lies within may go forward coldly and successfully; but the man who grasps a double inspiration, who, even unconsciously, is impelled by another force, has a stronger impetus for attack, a surer, more vital hewing power. Still watching her, ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... Anglo-Normans. Their laws, if we may judge from those of Wales, display a society in some respects highly cultivated. But, like the rest of that group of nations to which they belong, there was not in them the incentive to action and progress which is given by the consciousness of a part in human destiny, by the inspiration of a high idea, or even by the natural development of institutions. Their life and literature were aimless and wasteful. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... I was taken for my one interview with him. What he did not sell of the farm he rented to another more energetic farmer, one Everitt Adams, the old market-gardener whom I remembered. Adams with more thrift and the great incentive of necessity built hothouses and went in for market-gardening to supply the wants of the neighboring city, which was already making itself felt upon the surrounding country. Hence the long rows of celery, cabbage, lettuce, and peas that I remember across my father's back fence. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... love on earth! The highest bliss which crowns us from our birth, Our joy! the mainspring of our life and aims, Our great incentive when sweet love inflames Our hearts to glorious deeds and ever wreathes Around our brows, the happy smile that breathes Sweet fragrance from the home of holy love, And arms us with a ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... easy mark, no mere degenerate who hacked off great chunks of a splendid fortune for the sake of violent exercise. He was too indolent for violence, too inherently fastidious for degeneracy. And deep down somewhere in a nature that had had no incentive to develop, there was the fag end of that family shrewdness which had made the early Palgraves envied and maligned. Tall and well built, with a handsome Anglo-Saxon type of face, small, soft, fair mustache, large, rather bovine gray eyes, and a deep cleft in his chin, he gave at first ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... day and soared up among the stars by night. None could outstrip him as a student, and he easily held his place at the head of his class. The dullest scholar found in him a friend and a helper, while the brighter ones found in his example, an incentive ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... very glad if I could send you a new Organ work, but unfortunately all incentive to that sort of work is wanting to me here; and until the Tieffurt Cantor makes a pilgrimage to Rome all my organ wares will certainly remain on ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... poured its dregs. The weight of all the iron and stone used in the construction of the great railroad was the burden upon her shoulders. These dark streams of humanity passing her in the street, these beasts of men, these hairy-breasted toilers, had found in her and her kind the strength or the incentive to endure, to build, to go on. And one of them, stupid, selfish, merciless, a man whom she had really loved, who could have made her better, to whom she had gone with only hope for him and unselfish abnegation for herself—he had put a vile interpretation upon her ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... separate life and will of its own, and which, with no conscious invitation upon my part, would suddenly visit me! and in all manner of shapes and ways! But whatever my difficulties, I had always this immense incentive—to please my Jesus, tender and ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley

... genuinely sorry for him. The stain on his name does not prevent him from being a brave man and a gentleman. Control yourself, Monsieur de Saumaise, and the day will come when you will thank me for the advice. As you have no incentive for running away, I will put you on your word, and the vicomte also. You may go. While I admire the spirit which led you to take up the Chevalier's cause, I deplore it. Who, then, will succeed Monsieur ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... all, about 3,000; Gordon, who was not in the battle at Yellow Tavern, included. That action was fought by Fitz Lee's division of 2,400 men all told. But the men and officers were brave beyond words; the incentive to daring resistance was enormous; they would do ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... fought beside me, but after exchanging a few breathless words we became again separated. Little time elapsed ere one and all understood that to remain long under this galling fire of the palace guards would mean death to us, therefore it required no further incentive than an appeal from Omar to cause us to storm ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... strongly motivated, and it must be sharply checked up by some index or measure of success or failure. If the success of a performance can be measured, and chalked up before the learner's eyes in the form of a practice curve, so that he can see his progress, this acts as a strong incentive to rapid improvement. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... depression which had overfallen her, she seemed, for a time, to sink the more deeply into it. Silent, listless, almost sullen, she passed her days. There was but little incentive for her to go down into the village, and she took small interest in the miners' wives who dwelt there. For a time she was curious to see Mrs. Hanson, but, learning through Hughie that that lady lived up near her mine on a mountainside two ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... in the dark with reference to this question. She surrounds us with every incentive to obey her laws, rewards her obedient children with every pleasure the senses can afford, and punishes the disobedient with pains and penalties too numerous and severe to catalogue. Observation is all that is necessary to teach us the law of harmony. We know that the bright ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... Let our confidence in future be unbounded; consider whether you find it necessary to sacrifice me to what you term "the zest of life;" and, when you have once a clear view of your own motives, of your own incentive to action, do not ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... acquaintance with him, that he should expose his condition: doing the which appeared to subject him to parade his intellectual treasures and capacity for shaping sentences; and the effect upon Lord Fleetwood was an incentive to the display. Nevertheless he had a fretful desire to escape from the discomposing society of a lord; he fixed his knapsack and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to receive the missionaries, Brebeuf and Daillon concluded not to attempt the ascent of the Ottawa for the present, and returned to Quebec. Ten years later, such a report would not have moved Brebeuf to turn back, but would have been an added incentive ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis

... existence, that that appeal would be made, and that God would defend the right." With the saving clause adroitly introduced into the last sentence, everyone, except an Atheist, will agree; and, but for this, this speech reads as an incentive to Civil War, intended to stir up brother against brother to fight to the death. Such sentiments may, in the future, be remembered as marked with "the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, July 2, 1892 • Various

... on subjects of such interest. In another point of view, the publication of the debates is equally desirable, in the interest of the members themselves, whether leaders or followers of the different parties. Not to mention the stimulus that it affords to the cultivation of eloquence—an incentive to which even those least inclined or accustomed to put themselves forward are not entirely insensible—it enables the ministers to vindicate their measures to the nation at large, the leaders of the Opposition to explain their objections ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... So that the most primitive passions of mankind found outlet and held sway. The operations of the Border Legion were lost in deeds done in the gambling dens, in the saloons, and on the street, in broad day. Men fought for no other reason than that the incentive was in the charged air. Men were shot at gaming-tables—and the game went on. Men were killed in the dance-halls, dragged out, marking a line of blood on the rude floor—and the dance went on. Still the pursuit of ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... sky and ground were full of thrill. There was clamour everywhere, but never a word. There was stirring within and without. There was incentive in the yelping of the Wild Geese; but it was only tumult, for he could not understand why he was so stirred. There were voices that he could not hear—messages that he could not read; all was confusion of tongues. He ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the general assurance that she was better and steadily improving. Madge, however, was rather indefinite in her information. As time passed, the idea of giving her friends in the East a surprise took possession of her fancy. She instinctively felt that she needed every incentive to pursue the course she had resolved upon, since she often suffered from fits of depression hard to combat. The hope of appearing like a new being to her relatives was another innocent motive for her long-prolonged effort. Circumstances ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... have young people been expected to work from motives so detached from direct emotional incentive. Never has the age of marriage been so long delayed; never has the work of youth been so separated from the family life and the public opinion of the community. Education alone can repair these losses. It alone has the power of organizing a child's activities with some reference ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... This incentive has been developed to manifest advantage in America by such novelists as Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mr. George W. Cable, Mr. Hamlin Garland, Mrs. Edith Wharton, Frank Norris, Jack London, Mr. Booth Tarkington, and Mr. Stewart Edward White. Each of these authors—and many others might be ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... pressure of population is the original cause. Were it not for the competition this entails, so much thought and energy would not be spent on the business of life; and growth of mental power would not take place. Difficulty in getting a living is alike the incentive to a higher education of children, and to a more intense and long-continued application in adults. Nothing but necessity could make men submit to this discipline; and nothing but this discipline could ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... now appeared as beautiful as it was impossible. He had no expectation, however, of ever living such a life, for pride, the cornerstone of his character, had given way, and he was too greatly discouraged at the time to purpose reform even in the future. Without the spur and incentive of hope we become perfectly helpless in evil; therefore all doctrines and philosophies which tend to quench or limit hope, or which are bounded by the narrow horizon of time and earth, are, in certain emergencies, but dead weights, dragging down ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... best stock they could find—prices were hoisted to an extravagant height. There is no forming a "knock-out" at a pedigree sale; sturdy competition is the only recognized method of purchase, and the sporting spirit is a strong incentive, especially when the vendor is known as a courageous buyer at the sales ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... goddess had always been very kind to Mr. Anisty. He felt that here again she was favoring him. Maitland he had eliminated from this girl's life; Maitland had failed to keep his engagement, and so would never again be called upon to play the part of burglar with her interest for incentive and guerdon. Anisty himself could take up where Maitland had left off. Easily enough. The difficulties were insignificant: he had only to play up to Maitland's standard for a while, to be Maitland with all that gentleman's advantages, educational and social, then ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... often does prove an incentive," said the Traveler. "'Let me be judged by my peers' is a universal sentiment with the conscientious in ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... be less incentive to laughter than that which they are in. The humid atmosphere around them has a cold, clammy feel, and the light is no better than shadowy twilight. A weird, unearthly silence pervades it, only broken by the harsh twitter of a diminutive bird—a species of creeper—that keeps them ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... from his father and his natural surroundings. I want you to find him if you can. If he has been brought up vilely or treated brutally by strangers, the fault, of course, lies with me; this will probably distress you, but I think it will be an incentive also to you to try ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... we may conclude that our own remote ancestors passed through a similar experience and possessed very similar institutions. In studying the condition of the Indian tribes in these periods we may recover some portion of the lost history of our own race. This consideration lends incentive ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... of all these reinforcements. Most of them were coming by detachments, formed provisionally into marching battalions under officers new to them, whom they were to leave the first day, without the incentive of discipline, esprit de corps, or glory, and traversing an exhausted country, which the season and the climate would be rendering daily more bare and ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... capital mistakes in rearing the "domestic calamity," and these are over-vigilance and under-vigilance. Some parents never lose sight of their daughters, suspect them of all evil intentions, and are silly enough to show their suspicions, which is an incentive to evil-doing. For the weak-minded things do naturally say, "I will be wicked at once. What do I now but suffer all the pains and penalties of badness, without enjoying its pleasures?" And so they are guilty ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... justification of a contest confined to a single state or a limited region. Also, when residents of a state, through a contest, discover promising seedlings within their own state, it is believed that there is created in the sponsors more incentive to compile continuous data about the new kinds than would exist when the prize winners are chosen from regions quite removed. That so many examples were submitted was the result of excellent publicity ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... There was one incentive for taking her; it would please Mrs. Roberts. Dirk studied the thing for some time, to try to discover why she should care, and had finally given up the problem as too great for him. Yet he was sure she cared; there had been a wistful ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... can do who are eager in the pursuit of wealth. Under the influence of such an incentive, railroads, canals, and fortresses spring into being, and fleets bedeck the seas like the stars of the firmament. Money is not wanting when lucrative investment is the end in view. Even professed Christians can collect together heavy sums, when some great enterprise promises a ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble

... that we do; admitting that such an incentive is useful; the simple answer is that ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... political development up to the point at which this transition becomes both possible and necessary. They understand, it is true, why the working-man is resentful against the bourgeois, but regard as unfruitful this class hatred, which is, after all, the only moral incentive by which the worker can be brought nearer the goal. They preach instead, a philanthropy and universal love far more unfruitful for the present state of England. They acknowledge only a psychological development, a development of man in the abstract, out of all relation to the Past, whereas the whole ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... few whose names are printed in italics, the party consisted of prisoners of the Crown in different stages of probation, with whom the prospect of additional liberty was an incentive so powerful, that no money payment was asked by them or expected, while, from experience, I knew that for such an enterprise as this I could rely on their zealous services. The patience and resolution of such men in ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... what I have written will act as an incentive to some of my readers to try experiments in this branch of psychical research.[2] It is not enough that a few individuals by patient inquiry and experiment should have been convinced of the reality of telepathy. What is wanted is that scientific men generally, by the ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally

... and adopted the standards of his surroundings, which were monotonous and commonplace in the extreme, and so he desired no more adventurous method of expression than the process of writing, which he could do well. Imitation is often a strong incentive to reading, it is part of the craving for grown-upness to many children; they desire to do what their brothers and sisters can do. But during the first stage of childhood, roughly up to the age of six or even later, no child needs to learn to read or write, taking "need" in the psychological ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... men and women, particularly in the Menorah membership, to devote themselves to Jewish subjects as worthy of their best literary effort,—with publication in the Menorah Journal as a prize to be eagerly sought for. The Menorah hopes through the incentive of the Journal to develop a "new school" of writers on Jewish topics that shall be distinguished by the thoroughness and clarity of the university-trained mind and inspired by the youthful, searching, unfearing ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... woman, was it true that all was over? Had the last conflict been fought? Was it not rather to be believed that life was one long conflict? Was it not for her, Lloyd, to rouse that sluggard ambition? Was not this her career, after all, to be his inspiration, his incentive, to urge him to the accomplishment of a great work? Now, of the two, she was the stronger. In these new conditions what was her duty? Adler's clumsy phrases persisted in her mind. "That's his work," Adler had said. "God ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... former objection it may be replied, that the certainty of an alleviation, and of the advantages which would attend a meritorious conduct during the specified period of punishment, would prove a powerful incentive to the convicts, and would tend to produce more good members of society and useful settlers than could be expected, unless some reward was to be the certain result of meritorious conduct; without this stimulus, there might be, as there has been, some good characters to ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann

... and colors of brilliant hue, the village school began. It was the first time Myra's children had ever gone to school, but the Fat Woman had proved such a good teacher that they were only a year or so behind in their studies. This only served as an incentive to make them study. Periwinkle especially made rapid progress. Pearl however was not so fond of books, but her ways were so gentle and charming that no one objected when she had to count up her sums on the rosy ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz

... difference between Altruria and America is so immense that it is altogether beyond me to describe it. But now we have had some occurrences recently, quite in the American sense, and these have furnished me with an incentive as well as opportunity to send you a letter. Do you remember how, one evening after dinner, in New York, you and I besieged my husband and tried to make him tell us why Altruria was so isolated from the rest of the world, and why such a great and enlightened ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... lived as very few live, to satisfy every ambition and satiate every passion to the full, and now, with advancing years, she had not the one great bad passion of old age, which is avarice, as an incentive for prolonging her career. In its place, on the contrary, stood her one redeeming virtue, that abundant generosity which had made her welcome Margaret Donne's great talent with honest enthusiasm, and which had been like a providence to hundreds, perhaps to thousands ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... of the Home-Rule Bill that roused the (attorney's) devil in him. Fact that Clause II. was under discussion, and consequently out of order to debate Clause X., an incident of no consequence, except that it indirectly supplied incentive to his passionate eloquence, and led to disclosure of the true AMBROSE. When he approached Clause X., cries of "Order! Order!" interrupted. The Chairman recalled him to consideration of Clause II. He came back, said a few words on amendment, then was off again at Clause X., pursued ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various

... the tone and temper of leading agitators were all that could be desired. "Abstain," said Mr. Davitt, "from all acts of violence, repel every incentive to outrage. Glorious indeed will be our victory, and high in the estimation of mankind will our grand old fatherland stand, if we can so curb our passions and control our actions in this struggle for free land, as to march ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... virtuous Gori answered that he should not: this new love had been sent to him as a cure for all baser loves; instead of crushing it as an obstacle to his higher life and his glory, he should thankfully cultivate it as an incentive and assistance in working ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... worked indeed! To win this girl for my own, to show myself worthy of her innocent faith, supplied me with the most powerful incentive in life. In the quarter they regarded me first with ridicule, then with wonder, and, finally, with respect. For my enthusiasm did not fade. "He has turned over a new leaf," they said, "he means to be famous!" It was understood. No more ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... instructions which had been given there was little chance the men would let him slip through their fingers, and, with such an incentive on their part, there was no hope the struggle could ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis

... to the beneficent purposes of our Government than a sound and stable currency. Its exposure to degradation should at once arouse to activity the most enlightened statesmanship, and the danger of depreciation in the purchasing power of the wages paid to toil should furnish the strongest incentive to ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... sort of admiration which, until last autumn, had made their somewhat infrequent encounters exceedingly interesting. Autumn had altered their attitudes; Bunny became serious in proportion to the distance she put between them—which is of course the usual incentive to masculine importunity. They had had one or two little scenes at Roya-Neh; the girl even hesitated, unquietly curious, perplexed at her own attitude, yet diffidently interested in ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... of his spear point, the ape-man succeeded in forcing the lion to move ahead of him and eventually guided him into the passageway. Once inside, the problem became simpler since Tarzan followed closely in the rear with his sharp spear point, an unremitting incentive to forward movement on the part of the lion. If Numa hesitated he was prodded. If he backed up the result was extremely painful and so, being a wise lion who was learning rapidly, he decided to keep on going and at the end of the tunnel, emerging ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... practical issue. Finally, his family decided to give him a period in Paris, and he had been living there, with excursions to other parts of the Old World, for nearly two years when the Great War broke out and furnished him with the incentive to high adventure which his spirit craved. He enlisted at once and was enrolled in the Foreign Legion which was soon sent to the front. For two years he played not only a gallant part as a soldier, but, as his letters and journal show, he developed personal ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... between the attractions of the ministry, pure Hebrew scholarship and philanthropy. The idea of a paper destroyed these conflicting claims by comprehending them all. A paper would be at once a pulpit, a medium for organizing effective human service, and an incentive to serious study in the preparation ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... to law, all alike compelled him to urge on them patience, submission, and inaction before the provocation of a great wrong. He dared not even let them see one tithe of the sympathy he felt, lest if he did so they should draw from it an incentive ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... that the pride of bearing an illustrious name is a powerful incentive to well-doing. Noblemen have duties to fulfil both towards their ancestors and their posterity. They must walk uprightly under the penalty of dishonouring an entire race. Tradition obliges them to follow a path of honour and virtue, from which they cannot stray a single step without falling. ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... discharging their pistols in their faces and pressing them back into the water with their pikes. The assailants displayed great bravery and made desperate efforts to board the privateer; but the Americans needed not the incentive of the warning that no quarter would be given to fight with all the vigor and skill at their command. The struggle was a furious one, but in the end the British were so decisively defeated that only two of the boats returned ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... mother, looking at their children, feel this as part of their compensation for parenthood. "I shall die and leave some one behind me," means, "I shall die and yet I shall, in another form, live." Part of the incentive to parenthood, in a time which knows how to prevent parenthood and which shirks it as disagreeable, is the fear of death, of personal annihilation. For there is in death a blow to one's pride, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... why is perfection to be expected, where every thing must necessarily be imperfect? It is the duty of man to make the nearest approaches to public and private happiness. And if, as with a sponge, he wipe away such establishments, genius has little incentive to exertion, and merit has still less hope of reward. Now cast your eyes ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... others in return so abundantly showed towards him. And this generous forbearance of the seniors had its reward. It entailed upon the juniors a reciprocity of respect. It was felt by them at the time to be an additional incentive to moderation, to sobriety, to desistance from extreme views. The result was that the work got done, and what was done left no ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... evils that will follow a protectorate by Japan is that the Korean people will lose all incentive to improvement. No hope will remain that they can ever regain their independence. They need the spur of national feeling to make them determine upon progress and to make them persevere in it. But the extinction of nationality will bring despair, ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... such a risk, of course," answered Norbert phlegmatically; "but that will be an incentive for you to conceal my death as ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... those distant lands which have been but rarely visited by Europeans." And again he says: "The study of maps and the perusal of books of travel exercised a secret fascination over me." These early tastes blended at last with a serious purpose, and became "the incentive to scientific labor, or to ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... in a deep and dark ravine. The murderers could have no rest. They were in continual fear that the friends of La Salle would rise and kill them. Father Douay, M. Joutel, and La Salle's brother the Chevalier, knew full well that the murderers had the strongest possible incentive to kill ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... I have? Dead, I have found the true friends of my lifetime still as true as tender and as faithful as when I was alive, and making my memory an incentive to good actions done in my name. Dead, I have found them when they might have slighted my name, and passed greedily over my grave to ease and wealth, lingering by the way, like single-hearted children, to recall their love for me when I was a poor frightened child. Dead, I have heard ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... difficult to amuse as a savage; but even his self-engrossment was not proof against Lily's arts, or rather these were especially adapted to soothe an uneasy egoism. Her experience with Percy Gryce stood her in good stead in ministering to Dorset's humours, and if the incentive to please was less urgent, the difficulties of her situation were teaching her to make ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... personal experience, as well as from observation, that the mosques are too hurriedly visited and too little understood, an attempt at classification has here been made, as well as to give them a certain setting. This may prove a reminiscence to those who are familiar with the mosques, and an incentive to investigation on the part of those who are ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... husband to Europe and with him studied the works of the masters in all the art centers of the Continent. Then, enthusiastic and eager for Jason's advancement, she returned with him to New York and set him up in a splendid studio where he had every convenience and incentive to work. ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... and compromises of society. He must try to work out a scheme of morality suitable to his own case and temperament, which found the prohibitory law of Moses chill and uninspiring, but in the Sermon on the Mount a strong incentive to all those impulses of pity and charity to which his heart was prone. In early days his sense of social injustice and the inequalities of human opportunity made him inwardly much of a rebel, who would have embraced and acted on theories ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the kingdom of the Redeemer. It was here that, sixty-six years afterwards, the valuable life of one of the foremost in the ranks of modern Christian missionaries, John Williams, was sacrificed to the hatred of the whites of which we have just spoken. The proximate incentive to the murder was revenge for some ill-treatment the natives had shortly before received from a white man, a sandal-wood trader; but it is probable that the commencement of their strong dislike to strangers may be ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... congestion and will starve. The Coast region's malaria will always keep the black, as well as the white, population thinned down, but if deserted by the trader, and left to the Government official and the missionary, without any longer the incentive of trade to make the native exert himself, or the resulting comforts which assist him in resisting the climate, which the trade now enables him to procure, the Coast native will sink, via vice and degradation, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... The incentive to ambition is the love of power; the spur to avarice is either the fear of poverty or a strong desire of self-indulgence. The amassers of fortunes seem divided into two opposite classes—lean, penurious-looking mortals, or jolly fellows who are determined to get possession ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... never felt it monotonous, nor did they complain of the hard work. They knew it was necessary, and here on the very fighting ground itself—in wonderful France—there was a greater incentive to apply oneself to the mastering of the lessons ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young

... minutes before, and walked down the road, cursing his fate. Although he admitted he was a coward for talking to her as he had done about his wrecked life, yet he knew now that every word he had spoken was true. What did the future hold out to him? Not even the incentive to live. He found himself walking toward the tent, but, not wishing to meet Renmark in his present frame of mind, he turned and came out on the Ridge Road. He was tired and broken, and resolved to stay in camp until they arrested him. Then perhaps ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... for armaments, both on land and water, had far-reaching results, and, as we see it now, were clouds with silver linings. The demand for hardened steel projectiles, nickel-steel plates, and light and almost unbreakable machinery, was a great incentive to improvement in metallurgy while the necessity for compact and safely carried ammunition greatly stimulated chemical research, and led to the discovery of explosives whose powers no obstacle can resist, and incidentally to other more ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... everywhere with that ideal glamour given it by the mystical teachings of an earlier generation. Had she lived half a century earlier she might have been one of Fichte's most ardent disciples, and found in his subjective idealism the incentive to a higher inspiration than that attained to under the leadership of Comte. Her religion would then have differed but little from what it did in fact, but there would have been a new sublimity and a loftier spirit at the heart ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... her head, but had some trouble in translating what she understood into active motion; and this applies to all, excepting, of course, such movements as are the result of heredity, where no words, but some other incentive, such as "scent" may possibly come into play. It is difficult for human beings to grasp that there is life in the sub-conscious, and that it is in those sub-conscious regions that the will to ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... officers; but the very indifference of Mr. Dutton gave a value to his admiration, and made her more eager to obtain it than that of the rest. Besides, the vacuity of mind and employment at sea, a brisk flirtation is sure to attract lookers-on, and become a fruitful incentive to malice and envy. Bluebell could not account for the unfriendly interest she excited, as her Canadian education had taught her to regard fraternizing pro tem. with any sympathetic masculinity a very unimportant matter, and about as much a precursor to matrimony as if her companion were of the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... effecting this object there are two resources available, without wrong to any one, without any of the liabilities of mischief attendant on voluntary or legal charity, and not only without weakening, but on the contrary strengthening, every incentive to industry, and every motive ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... afterwards, when we were lads, my fellows and myself, there was nothing on which the governors laid more stress. Our laws themselves, I think, enforce this double lesson:—'Rule thou and be thou ruled.' And when I come to study the secret of it all, I seem to see that the real incentive to obedience lies in the praise and honour that it wins against the discredit and the chastisement which fall on the disobedient." [21] "That, my son," said the father, "is the road to the obedience of compulsion. But ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... the kindnesses measured out to us in this city by our friends and the press, yet laboring without visible results for the recognition of our rights as citizens of the United States, we cannot, even through the potent incentive of sympathizing with our "husbands, fathers, brothers and sons," lay aside our grievances and rejoice in a triumph which more clearly marks our ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various



Words linked to "Incentive" :   disincentive, inducement, incentive stock option, dynamic, sales incentive, bonus, premium, moral force, rational motive, incentive option, payment, incentive scheme, incentive program



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