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Incentive   /ɪnsˈɛntɪv/  /ɪnsˈɛnɪv/   Listen
Incentive

noun
1.
A positive motivational influence.  Synonyms: inducement, motivator.
2.
An additional payment (or other remuneration) to employees as a means of increasing output.  Synonym: bonus.



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"Incentive" Quotes from Famous Books



... village. To be sure, Mr. Shackford had been in litigation with several of the corporations, and had had legal quarrels with more than one of his neighbors; but Mr. Shackford had never been victorious in any of these contests, and the incentive of revenge was wanting to explain the crime. Besides, it was so ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... 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 further work. ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... which seemed to have a 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

... while he sympathizes with another the motive and aim of which he believes to be good. Of course, too, there were other objectors who denied, and will to this day not blush to deny, that the question of Slavery was the real substantial incentive to secession, and who paraded the minor questions of tariffs, the conflicting interests of the productive and the manufacturing States, and the like. These arguments the writer leaves unfingered; it is no business of his to fray their delicate texture. All he has to say of them here ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... inhabited by savages is poor in food-supply their number is, as a rule, small and their condition poor. It is not good for a people to have too easy times; that deprives them of the incentive to work. But also it is not good for people who are backward in civilization to be kept to a land which treats them too harshly; for then they never get a fair chance to progress in the scale of civilization. The people of the tropics and the people near the poles lagged behind in the ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox

... the treatise Of Good Works also belongs Though the incentive for its composition came from George Spalatin, court-preacher to the Elector, who reminded Luther of a promise he had given, still Luther was willing to undertake it only when he recalled that in a previous sermon to his congregation ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... habits of thought, and methods of culture, we also inherited the English literature. So rich was already this inheritance when our colonies were settled, that there was little need or incentive for the early Americans to strike out into new literary paths, and create an original literature. Our ancestors read Milton, Bunyan, Doddridge, Butler, Dryden, Pope, and Shakespeare. It is a noteworthy fact that American ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle

... 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," ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... the fragments of the projected answer, that Johnson's pension was one of the points upon which Mr. Sheridan intended to assail him. The prospect of being able to neutralize the effects of his zeal, by exposing the nature of the chief incentive from which it sprung, was so tempting, perhaps, as to overrule any feelings of delicacy, that might otherwise have suggested the illiberality of such an attack. The following are a few of the stray hints for this part of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... this refection, and no other incentive to hilarity than lemonade, Johnson was in a short time after our assembling transformed into a new creature; his habitual melancholy and lassitude of spirit gave way; his countenance brightened.' Hawkins's Johnson, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... trade with Santa Fe received shortly after his return to the United States. The student of American history will remember that the expedition commanded by this soldier was inaugurated in 1806; his report of the route he had taken was the incentive for commercial speculation in the direction of trade with New Mexico, but it was so handicapped by restrictions imposed by the Mexican government, that the adventurers into the precarious traffic were not only subject to a complete confiscation ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... To the activity of the body, striving to develop itself, succeeds the activity of the mind, endeavoring to instruct itself. Children are at first only restless; afterwards they are inquisitive. Their curiosity, rightly trained, is the incentive of the age we are now considering. We must always distinguish natural inclinations from those that have ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... here trotted back for the coin, and Lyster showed another one, as an incentive for all to scatter along the beach again. It looked as though the two white people must pay for the grant ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... digging a hole for his left foot, before delivering the ball, opened the contest, and did so well that he was kept in until the game was "in the refrigerator." Then Joe was given his chance, but there was little incentive to try, with the ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick

... 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 purpose she had ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... furnished a safeguard against waste of the public funds and insured the prompt completion of the road. The interest of the contractor in the successful operation, after construction, furnished a strong incentive to see that as the construction progressed the details were consistent with successful operation and to suggest and consent to such modifications of the contract plans as might appear necessary from an operating point of view, from time to time. The rental being ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... in print is always an incentive to better work. The type is cheering even when its legibility reveals several faults unnoticed in manuscript. Most small newspapers are glad to publish fairly good verse when the poet is willing to let it go for nothing. Be sure that rhyme and meter ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow

... proclamation, not only again open the evangelical pulpits to the priests, but the seditious tribunes to conspirators in surplices! Their address is a manifesto tending to degrade the constitutional powers: it is a collective petition—it is an incentive to civil war, and the overthrow of the constitution. Assuredly we are no admirers of the representative government, of which we think with J. J. Rousseau; and if we like certain articles but little, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... serious a nature; but the above suffice for my present argument, which is, that up to and including the April number I have made these accusations and that the only way they have been met is by underhand mud-slinging and by alleging that the incentive for my attack was that I could not secure insurance from any of the American companies; and I have met this with absolute proof, which must stand until it is disproved, that I have been during the past ten years importuned and urged by the large ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... hundred men, bright fellows too, fill up the amphitheatre every day and listen to me for an hour. They respect me, have confidence in my ability—and I try to merit it. That means I must study and keep up with the procession in my line. It's an incentive that a man can't have any other way, a practical necessity. That's the first reason. On the other hand, if I went to work for Graham I'd be dubbing around in a back room laboratory all by myself and doing what he wanted done whether ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... where tradition plays no part, where the useful is paramount, where business asserts itself over art and beauty, where material needs are the first to be satisfied, and where the country's unclaimed riches are our chief incentive to effort, it is not uninteresting to find an analogy with the society in Italy which produced the Renaissance. Diametrically opposed in their ideals, they have a common spirit. In Italy the rebirth was of the love of art, and of classic ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... small swords when he leaped from the boat, but he had been unconscious of it. He was yet free and he held a sword in his hand. One of the men who was holding Jim Hart suddenly kicked him to make him keep quiet, and Paul's wrath blazed up under the double incentive of the blow and the sneering face ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... activity, in the hostile preparations which would surely follow a declaration of war against England, on which country in peace the merchants of New York, Boston, and the other seaports of the United States principally depend, seemed to be the only incentive for such a war. But while the filibusters of "the greatest nation in creation," were looking for any cause of war, a good cause, in American eyes, arose. The American ships of war were mostly manned by British seamen. Men were greatly in demand for British war vessels, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... a single chapter. Even the part played in it by Americans can be sketched in outline only. But it is worth remembering that the systematic attack of our countrymen upon the Arctic fortress, began with an unselfish and humane incentive. In 1845 Sir John Franklin, a gallant English seaman, had set sail with two stout ships and 125 men, to seek the Northwest Passage. Thereafter no word was heard from him, until, years later, a searching party found a cairn of stones ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... who has to speak in public should be discouraged because of limited vocal resources. Many of the foremost orators began with marked disadvantages in this respect, but made these shortcomings an incentive to higher effort. One well-known speaker makes up for lack of vocal power by extreme distinctness of enunciation, while another offsets an unpleasantly heavy quality of ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... of praise is implanted in our bosoms as a strong incentive to worthy actions; it is a very difficult task to get above a desire of it for things that should be wholly indifferent. Women, whose hearts are fixed upon the pleasure they have in the consciousness that they are the objects of love and admiration, are ever ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... may become a powerful incentive in implanting right ideals of social conduct, and lay the foundation of true American citizenship, is ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof

... discharge of other official duties preventing the abuse of the service for the mere furtherance of private or party purposes, and leaving the employee of the Government, freed from the obligations imposed by patronage, to depend solely upon merit for retention and advancement, and with this constant incentive ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes

... capitalist 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 by another, ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... in men to corrupt religion; to change it from an aid and incentive to a holy life, into a contrivance to enable men to sin without fear of punishment. Obedience to God's law is dispensed with, if men will diligently profess certain opinions, or practically take part in certain rites. However scandalous the moral ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... not left us 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 ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... Northampton cannot undertake to counsel and direct our neighbors' hired helps, we enroll in the main branch of our competition only those who garden for themselves and hire no labor. To such the twenty-one prizes, ranging from two dollars and a half up to fifteen dollars, are a strong incentive, and by such the advice of visiting committees is eagerly sought and followed. The public educative value of the movement is probably largest under these limitations, for in this way we show what beautiful results may be got on smallest grounds ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... 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

... Deal—lines which as I have so often made clear, are in complete accord with the underlying principles of orderly popular government which Americans have demanded since the white man first came to these shores. We count, in the future as in the past, on the driving power of individual initiative and the incentive of fair private profit, strengthened with the acceptance of those obligations to the public interest which rest upon us all. We have the right to expect that this driving power will be given patriotically and whole-heartedly ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... there. He Himself suggests this in the parables of the Talents and the Pounds. "Thy pound has gained five, I will set thee over five cities. Thy pound has gained ten, I will set thee over ten cities. I will give thee a larger and nobler work hereafter." Is not that an incentive to stir one's blood? The more I grow in love, in unselfishness, in knowledge of God, in righteousness of life, the more use I shall be to my dear Lord and ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... it is asserted that in a happy union, "love is so exclusive that there is hardly a liking for good neighbors, and scarcely any love at all for God." If the "good neighbors" were equally blessed, they would not suffer from this exclusiveness, and it is practically true that there is no higher incentive to love and obey our Maker than the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... decide for herself. Not even of Aunt Charlotte or Aunt Ellen could she ask advice. She knew they would entreat her to accept, and she needed no such incentive to her own wishes. Far on into the night Worth sat at the white-curtained dormer window, looking at the stars over the apple trees, and fighting her battle between inclination and duty. It was a hard and stubbornly ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... of coming back with startling vividness in the still solitude of mountains, and out of the passing of painful panoramas had grown Bruce's desire to "make good." Now, in the first shock of his intense disappointment he felt that without a tangible incentive he was done before he ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... given a gun of my own, and was allowed to go shooting by myself. My father, to give me an incentive, offered a reward for every crow-scalp I could bring him, and, in order that I might get to work at once, advanced a small sum with which to buy powder and shot, this sum to be returned to him out of the first scalps obtained. My ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... should have been so captivated by these marks of royal favor as to lose his discretion, in the fullness of his gratitude; and, that after receiving a grant of land from his patron, as a further incentive, he should volunteer to assist in bringing Acadia under the British Crown, and as a primary step, undertake to reduce the Fort at Cape Sable; I say, that when I state this, nobody will be surprised, except a chosen few, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... 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 ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... had the treasures of Ophir for thy sake," exclaimed Spikeman; "but I am a ruined man if thou require so much, Ephraim Pike. But there, take the Carolus, and let it be an incentive to ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... but the brightness was gone from the day. He sat down to his desk and attacked his work, but "copy" would not come. The sporting editor and his inane jokes harassed him beyond expression. Just the sight of the clipping editor's back was an irritation. The office boy was a mere incentive to profanity. There was no spring in Condy that morning, no elasticity, none of his natural buoyancy. As the day wore on, his ennui increased; his luncheon at the club was tasteless, tobacco had lost its charm. ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... 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 made its way slowly and in a mangled form, yet none the less ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... found the place far inferior to the others which I had visited. The heat seemed to engender a sort of listlessness over the entire place. The people seemed to be falling asleep. Though we complain of cold in our northern hemisphere, it is a great incentive to work. Even our east wind is an invigorator; it braces us up, and strengthens ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... had passed out of his life, as he told himself, Hal found no incentive to social amusements. Hence he scarcely noticed a slow but widening ostracism which shut him out from house after house, under the pressure of the Pierce influence. But Mrs. Festus Willard had perceived and resented it. That any one for whom she had stood sponsor should fail socially ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... THE GREAT ROUND WORLD one of the most valuable factors in my school work. It takes the children out of the beaten paths and gives them an active interest in current history. Not only is it valuable for the children, but it furnishes an incentive to thought work ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... shall do well to remember this. We talk of being repaid for good actions: now I think that the very feeling which results from doing good, more than amply repays us for the trouble to which we may have been put. The remaining result is a gift Heaven kindly bestows as an incentive to virtue, but in ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... this, the discovery of Lucia's sex—for they had believed her to be what she appeared, a boy—which followed immediately on the loss of her Phrygian bonnet, and the story of her bitter wrongs, which had taken wind, acted as a powerful incentive to men naturally ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... clearer, then, than that it is to the interest of these agencies to create alarm, to arouse terror, and, through these means, to enlarge their patronage. When a trade or profession has not only every pecuniary incentive to create trouble, but when it is also largely promoted by notorious criminals and other vicious elements, the amount of mischief that is certain to result from the combination may well exceed the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... not without truth, said of him by Goethe, that he was inspired by the Genius of Pain; for, from the first to the last of his agitated career, every fresh recruitment of his faculties was imbibed from that bitter source. His chief incentive, when a boy, to distinction was, as we have seen, that mark of deformity on his person, by an acute sense of which he was first stung into the ambition of being great.[105] As, with an evident reference to his own fate, he himself ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... herself, and was at first very much astonished by the view the great man took of the matter. But as the latter developed the case, the girl's guilt no longer seemed impossible, or even improbable. The total absence of any ostensible incentive to the murder gave Faustina's quarrel with her father a very great importance, which was further heightened by the nature of the evidence. There had been high words, in the course of which the Princess Montevarchi had left the room, leaving her daughter alone with the old ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... themselves ill-treated, you might propose closing them down entirely and see what the native reaction would be," von Schlichten told her. "Independently-hired free workers can make themselves rich, by native standards, in a couple of seasons; many of the serfs pick up enough money from us in incentive-pay to buy their freedom after ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper

... feelings or his intentions; in fact, his determination to marry her was strengthened. Because she loved him very much, she ran away from him, leaving him in a strange city without even her name for a clue. But now she had a hope, a real incentive—the biggest one there is. She pawned all the coveted clothes she had bought and went to a place far away where she could begin a new life—the life of ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... incentive to the search had always been the detailed account left by Fray Pedro Simon, who for twenty years lived among these tribes as missionary, preceding Valverde, known as the ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... wrenched out, the blood gushes forth from both wounds, mingled with the venom of the Lernaean poison. Nessus takes it out, and says to himself, "And yet I shall not die unrevenged;" and gives his garment, dyed in the warm blood, as a present to her whom he is carrying off, as though an incentive to love. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius. Even in the practical part of a science, painful to the operator himself, Mr. Abernethy has declared, and eloquently declared, that this enthusiasm is absolutely requisite. "We have need of enthusiasm, or some strong incentive, to induce us to spend our nights in study, and our days in the disgusting and health-destroying observation of human diseases, which alone can enable us to understand, alleviate, or remove them. On no other ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... to keep 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

... days of the early summer Walter kept plodding on at his business, but life had lost its charm. He was, indeed, utterly sick at heart; all incentive to push on seemed to be taken from him, and the daily round was gone through mechanically, simply because it waited his attention on every hand. As is often the case when success becomes no longer an object ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... force in it. We British are not naturally Imperialist; we are something greater—or something less. For two years and a half now we have been fighting against Imperialism in its most extravagant form. It is a poor incentive to right living to propose to parody the devil we ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... may be so small that it is prohibitive. Hence we find the Danish Hans Christian Andersen and the Norwegian Ibsen writing in German, as do also many Scandinavian scientists. Georg Brandes abandons his native Danish and seeks a larger public by making English the language of his books. The incentive to follow a literary career, especially if it includes making a living, is relatively weak among a people of only two or three millions, but gains enormously among large and cultivated peoples, like the seventy million German-speaking ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... unkindness, she will be apt to find unkindness persisted in. The criminal records of the nation show too often the truth of the saying that "Once a thief always a thief." Deprived of his good repute, man loses his chief protection against evil and his incentive ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... what might be gathered from her increased cordiality on other subjects, to which she now adroitly turned the conversation. This was just enough to encourage him, and at the same time leave him in that degree of doubt and suspense which generally operate as the greatest incentive to persevere in the pursuit of an object. It proved so in his case; and, to this natural incentive to persevere, was now added another, that of respect for her character,—a respect which every hour's conversation ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... Now malice without incentive is unthinkable. But Duchemin searched his memory in vain for anything he could have said or done to make anybody desire to discredit him in the sight of the ladies of the Chateau de Montalais. Still ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... much outcry in these latter days against the newly-formed habit of cigarette smoking cultivated by ladies of the West. Condemnation of the practice seems if anything to act as an incentive, so, yielding to the pleasant temptation of palliating faults in pretty women, I would suggest as an excuse that they are but following in the foot-steps of their sisters of the Far East, where, it may be roughly stated, the women-folk ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... from any hopes or means of wintering in the vicinity of Fort George." The exigency was insufficient to justify the measure, which was promptly disavowed by the United States Government; but the act imparted additional bitterness to the war, and was taken by the enemy as a justification and incentive to the retaliatory violence with which the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... but practical apparatus described in this chapter supplies an incentive for learning the Morse telegraphic code, which is used for sending sound signals, and for visible signals transmitted by means of flags, lamps, and heliograph mirrors. Signalling is so interesting, and on occasion ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... stimulus to individual exertion, if the Fellows who have received the medals of the Society, and those who have repeatedly enriched its Transactions, were distinguished by being collected into a separate and honourable list. It would also be found, perhaps, not less a future incentive than an act of retrospective justice, if the names of all those illustrious Fellows who have formerly obtained the medals, as well as of all those individuals who have been large benefactors to the Society, were recorded at the end of the list. ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... I was accustomed to pass the day with my mistress; my greatest pleasure was to take her through the fields on beautiful summer days, the sight of nature in her splendor having ever been for me the most powerful incentive to love. In winter, as she enjoyed society, we attended numerous balls and masquerades, and because I thought of no one but her I fondly imagined her ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... have lost both the opportunity for real physical exertion, the incentive to work in the joyous competition of skill, and finally the reward of work ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... Sublime incentive to eternal fame! Then, when the feeling is so universal, when it is one which modern civilization is nurturing and developing, who does not feel that it is not only the most benevolent, but the most politic thing you can do to avail yourselves ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... at last, "that it would depend wholly on the size of the stakes. He's a coward when it comes to a show-down, but money and place and power are his gods. If it was a tremendous piece of villainy with a big incentive he mightn't have the courage to see it through himself, but he is quite capable of aiding and abetting it, or hiring others to do ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... Grant, and that it has an object which, if you understood, you would be loath to frustrate. True, these troops are, in strict law, only to be removed by my order; but General Grant's judgment would be the highest incentive to me to make such order. Nor can I understand how doing so is bad faith and dishonor, nor yet how it so exposes Kentucky to ruin. Military men here do not perceive how it exposes Kentucky, and I am sure Grant would not permit it if ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... is obtained at intervals along this unattractive stretch of country, but there are no continuously ridable stretches, and the principal incentive to mount at all is a feeling of disgust at so much compulsory walking. A noticeable feature through the desert is the almost unquenchable thirst that the dry saline air inflicts upon one. Reaching a railway section-house, I find no one at home; but there is a small ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... a shout of delight, and followed into the cover, with an impetuosity that, for the moment, drove all before it. But the bloody trophy in the hand of the partisan served as an incentive to the attacked, as well as to the assailants. Mahtoree had left many a daring brave behind him in his band, and the orator, who in the debates of that day had manifested such pacific thoughts, now exhibited the most generous self-devotion, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... bring off the dead bodies of his comrades, not mutilated by the process, he was but partially intimidated. Defeat was, in that case, converted to a sort of triumph; and having gone within one step of victory—for so this half-success was estimated—was the strongest incentive to a renewal of the effort. It might be, therefore, that the ranger's adoption of the custom was a measure of self-defence. But it is to be feared that this consideration—weak as it is, when stated as an excuse for cruelty so barbarous—had ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... me anything more ghastly than taking a system of canned exercises in the morning or at night in one's bedroom or bathroom, or elsewhere, with no other incentive than some physical gain that, when you come to sum it up, is largely fictitious in value—or comes inevitably to be thought so—I would like to have you step forward and name it. I have been all through that phase of it, and I know; and I also know by heart the patter of the persons who recommend ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe

... Improvements and Manufactures, I would have trebled them. By this Means, it is hardly credible, what a Progress we should make, in all those Subjects of Husbandry and manual Arts in a few Years; and how we should work up the Industry and Skill of our People, by every Incentive that Profit or Glory could give them. I formerly reckoned up many Articles which I may probably seem tedious in repeating now, but you will make Allowances for my Fondness and Folly, as you know Mr. Dean; a Lover would as soon be tired with dwelling on the Praises of ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... Pen and Venables were of incompatible tempers: the troops were not furnished with arms fit for such an expedition: their provisions were defective both in quantity and quality: all hopes of pillage, the best incentive to valor among such men, were refused the soldiers and seamen: no directions or intelligence were given to conduct the officers in then enterprise: and at the same time they were tied down ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... the thin wrap closer about her shoulders. Suddenly she laughed. "But why contemplate the disaster that didn't occur? We are more secure than ever. This girl was the only one who knew, because no one else could have had the same incentive to spy upon him, Hetty. She is dead. Your name isn't likely to be shouted from the housetops, for the simple reason that it is safely locked up in a grave." She hesitated for a moment and then added: "In two graves, if it makes you feel ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... easy aboriginal holding of the soil, and were sceptical both as to the validity and justice of these revived alien grants; but the newer arrivals hailed this certain tenure of legal titles as a guarantee to capital and an incentive to improvement. There was also a growing and influential party of Eastern and Northern men, who were not sorry to see a fruitful source of dissension and bloodshed removed. The feuds of the McKinstrys and Harrisons, kept alive ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... thought. Once I was afraid that men might think too much; now, I only dread lest they will think too little and far too timidly, for I now see that real thinking is rare and difficult and that it needs every incentive in the face of innumerable ancient and inherent discouragements and impediments. We must first endeavor manfully to free our own minds and then do what we can to hearten others to free theirs. Toujours ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... when he is struggling to get up. Any one can do that. Greatness, generosity, statesmanship are shown in stimulating, encouraging every individual in the body politic to make of himself the most useful, intelligent, and patriotic citizen possible. Take from the Negro all incentive to make himself and his children useful property-holding citizens, and can any one blame him for becoming a beast capable of committing ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... Goeben, disaster to the, Good Hope, H.M.S., sunk, Gothas, activities of, Gouraud, General, Governesses, English, revelations of, Grandcourt, taken by British, Grand Fleet, ceaseless vigil of, Title, passes. Grapes of Verdun, the, Great incentive, a, Greece Dominated by pro-German Court, Hampers Allies, Territory violated by Bulgarian troops, Ultimatum presented to, Greenwich time applied to Ireland, Grey, Sir Edward Dissatisfied with Neutrals, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... them had a daughter. She had white, even teeth that flashed when she laughed; the whole effect of her was as sound and as appetizing as a piece of ripe fruit. Greenhow told her that the prospect of having a home of his own was an incentive such as pot-hunting held out to no man. He looked as he said it, a very brother to Nimrod, for as yet the Pot had ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... Under the incentive of such exalted patronage, Shakespeare's activity redoubled, but his work shows none of the conventional marks of literature that is produced in the blaze of Court favour. The first six years of the new reign saw him absorbed ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... the public games, the surrounding pictures and statues were all intended to excite ambition by showing men the heroic size to be attained by the awards of fame. But at home, in the house, man is already supreme, and needs no incentive to assert himself, and no tall standard by which he may be measured. The Lares and Penates themselves were very small objects to look at, whatever may have been the thoughts they suggested. Nothing is so alarming or unpleasant as gigantic figures ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... something to win that cheer from these lads, boys at heart, though just at manhood's morning, and sworn to the service of their flag. How she wished Daddy Neil could hear it. Captain Pennell, into whose life during the past month had come some incentive to live, joined in the yell with a will, giving his cap a toss into the air when the echoes of it went floating out over the Severn, while Mrs. Harold and Polly waved their sweaters wildly, and yelled with all ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... leaders have been wanting—men and women of strong and winning personality. The rural teacher, if he were a man of power and initiative, often proved to be a real savior and redeemer of social life in his community. But leaders of this type cannot now be secured without a reasonable incentive. Such men will seldom sacrifice themselves for the organization and uplift of a community except for proper compensation. If teachers—or at least the strong ones—were paid two or three times as much as they are to-day, and if the standards were raised accordingly, so as to secure really strong ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... has doubtless been a greater incentive to ambitious boys than any other. It is perhaps worth noting that a prominent Japanese merchant of Boston, when a boy in his native land, after reading the book, determined to seek his fortune in Franklin's country, and testifies to it as one of the chief factors in his successful career. ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... love? The reprobate or worthless lose nothing by the happiness of others. It is inscrutably hid from mankind who are the elect, until the Holy Spirit influences them with the love of God in Christ Jesus, and this sometimes in the last moments of life. There is every encouragement, nay incentive, to the sinner who feels the burthen of guilt to fly for refuge to the hope set before him in the gospel. 'It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... call of the gypsy-queen, enables her to break the yoke imposed on 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 brought up in dangerous and evil surroundings, but both ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... 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, and where ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... hemisphere before the sixteenth century, and that the Spaniards did no more than increase the number of the already indigenous species. Its nutritive qualities, and the wonderful facility with which it is propagated, render it at once the most useful of trees, and the greatest possible incentive to indolence. In less than one year after it is planted the fruit may be gathered and the proprietor has but to cut away the old stems and leave a sucker, which will produce fruit three months after. There are different sorts of bananas, and they are used in different ways; fresh, dried, fried, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... added, to reconcile me to the previous day's defeat, and to animate me to new trials. Never did I so much need incentive and upholding, never before had I esteemed the value of a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... builder of this surpassing and significant structure has been the people: whose watchfulness of its progress has been constant, whose desire for its benefits has been the incentive behind its plans, by whom its treasury has been supplied, whose exultant gladness now welcomes its success. The people of New York have illustrated anew their magnanimous spirit in cheerfully supplying their share of the cost, though not anticipating from such large outlay direct reliefs and signal ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley

... of a "life on the ocean wave," and though I had no great fancy for working all day at a desk, I agreed to enter my father's office and tackle to in earnest, my incentive to labour, I confess, being the hope of one day becoming the husband of Grace Goldie. We married, and I have every reason still to call myself ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... provided the incentive of rivalry. They too were the pupils of the Ancients, and taught nothing that might not be learned equally well or better from their masters, but they invited the question why England should be ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... to work in right good earnest, and, with necessity for an incentive, found ourselves at the expiration of three days master of a fine canoe, with which we drew down the astonishment of the natives. Two days more and we bid them a touching farewell, promised to call and see them again, bring ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... justice, must yield to sovereign expediency. If there is any approximate truth in Mr. Hoover's calculation that the coal output of Europe has fallen by one-third, a situation confronts us where distribution must be effected with even-handed impartiality in accordance with need, and no incentive can be neglected towards increased production and economical methods of transport. The establishment by the Supreme Council of the Allies in August, 1919, of a European Coal Commission, consisting of delegates from Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Poland, ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... it stands at all our street-corners, disguising one of the most beautiful of ideas under one of the most preposterous of forms. It is useless to deny that the miracles of science have not been such an incentive to art and imagination as were the miracles of religion. If men in the twelfth century had been told that the lightning had been driven for leagues underground, and had dragged at its destroying tail ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton



Words linked to "Incentive" :   dynamic, moral force, rational motive, payment, sales incentive, dividend, disincentive, premium



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