For they had seen her ever virtuous, And loving Hermegild right as her life: Of this bare witness each one in that house, Save he that Hermegild slew with his knife: This gentle king had *caught a great motife* *been greatly moved Of this witness, and thought he would inquere by the evidence* Deeper into this case, the truth to lear.* *learn英文原著 · 《The Canterbury Tales》
That favourite "motif", the "Patient Grizzle", occurs, rather, however, in the Border ballad than the Petrarcan form?英文原著 · 《The Danish History》
"Witches and wizards" (as belonging to the older layer of archaic beliefs) are hateful to the gods, and Woden casts them out as accursed, though he himself was the mightiest of wizards. Heathen Teutonic life was a long terror by reason of witchcraft, as is the heathen African life to-day, continual precautions being needful to escape the magic of enemies. The Icelandic Sagas, such as Gretter's, are full of magic and witchcraft. It is by witchcraft that Gretter is first lamed and finally slain; one can see that Glam's curse, the Beowulf motif, was not really in the original Gretter story.英文原著 · 《The Danish History》
The creative process thus in the first instance is purely a matter of feeling--exactly what we speak of as "motif" in a work of art.英文原著 · 《The Dore Lectures on Mental Science》
You find it again in Isolde's motif continually."英文原著 · 《The Pit》
In his thought, nature is not accessory to man. Worthy M. Perichon, of prosaic, not to say philistinic fame, had, as we remember, his travels immortalized in a painting where a colossal Perichon in front almost completely eclipsed a tiny Mont Blanc behind. A Far Oriental thinks poetry, which may possibly account for the fact that in his mind-pictures the relative importance of man and mountain stands reversed. "The matchless Fuji," first of motifs in his art, admits no pilgrim as its peer.英文原著 · 《The Soul of the Far East》