Best 132 quotes in «motive quotes» category

I'm sorry you leftists, you're not the only people whose motives are pure.

In all our actions, God considers the intention: whether we act for Him or for some other motive.

I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.

In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail.

It is all right when God sends us the approval of our fellow men; however, we must never make that approval a motive in our life.

In the motive lies the good or ill.

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.

It's a world in which people's motives are questionable and shadowy.

It's so easy to become a grumbler, someone who condemns and carps at everything on principle and sees an ulterior motive behind it.

Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.

Many actions, like the Rhone, have two sources,--one pure, the other impure.

It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.

Men who just call to say hello generally have ulterior motives.

Magnanimity will not consider the prudence of its motives.

Motives reveal why we do what we do, which is actually more important to God than what we're doing.

Never go into business purely to make money. If that's the motive you're better off doing nothing.

My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have... an ambition of transcendence.

Never judge a man's actions until you know his motives

Occasionally we all do wrong things from right motives. Only time can prove us right or wrong. The past is the past. Nothing can change it now, and who is to say that it was all wrong, anyway?

No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.

One must know ones enemy as he is, not as one, for whatever motives, wishes him to be.

Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action.

Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.

Our motive is not to prove our self-worth, but to live up to our possibilities.

Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can.

People who don't know you, you don't know their motives. They smile at you all day, "Oh, that's great. You've done it again! You're the greatest!" And that's not good for an artist.

Profit per se is not my motive.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them.

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.

That man is the most loyal who aims at the noblest motive, and that motive the public good.

The meaning of what is said is according to the motive for saying it: because things are not subject to speech, but speech to things. Therefore we should take account of the motive of the lawgiver, rather than of his very words.

The motive power is the cause of all life.

The most terrible of motives and the most unanswerable of responses: Because.

The noblest motive is the public good.

Ready are we all to cry out and ascribe motives when our toes are pinched.

The motive power of democracy is love

The overcoming of adversity and, ultimately, denying it the rite of passage, has been a constant and perpetual motive throughout my life.

There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.

There is no such thing as an exact synonym and no such thing as an unmixed motive.

The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show.

The satisfaction that accompanies good acts is itself not the motivation of the act; satisfaction is not the motive, but only the consequence.

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.

This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.

There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.

This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time ignoring his fundamental ones.

The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive.

To exercise some sort of control over others is the secret motive of every selfish person.

The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.

Traveling outgrows its motives. It soon proves sufficient in itself. You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you - or unmaking you.

Those who joined us for selfish personal reasons, for a career or other motives will be the ones to leave.