Motive Quotes

No motive is pure. No one is good or bad-but a hearty mix of both. And sometimes life actually gives to you by taking away.

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.

The motive power of democracy is love

Every instance of obedience, from right motives, strengthens us spiritually, whilst every act of disobedience weakens us.

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

Be sure that your motive in praying is to glorify God.

Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is seen, and you need not search for truth; truth will find you.

As long as I know that my motives are good, I'm Seldom very concerned with the opinions of others. -Mandorallen, Baron of Vo Mandor.

The motive force of history is truth and not lies.

I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device.

No one is willing to acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive can be found for the estrangement of his acquaintances.

The only work that spiritually purifies us is that which is done without personal motives.

The distance is nothing when one has a motive.

We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.

See a person's means ... Observe his motives. Examine that in which he rests. How can a person conceal his character?

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

Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive of our actions.

My motive has always been just to be who I am, and play what I love- if that doesn't get me anywhere then at least it wasn't because I tried to be something I'm not.

The motive of success is not enough.

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

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

Words can be worrisome, poeple complex, motives and manners unclear, grant her the wisdom to choose her path right, free from unkindness and fear.

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.

A person who is keen to shake your hand usually has something up his sleeve.

One of the deepest motives (as you are aware) in the human beast (so deep that many have failed to detect it) is Alliteration.

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

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

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.

Love provides the motive for obeying the commands of the law, but the law provides specific direction for exercising love.

One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.

Everybody who talks to a newspaper has a motive. That's just a given. And good reporters always, repeat always, probe to find out what that motive is.

When we pray we link ourselves with an inexhaustible motive power.

The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labor-power to the greatest possible extent.

We can never understand other people's motives, nor their furniture.

The noblest motive is the public good.

Man sees your actions, but God your motives.

He who has no passion has no principal or motive to act.

A wrong motive involves defeat.

Everyone has motives. Let's acknowledge that and get on with the interesting part.

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 motive of art comes to us not from what exists, but from the notion that there is something higher, something nobler, something richer, and that what exists corresponds only partially to all of this.

What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.

In a promise,
what you thought,
and not what you said,
is always to be considered.

And all shall be well and/ All manner of thing shall be well/ By the purification of the motive/ In the ground of our beseeching

We act unbelievingly and disobediently when, for whatever motive, we distort, falsify, or suppress the facts about our life in nature and history.

We like so much to hear people talk of us and of our motives, that we are charmed even when they abuse us.

Criticism discloses that which it would fain conceal, but conceals that which it professes to disclose; it is therefore, read by the discerning, not to discover the merits of an author, but the motives of his critic.

The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive.

Pure motives do not insure perfect results.

Never question another man's motive. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives.