Quotes About Motives

Could a man be justified in marrying for money, or have rational ground for expecting that he might make himself happy by doing so?

What is any public question but a conglomeration of private interests? What is any newspaper article but an expression of the views taken by one side? Truth! it takes an age to ascertain the truth of any question! The idea of Tom Towers talking of public motives and purity of purpose! Why, it wouldn't give him a moment's uneasiness to change his politics to-morrow, if the paper required it.

What is any public question but a conglomeration of private interests? What is any newspaper article but an expression of the views taken by one side? Truth! it takes an age to ascertain the truth of any question! The idea of Tom Towers talking of public motives and purity of purpose!

We shall see. You may be sure at any rate of this, — that I shall never ask them to do so. Things seem to be so different now from what they did. I don't care for the seat. It all seems to be a bore and a trouble. What does it matter who sits in Parliament? The fight goes on just the same. The same falsehoods are acted. The same mock truths are spoken. The same wrong reasons are given. The same personal motives are at work.

Yet ambition and avarice, almost more than any other passions, are the motives of crime.

There are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.

They were admirable things for the observer - excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his.

We are what we are because we have been what we have been, and what is needed for solving the problems of human life and motives is not moral estimates but more knowledge.

The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality.

Il fatto è che sono una scrittrice: una donna scrittrice non è una donna di casa che scrive, ma qualcuno la cui intera esistenza è condizionata dallo scrivere. È una vita che ne vale un'altra: che ha i suoi motivi, il suo ordine, i suoi fini che si possono giudicare stravaganti solo se di essa non si capisce niente.

Education -- whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even oneself -- consists in creating motives. To show what is beneficial, what is obligatory, what is good -- that is the task of education. Education concerns itself with the motives for effective action. For no action is ever carried out in the absence of motives capable of supplying the indispensable amount of energy for its execution.

Base motives have in them more energy than noble ones. Problem: in what way can the energy belonging to the base motives be transferred to the noble ones?

Somewhere behind the bland emotionless labels favored by contemporary culture lies a tangled realm of unmentioned motives and murky passions, where petroleum – the black blood of the earth, as shamans and loremasters in a surprisingly large number of cultures call it – has become an anchor for fantasies of omnipotence and dreams of destiny, and that realm must be confronted directly in order make sense of where our civilization is headed.

It [the Spanish-American War] has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that fortune which loves the brave.

In conflict, before we even hear what the other side has said, we assume we know what they mean. We have already attached motives to their messages. Often, even before they have finished, we are developing our response.

O, how easy it is to do religious things if other people are watching! Preaching, praying, attending church, reading the bible, acts of kindness and charity-they all take on a certain pleasantness of the ego if we know that others will find out about them and think well of us. It is a deadly addiction for esteem that we have.

We may think we are centering our lives on God when we are really making Him a means to self-esteem.

Buzzards don't make good friends. They always have an interior motive.

Politicians are usually the first to forget that if you assume someone else is acting in bad faith, they will do the same to you. Questioning motives poisons the well.

tales in search of an excuse for their telling.

When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives" (James 4:3).

We love from little motives, not for large reasons.

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

To will, in the fullest sense of the word, is to be unaware that one wills, is to refuse to loiter over the phenomenon of the will. The man of action weighs neither his impulses nor his motives, still less does he consult his reflexes: he obeys them without reflecting upon them, without hampering them.