Quotes About Motives

I am not tormented, Fern responded. I am... diminished. I have always believed that your soul grows when you do something that is good and brave, a right thing, a true thing, and when you do evil- no matter what the motive- your soul is eroded. Well, my soul is less.

She expected from other people the same opinions and feeling as her own, and she judged their motives by the immediate effect of their actions on herself.

It was the desire of appearing superior to other people. The motive was too common to be wondered at.

It was now some years since Anne had begun to learn that she and her excellent friend could sometimes think differently; and it did not surprise her, therefore, that Lady Russell should see nothing suspicious or inconsistent, nothing to require more motives than appeared, in Mr Elliot's great desire of a reconciliation.

Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs, between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end, and avarice begin?

The warily silent Hughes has protected his secrets better than his sister has: no one can use his words against him. But everyone can—and does—speculate about his motives.

Both parties act in their political self-interest. Indeed, that's the purpose of a political party. But unlike Democrats, at least Republicans are honest about it.

I must discipline myself. I must be imaginative and create plots, knit motives, probe dialogue - rather than merely trying to record descriptions and sensations. The latter is pointless, without purpose, unless it is later to be synthesized into a story. The latter is also a rather pronounced symptom of an oversensitive and unproductive ego.

It is the easiest thing in the world to become a Christian - ten thousand times easier than it is to hold out unrepenting against the motives which God presents to the mind, to induce it to forsake its evil thoughts and turn unto Him.

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.

We really can't tell the difference between people who might seek power for some greater good and people who seek power just to aggrandize themselves. For example, all revolutionaries say that they want to uplift the downtrodden.

Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.

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

If the outcome is good, what's the difference between motives that sound good and good, sound motives?

Doing good things for wrong reasons consistently brings unfavorable results.

Ricardo Semler, CEO and majority owner of the Brazil-based Semco Partners, practices asking "Why?" three times. This is true when questioning his own motives, or when tackling big projects. The rationale is identical to Derek's.

Call him Judas if you want but he did it for reasons much older than silver.

If your motives aren't clean, money itself becomes evil. But When we don't have money enough evil, the world tells us we're losers. So what determines our place in society is not how much kindness is in our hearts but how much evil is in our wallet.

In all these situations of conflict the ego is seeking to repudiate a part of its own id. Thus the institution which sets up the defence and the invading force which is warded off are always the same; the variable factors are the motives which impel the ego to resort to defensive measures. Ultimately all such measures are designed to secure the ego and to save it from experiencing 'pain.

What drives them, more than rewards, is the desire to find or create order where there was none before.

Everybody has an angle. The only time I say no to an interview is when someone says they don't have an angle. I know right away that that's not honest.

It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.

Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.

Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?