Quotes About Motives

I well remember it being said to me by an occultist of great experience that two things are necessary for safety in occultism, right motives and right associates.

Being kind to someone, only to look kind to others, defeats the purpose of being kind.

Everything about our lives - our attitudes, motives, desires, actions, and even our words - is influenced by our view of God.

There is beauty all around you if you are willing to just look and see, there is blessings hidden in what you do, as long as you have noble motives.

Is there anything more harsh in this life than to be misjudged, and have one's motives entirely misunderstood?

A genuine culture built on fundamentals like trust and aimed at the goal of business for good is more than enough, but only if it genuinely outweighs the traditional business motives of driving revenue, growth, and profit.

In the final analysis, therefore, the tomb of Edward I may stand, like the unfinished castle at Caernarfon, not only as a monument to the past, but also as a warning to the future: a final reminder of the power of myth to shape men's minds and motives, and thus to alter the fate of nations.

The lie, the perfect lie, about people we know, about the relations we have with them, about our motive for some action, formulated in totally different terms, the lie as to what we are, whom we love, what we feel with regard to people who love us … that lie is one of the few things in the world that can open windows for us on to what is new and unknown, that can awaken in us sleeping senses for the contemplation of universes that otherwise we should never have known.

love, and consequently fear, of the crowd being one of the most powerful motives in all human beings...

What gospel principles do not, legal motives cannot do.

How many decisions- including ones of great historical significance that impact millions of people- are made by men and women who are driven by personal motives rather than by a desire to do the right thing?

A wise man -- a cop named Capslock -- once observed that he'd never seen a murder with a large sum of money attached to it, in which the money wasn't important. On the other hand, Virgil hadn't ever seen a murder that involved an intense sexuality in which sexuality wasn't involved.

At least chemists can turn to analysis; sufferers from an unknown disease can call in a doctor. And criminal cases are more or less clarified by the examining magistrate. But the disconcerting actions of our fellow-men rarely reveal their motives.

But when it comes to the disconcerting actions of our fellow-men, we rarely discover their motives.

At a time when I believed what people told me, I should have been tempted to believe Germany, then Bulgaria, then Greece when they proclaimed their pacific intentions. But since my life with Albertine and with Françoise had accustomed me to suspect those motives they did not express, I did not allow any word, however right in appearance of William II, Ferdinand of Bulgaria or Constantine of Greece to deceive my instinct which divined what each one of them was plotting.

Humane motives are too sacred for the person they are used to appeal to not to bow before them, whether he believes them to be sincere or not; I did not wish for a moment to appear to be weighing up the relative importance of my invitation and the possible fatigue of Mme de Guermantes, and I promised to say nothing to her about the object of my visit, acting as though I had been completely taken in by this rigmarole M. de Guermantes had staged for my benefit.

There are two levers for moving man -- interest and fear.

It isn't kind to cultivate a friendship just so one will have an audience.

Don't do wrong things for the right reasons, and don't do right things for the wrong reasons.

Liars; those people who hide behind the truth for no real reason but for their own selfish gain.

Crimes are not to be measured by the issue of events, but by the bad intentions of men.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

I have trust issues. With women, friends, whatever. You always wonder what their real motives are. Ive got a small circle of friends, and its a lot of the same friends Ive known forever. Right now, that works for me. I came out of some difficult things these past couple of years. I kind of feel like I'm just now finding my footing. So I want to make sure thats secure before I go out and do anything else. I need to keep working on myself for a while.

Pain can be a professor theology. Pain can be a marriage counselor. Pain can be a life coach. Nothing gets our full attention like pain. It breaks down false idols and purifies false motives. It reveals where we need to heal, where we need to grow. It refocuses priorities like nothing else. And pain ins part and parcel of God's sanctification process in our lives.