quotes about Motive
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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.
-- Abraham KuyperSource : "Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art".
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People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.
-- Albert Ellis -
A person who is keen to shake your hand usually has something up his sleeve.
-- Alec Guinness -
When we pray we link ourselves with an inexhaustible motive power.
-- Alexis Carrel -
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Almost all education has a political motive.
-- Bertrand Russell -
But if we never acted except when we were certain our motives were pure, we would never act at all.
-- C.J. SansomSource : C. J. Sansom (2008). “Revelation”, p.259, Pan Macmillan
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Profit per se is not my motive.
-- Chris HughesSource : "I Think It Would Be Fun to Run the New Republic: Chris Hughes as Charles Foster" by Tim Carmody, www.wired.com. March 9, 2012.
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Pure motives do not insure perfect results.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee -
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He who has no passion has no principal or motive to act.
-- Claude Adrien Helvetius -
There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.
-- Eric Hoffer -
It's so easy to become a grumbler, someone who condemns and carps at everything on principle and sees an ulterior motive behind it.
-- Eric MetaxasSource : Eric Metaxas (2011). “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy”, p.286, Thomas Nelson Inc
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One must know ones enemy as he is, not as one, for whatever motives, wishes him to be.
-- Eugen Kogon -
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... we are most of us brought up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong.
-- George Eliot -
Every instance of obedience, from right motives, strengthens us spiritually, whilst every act of disobedience weakens us.
-- George Muller -
The overcoming of adversity and, ultimately, denying it the rite of passage, has been a constant and perpetual motive throughout my life.
-- Heather Mills -
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It is the man that makes the motive, and not the motive the man.
-- James McCoshSource : James McCosh (2009). “The Method of the Divine Government”, p.280, Applewood Books
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The distance is nothing when one has a motive.
-- Jane AustenSource : Jane Austen (2016). “Pride and Prejudice (Fourth Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company
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The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive,
-- Janet MalcolmSource : Janet Malcolm (2013). “The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes”, p.183, Vintage
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Love provides the motive for obeying the commands of the law, but the law provides specific direction for exercising love.
-- Jerry Bridges -
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.
-- John Stuart Mill -
Motives reveal why we do what we do, which is actually more important to God than what we're doing.
-- Joyce Meyer -
As an actor, your motives and your own crazy psyche is really all you're responsible for in the movie.
-- Kate BeckinsaleSource : Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. July 15, 2012.
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I have always examined closely the motives of any group for which I am asked to raise money.
-- Kate Smith -
There is no such thing as an exact synonym and no such thing as an unmixed motive.
-- Katherine Anne Porter -
Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.
-- Leonardo da Vinci -
Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
-- Lord Acton -
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And I envy the intransigence of my own Countrymen who shoot to kill and never See the victim's face become their own Or find his motive sabotage their motives.
-- Louis MacNeiceSource : Louis MacNeice (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.93, Faber & Faber
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In a promise, what you thought, and not what you said, is always to be considered.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
We like so much to hear people talk of us and of our motives, that we are charmed even when they abuse us.
-- Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne -
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?
-- Mary Balogh -
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We can never understand other people's motives, nor their furniture.
-- Mignon McLaughlin -
What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.
-- Miguel de Unamuno -
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.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi -
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.
-- Nicolas BouvierSource : "On the road again" by Rory Maclean, www.theguardian.com. May 31, 2007.
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I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device.
-- Nikola Tesla -
This it is to be a man of the highest type: to be and not seem; to do and not simply to talk; to have the right ideal, the true motive and patiently to transform conduct in accordance with it.
-- Ossian Everett Mills -
When youre a woman with a certain amount of fame and money, you are never certain what someones motives are.
-- Patricia Richardson -
We rarely do anything with on single motive.
-- Paul David Tripp -
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This insistence on "having his say upon the universe" is the profoundest motive of William James thinking as well as of his filial gratitude.
-- Ralph Barton PerrySource : "The Thought and Character of William James, Volume 1". Book by Ralph Barton Perry, 1935.
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Men who just call to say hello generally have ulterior motives.
-- Steig Larsson -
Everyone has motives. Let's acknowledge that and get on with the interesting part.
-- Stephen C. Meyer -
Beautiful words are ugly motives best friends.
-- Steve Fowler -
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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
-- T. S. Eliot -
Man sees your actions, but God your motives.
-- Thomas a Kempis -
What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay -
We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money....
-- Thomas Bernhard -
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No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.
-- William Makepeace ThackeraySource : "Thackeray and his Novels" by William Makepeace Thackeray, Blackwood's Mag, January 1854.
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Love is a far more dangerous motive than dislike.
-- Lady Violet -
I, Alexander B. Campbell, make this statement of the cause of my death to relieve the coroner of the necessity of an inquest, and also let my friends know the motive that led me to take my own life.
-- Alex Campbell -
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.
-- Ben HowardSource : Source: innerearmedia.wordpress.com
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We live in an age where in politics, people can't disagree with each other without good faith being questioned, there is always an ulterior motive - in it for the money, advance a career.
-- Owen JonesSource : Source: www.gq-magazine.co.uk
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Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive of our actions.
-- Pliny the YoungerSource : Pliny (the Younger.), William Melmoth (1796). “The letters of Pliny the consul:: with occasional remarks”, p.20