Motive famous quotes

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 Kuyper

#Art #Motive #Notion

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.
-- Albert Ellis

#People #Motive

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

#Hands #Motive #Sleeves

When we pray we link ourselves with an inexhaustible motive power.
-- Alexis Carrel

#Links #Praying #Motive

Almost all education has a political motive.
-- Bertrand Russell

#Political #Motive

But if we never acted except when we were certain our motives were pure, we would never act at all.
-- C.J. Sansom

#Certain #Motive

Profit per se is not my motive.
-- Chris Hughes

#Profit #Motive

Pure motives do not insure perfect results.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Perfect #Results #Motive

He who has no passion has no principal or motive to act.
-- Claude Adrien Helvetius

#Passion #Motive #Principal

There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.
-- Eric Hoffer

#Humanity #Reason #Motive

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 Metaxas

#Principles #Easy #Motive

One must know ones enemy as he is, not as one, for whatever motives, wishes him to be.
-- Eugen Kogon

#Enemy #Wish #Motive

... 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

#Suffering #Morality #Motive

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

#Obedience #Motive #Instance

The overcoming of adversity and, ultimately, denying it the rite of passage, has been a constant and perpetual motive throughout my life.
-- Heather Mills

#Adversity #Overcoming #Motive

The motive power of democracy is love
-- Henri Bergson

#Philosophical #Democracy #Motive

I rarely find motive in bird vomit.
-- Jack Hodgins

#Bird #Motive

It is the man that makes the motive, and not the motive the man.
-- James McCosh

#Men #He Man #Motive

The distance is nothing when one has a motive.
-- Jane Austen

#Distance #Motive

The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive,
-- Janet Malcolm

#Needs #Motive #Murderer

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

#Exercise #Law #Motive

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

#Advantage #Motive

Motives reveal why we do what we do, which is actually more important to God than what we're doing.
-- Joyce Meyer

#Important #Motive

As an actor, your motives and your own crazy psyche is really all you're responsible for in the movie.
-- Kate Beckinsale

#Crazy #Responsible #Motive

I have always examined closely the motives of any group for which I am asked to raise money.
-- Kate Smith

#Groups #Motive #Raises

There is no such thing as an exact synonym and no such thing as an unmixed motive.
-- Katherine Anne Porter

#Motivation #Motive #Synonym

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.
-- Leonardo da Vinci

#Needs #Action #Motive

Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
-- Lord Acton

#Spiritual #Men #Motive

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 MacNeice

#Envy #Killing #Motive

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

#Promise #Said #Motive

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

#People #Abuse #Motive

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

#Past #Motive #Prove

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

#People #Furniture #Motive

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

#Believe #Motive #Pretext

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

#Sake #Action #Motive

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 Bouvier

#Travel #Thinking #Motive

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

#Rays #Motive #Cosmic

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

#Men #Type #Motive

When youre a woman with a certain amount of fame and money, you are never certain what someones motives are.
-- Patricia Richardson

#Fame #Certain #Motive

We rarely do anything with on single motive.
-- Paul David Tripp

#Motive

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 Perry

#Gratitude #Thinking #Motive

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

#Men #Hello #Motive

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

#Interesting #Motive #Acknowledge

Beautiful words are ugly motives best friends.
-- Steve Fowler

#Beautiful #Ugly #Motive

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

#Purification #Motive #Wells

Man sees your actions, but God your motives.
-- Thomas a Kempis

#Men #Action #Motive

What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Want #Motive

We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money....
-- Thomas Bernhard

#Making Money #Fame #Motive

No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.
-- William Makepeace Thackeray

#Life #Habit #Motive

Love is a far more dangerous motive than dislike.
-- Lady Violet

#Love Is #Dangerous #Motive

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

#Causes #Motive #My Own

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 Howard

#Who I Am #Play #Motive

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 Jones

#People #Age #Motive

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

#Our Actions #Glory #Motive