Motive Quotes - Page 23

• I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Vanity, Curiosity, Journalist

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• [You write out of the] desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, etc., etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive and a strong one.

  George Orwell

  Strong, Clever, Writing

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• Selfishness is the controlling force of sinful living. It is this motive which pulsates through the natural mind, emotions and will - self-pleasing, self-serving, living for self.

  Walter J Chantry

  Self, Mind, Emotion

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• If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you maybe sure that whatever their motives, love of man is not one of them.

  Ayn Rand

  Struggle, Men, Should Have

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• In an age in which we can project an image and score that image based on immediate Facebook and Twitter feedback, thus making a video game of life and a false-reality composed of lies, what gets lost is a joyful obsession with the work we create from the purest of motives, a sheer joy in the act of creation itself that causes us to lose ourselves in something else, and in a way die to ourselves over the absolute love of a thing we are breathing into life.

  Donald Miller

  Lying, Reality, Breathing

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• There are many ways to prescribe happiness but there is one way that is available to everybody, it's not very expensive ... it's very democratic, and everyone has acesss to it. It is: Find someone who needs help and help him for no ulterior motive.

  Yossi Vardi

  Needs, Way, Helping

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• Politics of all sorts, I confess, are far beyond my limited powers of comprehension. Those of this country as far as I have been able to observe, resolve themselves into two great motives. The aristocratic desire of elevation and separation, and the democratic desire of demolishing and levelling.

  Fanny Kemble

  Country, Two, Desire

  Fanny Kemble (1835). “Journal of a Residence in America”, p.95

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• Distrust your judgment the moment you can discern the shadow of a personal motive in it.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Shadow, Judgment, Moments

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1994). “Aphorisms”, Ariadne Press (CA)

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• A common fallacy: to imagine a measure will be easy because we have private motives for desiring it.

  George Eliot

  Thinking, Common, Imagine

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• When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Faith, Believe, Long

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• No woman dares to refuse love without a motive, for nothing is more natural than to yield to love.

  Honore de Balzac

  Love, Yield, Natural

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• Who does not feel that Nansen's account of his search for the Pole rather loses than gains in ideal satisfaction by the pretense of a few trifling acquisitions for science?

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Satisfaction, Gains, Doe

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• I like owls. I admire their intransigent spirit. I have respected them deeply ever since I met a baby owl in a wood, when it fell over dead, apparently from sheer temper, because I dared to approach it. It defied me first, and then died. I have never forgotten the horror and shame I experienced when that soft fluffy thing (towards which I had nothing but the most humanitarian motives) fell dead from rage at my feet.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Baby, Feet, Owl

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• The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby's birth; he scarcely sees it when awake, and yet it is with him all the time. Every stroke he strikes is for his child. New social aims, new moral motives, come vaguely up to him.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Baby, Children, Father

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2007). “Outdoor Studies, Poems”, p.237, Reprint Services Corporation

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• Ready are we all to cry out and ascribe motives when our toes are pinched.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Toes, Cry, Ready

  Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln Association (Springfield, Ill.) (1953). “Collected Works: 1862-1863”

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• Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.

  Joseph Addison

  Humanity, Pity, Incitement

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• We can never understand other people's motives, nor their furniture.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  People, Furniture

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.45, BookBaby

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• The motives and purposes of authors are not always so pure and high, as, in the enthusiasm of youth, we sometimes imagine. To many the trumpet of fame is nothing but a tin horn to call them home, like laborers from, the field, at dinner-time, and they think themselves lucky to get the dinner.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Home, Thinking, Enthusiasm

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2012). “Kavanagh (Annotated Edition)”, p.46, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Men should soon make up their minds to be forgotten, and look about them, or within them, for some higher motive in what they do than the approbation of men, which is fame, namely, their duty; that they should be constantly and quietly at work, each in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their fame to take care of itself.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Men, Leaving, Mind

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1851). “The prose works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”, p.38

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• Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right.

  Samuel Johnson

  Vanity, Advice, Inquiry

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1834). “Murphy's essay. The rambler. The adventurer. The idler. Rasselas. Tales of the imagination. Letters. Irene. Miscellaneous poems”, p.139

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• Of him that hopes to be forgiven it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is, therefore, superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain.

  Samuel Johnson

  Forgiveness, Forgiving, Thrones

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “Johnsoniana; or supplement to Boswell; being Anecdotes and sayings of Dr. Johnson, etc”, p.385

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• If there was the same propensity in mankind for investigating the motives, as there is for censuring the conduct, of public characters, it would be found that the censure so freely bestowed is oftentimes unmerited and uncharitable.

  George Washington

  Character, Would Be, Found

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1839). “The Writings of George Washington: pt. IV. Letters official and private, from the beginning of his presidency to the end of his life: (v. 10) May, 1789-November, 1794. (v. 11) November, 1794-December, 1799”, p.97

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• Contempt of others is the truest symptom of a base and bad heart,--while it suggests itself to the mean and the vile, and tickles there little fancy on every occasion, it never enters the great and good mind but on the strongest motives; nor is it then a welcome guest,--affording only an uneasy sensation, and bringing always with it a mixture of concern and compassion.

  Henry Fielding

  Heart, Mean, Compassion

  Henry Fielding (1916). “The Works of Henry Fielding”, p.299, Library of Alexandria

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• Whatever be the motives which induce men to write,--whether avarice or fame,--the country becomes more wise and happy in which they most serve for instructors.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Wise, Country, Writing

  Oliver Goldsmith, David Masson (1869). “The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith”, p.210

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• Bid a singer in a chorus, Know Thyself; and will he not turn for the knowledge to the others, his fellows in the chorus, and to his harmony with them?

  Epictetus

  Singers, Praise, Harmony

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