Motive Quotes - Page 35

• How many times do we lose an occasion for soul work by leaping ahead to final solutions without pausing to savor the undertones? We are a radically bottom-line society, eager to act and to end tension, and thus we lose opportunities to know ourselves for our motives and our secrets.

  Thomas Moore

  Opportunity, Soul, Secret

  Thomas Moore (1992). “Care of the soul: a guide for cultivating depth and sacredness in everyday life”, Harpercollins

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it. People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake.

  Stephen Covey

  Mistake, Heart, People

  14 Copy quote

• Our motives and thoughts ultimately influence our actions. Jesus repeatedly emphasized the power of good thoughts and proper motives: 'Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not' In Proverbs we read, 'For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Jesus, Heart, Doubt

  4 Copy quote

• There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.

  E. M. Forster

  Self, Years, Use

  E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.675, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to you, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it—some motive—some trick.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Hate, Nice, Love You

  Christopher Isherwood (2012). “A Single Man”, p.54, Random House

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• As long as I know that my motives are good, I'm Seldom very concerned with the opinions of others. -Mandorallen, Baron of Vo Mandor.

  David Eddings

  Long, Opinion, Concerned

  26 Copy quote

• One of the deepest motives (as you are aware) in the human beast (so deep that many have failed to detect it) is Alliteration.

  Lewis Carroll

  Beast, Alliteration, Humans

  15 Copy quote

• There was a warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Self, Soul, Phrases

  D. H. Lawrence (2013). “The Essential D.H. Lawrence”, p.271, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is an occult law moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as 'separateness' and the nearest approach to that selfish state which the laws of life permit is in the intent or motive.

  H. P. Blavatsky

  Selfish, Reality, Men

  H.P. Blavatsky (2007). “The Key to Theosophy by H.P. Blavatsky”, p.126, Theosophy Trust Books

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I had become too accustomed to the pseudo-Left new style, whereby if your opponent thought he had identified your lowest possible motive, he was quite certain that he had isolated the only real one. This vulgar method, which is now the norm and the standard in much non-Left journalism as well, is designed to have the effect of making any noisy moron into a master analyst.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Real, Style, Opponents

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.270, Atlantic Books Ltd

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. Without the sustaining influence of faith in a divine power we could have little faith in ourselves. We need to feel that behind us is intelligence and love. Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create. Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is a part of an unending plan.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Atheist, Men, Important

  Telephone Remarks to a Group of Boy Scouts: "What it Means to Be a Boy Scout", July 25, 1924.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.

  Graham Greene

  Men, Trouble

  Graham Greene (1992). “The Quiet American”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture

  M. Scott Peck

  Christian, Evil People, Church

  M. Scott Peck (1983). “People of the Lie”, p.76, Simon and Schuster

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.

  Alain de Botton

  Powerful, Distance, Views

  5 Copy quote

• The motive that impels modern reason to know must be described as the desire to conquer and dominate. For the Greek philosophers and the Fathers of the church, knowing meant something different: it meant knowing in wonder. By knowing or perceiving one participates in the life of the other. Here knowing does not transform the counterpart into the property of the knower; the knower does not appropriate what he knows. On the contrary, he is transformed through sympathy, becoming a participant in what he perceives.

  Jürgen Moltmann

  Father, Knowing, Greek

  "The Dance Between God and Humanity: Reading the Bible Today as the People of God". Book by Bruce K. Waltke, 2013.

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us.

  Albert Einstein

  Spiritual, Pain, Philosophy

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.36, Broadway Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• And these are your reasons, my lord?" "Do you think I have others?" said Lord Vetinari. "My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent." Hughnon reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn't see them at all.

  Terry Pratchett

  Thinking, Reason, Lord

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “The Truth: (Discworld Novel 25)”, p.48, Random House

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• USE COMMON SENSE. If somebody offers you a thousand dollars for this book, chances are their motives are not pure. Then again, a thousand dollars is a lot of money. Take the money and run.

  Pseudonymous Bosch

  Running, Book, Common Sense

  Pseudonymous Bosch (2012). “This Isn't What It Looks Like: The Secret Series”, p.37, Usborne Publishing Ltd

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.

  George Eliot

  Expectations, Remember, Born

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.145, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I know that sometimes people fake on each other out of genuine motives to hold onto the object of their tenderest feelings. They see themselves as so inadequate that they feel forced to wear a mask in order to continuously impress the other. I do not want to "hold" you, I want you to "stay" out of your own need for me.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Order, People, Fake

  ELDRIDGE CLEAVER (1968). “SOUL ON ICE”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many doctors are drawn to this profession (psychology) because they have an innate deficiency of insight into the motives, feelings and thoughts of others, a deficiency they hope to remedy by ingesting masses of data.

  William S. Burroughs

  Doctors, Data, Psychology

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquility was no more.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Gone, Tranquility, Reason

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.73, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Integrity, Judging, Childhood

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2015). “Annotated Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus with English Grammar Exercises: by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, p.232, Powell Publications, LLC

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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, Prove, Wrong Things

  Mary Balogh (2007). “The Devil's Web”, p.153, Dell

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world is not full of betrayers, it is full of people with decent motives and a full desire to do right by those who know them and love them. This is a little-known truth, but I think it is a truth nonetheless. Empirically, from all the years of my work, I would attest to that. I know it is a miraculous conclusion, but there it is. We like to make strangers of everyone. We are not wolves, but lambs astonished in the margins of the fields by sunlight and summer.

  Sebastian Barry

  Summer, Thinking, Years

  7 Copy quote