Motive Quotes - Page 36

• Never trust a demon. He has a hundred motives for anything he does... ninety-nine of them, at least, are malevolent.

  Neil Gaiman

  Ninety Nine, Doe, Never Trust

  "Preludes & Nocturnes (The Sandman, Book 1)". Book sub-series by Neil Gaiman, January – August 1989.

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• He felt safe with her. He'd never been safe with another human being, not since he'd been taken as a child from his home. He'd never been able to trust. He could never give that last small piece - all that was left of his humanity - into someone else's keeping. And now there was Rikki. She let him be whatever he had to be to survive. She didn't ask anything of him. There was no hidden motive. No agenda. Just acceptance. She was different - imperfect, or so she thought - and she knew what it was like to fight to carve out a space for herself. She was willing for him to do thar.

  Christine Feehan

  Children, Taken, Home

  Christine Feehan (2010). “Water Bound”, p.152, Penguin

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• I pulled myself up and told myself to stop these ridiculous thoughts, wondering why it is that we can never stop trying to analyse the motives of people who have no personal interest in us, in the vain hope of finding that perhaps they may have just a little after all.

  Barbara Pym

  People, Trying, May

  Barbara Pym (2006). “Excellent Women”, p.162, Penguin

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• The fourfold root of the principle of sufficent reason is "Anything perceived has a cause. All conclusions have premises. All effects have causes. All actions have motives.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Roots, Principles, Causes

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• You have to give everyone ugly motives for everything they do, because ugly motives are all you understand.

  Cassandra Clare

  Giving, Ugly

  Cassandra Clare (2008). “City of Ashes”, p.400, Simon and Schuster

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• I felt the sensation of each of the directions I mentally and emotionally turned into amazed at all the possible directions you can take with different motives that come in like it can make you a different person — I’ve often thought of this since childhood of suppose instead of going up Columbus as I usually did I’d turn into Filbert would something happen that at the time is insignificant enough but would be like enough to influence my whole life in the end? — What’s in store for me in the direction I don’t take?

  Jack Kerouac

  Childhood, Different, Would Be

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• It is remarkable how I am never quite clear about the motives for any of my decisions. Is that a sign of confusion or inner dishonesty or is it a sign that we are guided without our knowing or is it both ...The reasons one gives for an action to others and to one's self are certainly inadequate. One can give a reason for everything. In the last resort one acts from a level which remains hidden from us. So one can only ask God to judge us and to forgive us.... At the end of the day I can only ask God to give a merciful judgement on today and all its decisions. It is now in his hand.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Hands, Knowing, Self

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• There is no humiliation worse than the consciousness of a wasted life. It stains the spirit, forestalls hope, and destroys any motive for action or change.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Spirit, Action, Consciousness

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• We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.

  C. S. Lewis

  Running, Heart, Exercise

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• I can't help comparing what I have with Gale to what I'm pretending to have with Peeta. How I never question Gale's motives while I do nothing but doubt the latter's. It's not a fair comparison really. Gale and I were thrown together by a mutual need to survive. Peeta and I know the other's survival means our own death. How do you sidestep that?

  Suzanne Collins

  Mean, Doubt, Survival

  Suzanne Collins (2009). “The Hunger Games”, p.107, Scholastic Inc.

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• I see. So you playacted the role of a rake who was only pretending to be in earnest, knowing you would come across as though you had the lowest of motives, when in fact, you were sincere?” “Precisely.” She gave a short, wry laugh and shook her head at him. “Convoluted sir! You are a maze.” He shot her a sulky glance. “I thought you were going to say I was amazing.” “That, too,” she admitted with a rueful smile, capturing his square chin between her fingertips.

  Gaelen Foley

  Knowing, Wry Smile, Squares

  Gaelen Foley (2002). “Lord of Fire”, p.175, Ballantine Books

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• Gods tend to be selfish. Even when they're helpful, they always have their own motives. That's why you have to be careful about trusting them.

  Rick Riordan

  Selfish, Helpful, Be Careful

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• Darken your room, shut the door, empty your mind. Yet you are still in great company - the Numen and your Genius with all their media, and your host of elementals and ghosts of your dead loves — are there! They need no light by which to see, no words to speak, no motive to enact except through your own purely formed desire.

  Austin Osman Spare

  Light, Doors, Media

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• Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mistake, Character, Past

  Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Penny Dreadfuls: Tales of Horror: Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.719, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• More than my questions about the efficacy of social actions were my questions about my own motives. Do i want social justice for the oppressed or do i jusy want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I dont have to watch the evening news to see the world is bad, i only have to look at myself. I am not brow beating here, i am only saying that true charge , true living giving, God honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem i had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read “I am the problem

  Donald Miller

  Thinking, Here I Am, Giving

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• I've learned that the universe doesn't care what our motives are, only our actions. So we should do things that will bring about good, even if there is an element of selfishness involved. Like the kids at my school might join the Key Club or Future Buisness Leaders of America, because it's a social thing and looks good on their record, not because they really want to volunteer at the nursing home. But the people at the nursing home still benefit from it, so it's better that the kids do it than not do it. And if they never did it, then they wouldn't find out that they actually liked it.

  Wendy Mass

  School, Kids, Home

  Wendy Mass (2011). “13 Gifts”, p.338, Scholastic Inc.

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• True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them the desire to do right is precisely the same.

  Robert E. Lee

  Men, Patriotism, Desire

  Letter to General P.G.T. Beauregard, October 03, 1865.

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• You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you're doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn't enough.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Believe, Play, People

  Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Lathe Of Heaven”, p.74, Hachette UK

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• I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Motivational, Hilarious, Dream

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• In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.

  Carl Sagan

  Kindness, Fear, Real

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.298, Ballantine Books

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• People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.

  Veronica Roth

  Believe, Heart, People

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• ...there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: "He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Tombstone, Simple, Men

  P. G. Wodehouse (2015). “My Man Jeeves”, p.75, Booklassic

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• We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Never Forget, Complicated, Humans

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• There are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Men, Names, Scotland

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2016). “Sherlock Holmes. The best stories”, p.18, "Издательство ""Проспект"""

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• [A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.

  Frederick Douglass

  Spiritual, Men, Air

  Frederick Douglass (2011). “In the Words of Frederick Douglass: Quotations from Liberty’s Champion”, p.237, Cornell University Press

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