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To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all. -- Lord Byron
I try to be careful with my persuasiveness. When my heart is really behind it, and when I have no ulterior motive, then I know I'm truly persuasive. -- Giancarlo Esposito
Motive is never easy. Sometimes it occurs to one only later. -- John Hawkes
..the establishment of Civil and Religious Liberty was the Motive that induced me to the field of battle. -- George Washington
How can any Action be meritorious of Praise or Dispraise, Reward or Punishment, when the natural Principle of Self-Love is the only and the irresistible Motive to it? -- Benjamin Franklin
For 'Motive,' it wasn't a question of making it look un-Canadian, but instead, we wanted it to be the product of a bunch of really skilled people making something. And that's what you have. -- Kristin Lehman
I didn't expect to feel pathos for the villains in our show. I feel quite moved in several of our episodes; I never realized that a show like 'Motive,' which aims for a broad appeal, could have that sort of emotional impact. -- Kristin Lehman
Pure motives do not insure perfect results. -- Christian Nestell Bovee
Every action needs to be prompted by a motive. -- Leonardo da Vinci
What makes life dreary is the want of a motive. -- George Eliot
Never judge a man's actions until you know his motives -- Vikas Swarup
Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own. -- James M. Barrie
I ago's soliloquy--the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity--how awful it is! -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Selfishness is the grand moving principle of nine-tenths of our actions. -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
I keep renaming my motives, but continue doing the same things. -- Mason Cooley
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. -- Oscar Wilde
We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action. -- Sarojini Naidu
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity. -- George Eliot
In a promise, what you thought, and not what you said, is always to be considered. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history. -- Mao Zedong
We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive. -- Lord Byron
For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions. -- James Russell Lowell
Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden. -- William Shenstone
It is motive alone that gives real value to the actions of men, and disinterestedness puts the cap to it. -- Jean de la Bruyere
The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone. -- William Butler Yeats
Never fear to bring the sublimest motive to the smallest duty, and the most infinite comfort to the smallest trouble. -- Phillips Brooks
Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. -- Ayn Rand
It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -- Eric Hoffer
He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. -- Walter Scott
The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives. -- Mahatma Gandhi
There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority. -- Charles Kuralt
Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do. -- Christian Nestell Bovee
Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity. -- William Howard Taft
In my opinion, the form of Government may be different in different countries, according to their circumstances, their wishes, their wants. England loves her Queen, and has full motive to do so. -- Lajos Kossuth
Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organise themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? -- Robert M. Pirsig
I really have no ulterior motive in taking on certain roles. I have no larger issue that I really want to show people. I'm an actor, that's all. I just do what I do. -- Sally Field
If you're actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you'll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface. -- Emma Thompson
We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends. -- Robert Byrd
We must not inquire too curiously into motives. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light. -- George Eliot
Mysteries and thrillers are not the same things, though they are literary siblings. Roughly put, I would say the distinction is that mysteries emphasize motive and psychology whereas thrillers rely more heavily on action and plot. -- Jon Meacham
I've been pretty good at reading people. If you rockin' with me cause you're just a solid individual, then we're rockin'. But if you got a motive or something, I am going to probably see right through that. -- Marshawn Lynch
Some people are born with a vital and responsive energy. It not only enables them to keep abreast of the times; it qualifies them to furnish in their own personality a good bit of the motive power to the mad pace. -- Kate Chopin
Prayer's important, not just as some kind of a metaphysical exercise, but I think it's a way to refresh one's own mind and motive. If you're praying, you're really looking beyond your own personal thoughts and the pressures that are around you. -- Mike Huckabee
The atmosphere is much too near for dreams. It forces us to action. It is close to us. We are in it and of it. It rouses us both to study and to do. We must know its moods and also its motive forces. -- Cleveland Abbe
It's not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even - or rather, especially - when we'd prefer not to be. -- Josh Radnor
For the life of me, I don't understand what honest motive there is in putting this in front of this body to philosophically debate marriage on a constitutional amendment that is not going to happen, and which is enormously divisive in all of our communities. -- Dianne Feinstein
It's always inspiring to me to meet people who feel that they can make a difference in the world. That's their motive, that's their passion... I think that's what makes your life meaningful, that's what fills your own heart and that's what gives you purpose. -- Maria Shriver
Where destruction is the motive, unity is dangerous. For example, if I have evil intent and I galvanize that evil intent with many others, the capacity to destroy is immense. Where goodness is the motive, unity is phenomenal and actually has some good issues to it. -- Ravi Zacharias
The main thing in measuring integrity is someone's motive and intent, not how many records they sell. Our intent in Ministry was never to be big. We just wanted to make enough money to live and to buy a studio, which we have done in Austin. -- Al Jourgensen
Men's minds are as variant as their faces. Where the motives of their actions are pure, the operation of the former is no more to be imputed to them as a crime, than the appearance of the latter; for both, being the work of nature, are alike unavoidable. -- George Washington
One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community. -- Albert Einstein
The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice. -- Jonathan Swift
When I wrote 'We Were The Mulvaneys,' I was just old enough to look back upon my own family life and the lies of certain individuals close to me, with the detachment of time. I wanted to tell the truth about secrets: How much pain they give, yet how much relief, even happiness we may feel when at last the motive for secrecy has passed. -- Joyce Carol Oates
As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm, the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Effort plus motive equals result. -- P.D. Ouspensky
Motivation is motive in action. -- Denis Waitley
A wrong motive involves defeat. -- Mary Baker Eddy
Never mistake motive for action. -- Ernest Hemingway
As an artist, motive means opportunity -- Siren Waroe
The key to motivation is motive. -- Stephen Covey
Almost all education has a political motive. -- Bertrand Russell
The noblest motive is the public good. -- Virgil
Vanity is a motive of immense potency. -- Bertrand Russell
The motive power of democracy is love. -- Henri Bergson
Profit per se is not my motive. -- Chris Hughes
The motive of success is not enough. -- Alfred North Whitehead
I rarely find motive in bird vomit. -- Jack Hodgins
The motive power of democracy is love -- Henri Bergson
In the motive lies the good or ill. -- Samuel Johnson
No one does anything from a single motive. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
We rarely do anything with on single motive. -- Paul David Tripp
The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive, -- Janet Malcolm
Where destruction is the motive, unity is dangerous. -- Ravi Zacharias
Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument. -- Reinhold Niebuhr
The motive power is the cause of all life. -- Leonardo da Vinci
Conviction is a good motive, but a bad judge. -- Albert Einstein
The distance is nothing when one has a motive. -- Jane Austen
Life always take on the character of its motive. -- J. G. Holland
Love is a far more dangerous motive than dislike. -- Lady Violet
Take away the motive, and you take away the sin. -- Miguel de Cervantes
Evolution of consciousness is the central motive of terrestrial existence. -- Sri Aurobindo
The motive force of history is truth and not lies. -- Leon Trotsky
Selfishness, not love, is the actuating motive of the gallant. -- Madame Roland
Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive -- Samuel Johnson
A business fails when motive becomes more important than the trust. -- Thiruman Archunan
Forgiveness, no matter your motive, is a dynamic of mutual healing. -- Bryant McGill
When we pray we link ourselves with an inexhaustible motive power. -- Alexis Carrel
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Believe in something big. Your life is worth a noble motive. -- Walter Inglis Anderson
It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men. -- Jean de la Bruyere
What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant. -- Thomas B. Macaulay
She had always been...the motive power of her own happiness. -- Ayn Rand
Where there is no emotion, there is no motive for violence. -- Leonard Nimoy
The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion. -- H. L. Mencken
Be sure that your motive in praying is to glorify God. -- Billy Graham
Your love for me is transparent, no hidden agenda, no ulterior motive. -- Euginia Herlihy
Never question another man's motive. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The key ingredient in engaging the power available from service is motive. -- Richie Norton
We often act treacherously more from weakness than from a fixed motive. -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it. -- William Makepeace Thackeray
Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive of our actions. -- Pliny the Younger
He who has no passion has no principal or motive to act. -- Claude Adrien Helvétius
Motivation is desire or inspiration. A motive is a reason. What's your reason? -- Rob Liano
Example is a motive of very prevailing force on the actions of men. -- Samuel Rogers
Tis the motive exalts the action; 'Tis the doing, and not the deed. -- Margaret Preston
The profit motive promotes economic growth by creating better products at cheaper prices. -- Mark Skousen
I believe absolutely in love being the central motive force of the universe. -- Laurence Housman
Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -- Eric Hoffer
Feeling and longing are the motive forces behind all human endeavor and human creations. -- Albert Einstein
The old detective story that's got a really complicated motive doesn't apply to mine. -- Ruth Rendell
The guiding motive of mankind should be charity towards men, charity towards all animals. -- Swami Vivekananda
Altruism is a fine motive, but if you want results, greed works much better. -- Henry Spencer
It is the man that makes the motive, and not the motive the man. -- James McCosh
I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device. -- Nikola Tesla
Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil. -- Anna Brownell Jameson
When a man resists sin on human motive only, he will not hold out long. -- Daniel H. Wilson
The fundamental motive of true teaching is the love that seeks and studies and performs. -- Robert Grudin
America - a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose. -- Herbert Hoover
The Man who works for others, without any selfish motive, really does good to himself. -- Ramakrishna
War, waged from whatever motive, extinguishes the sentiment of reason and justice in the mind. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

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