Quotes
Quotes about Motives
All impediments in fancy's course
Are motives of more fancy.
Of the various executive abilities, no one excited more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the hands of honest men, with understanding sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the same time more difficult to fulfil. The knowledge of character possessed by a single individual is of necessity limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect.
Children are to be won to follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on no account to be forced thereto by whipping.
Popular historical novels falsify the past and simplify the motives which make historical change
I can't accept that a work of fiction should be either immoral or moral. It should merely show the world as it is and have no moral bias. It is for the reader to see in the book the nature of the motives of human actions and perhaps learn something, too, of the motives behind the social forces which judge those actions and which, I take it, we call a system of morality
We would often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives which produced them.
We like so much to hear people talk of us and of our motives, that we are charmed even when they abuse us.
One must be truthful with oneself about one's own motives, especially if one is to survive in the world. It takes rigor, and it takes courage.
Behind the words of Jesus and the memories about him, there shines forth a self-authenticating portrait of a real person in all his human uniqueness, an impression which is accessible alike to the layman and to the expert, to believer and non-believer. No reader of the gospel story can fail to be impressed by Jesus' humble submission to the will of his God on the one hand, and his mastery of all situations on the other; by his penetrating discernment of human motives and his authoritative demand of radical obedience on the one hand, and his gracious, forgiving acceptance of sinners on the other. There is nothing, either in the Messianic hopes of pre-Christian Judaism or in the later Messianic beliefs of the early Christian Church to account for this portrait. It is characterized by an originality and freshness which is beyond the power of invention. (Continued tomorrow).
"Let there be no inscription upon my tomb. Let no man write my epitaph. No man can write my epitaph. I am here ready to die. I am not allowed to vindicate my character; and when I am prevented from vindicating myself, let no man dare calumniate me. Let my character and motives repose in obscurity and peace, till other times and other men can do them justice."
Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can.
If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own. â¢Charlotte Bronte A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked. â¢Bernard Meltzer True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. â¢George Washington Friends are born, not made. â¢Henry Adams Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes. â¢Anonymous Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. â¢Aristotle A friend loveth at all times. â¢Bible, Proverbs 17:17 Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship-never. â¢Charles Caleb Colton A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. â¢Ralph Waldo Emerson It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them â¢Ralph Waldo Emerson The only way to have a friend is to be one. â¢Ralph Waldo Emerson Real friendship is shown in times of trouble; prosperity is full of friends. â¢Euripides It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did. â¢F Scott Fitzgerald We do not regret the loss of our friends by reasons of their merit, but because of our needs and for the good opinion that we believed them to have held of us. â¢François Duc de La Rochefoucauld God gives us our relatives- thank God we can choose our friends. â¢Ethel Watts Mumford Love demands infinitely less than friendship. â¢George Jean Nathan Women can form a friendship with a man very well; but to preserve it-- to that end a slight physical antipathy must probably help. â¢Friedrich Nietzsche Hold a true friend with both your hands. â¢Nigerian Proverb Friendship is constant in all other things save in the office and affairs of love. â¢William Shakespeare The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend. â¢Logan Pearsall Smith A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. â¢Henry David Thoreau Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. â¢Bible, John 15:13 The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right. â¢Mark Twain Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce. â¢Voltaire Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one. â¢Oscar Wilde Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. â¢Virginia Woolf Chide a friend in private and praise him in public. â¢Solon Depend on no man, on no friend, but him who can depend on himself. He only who acts conscientiously towards himself will act so towards others, and vice versa. â¢Lavater Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, What! You, too? I thought I was the only one. â¢C. S. Lewis If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends let others excel you. â¢Colton Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest to his feet. â¢John Seldon There's not so much danger in a known foe than in a suspected friend. â¢Nabb To lose a friend is the greatest of all losses. â¢Syrus True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost. â¢Charles Caleb Colton We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them. â¢Evelyn Waugh Who purposely cheats his friend, would cheat his God. â¢Lavater Friendship is like money, easier made than kept. â¢Samuel Butler A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. â¢Ralph Waldo Emerson, If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. â¢Blaise Pascal I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. â¢Plutarch There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between counsel of a friend and a flatterer. â¢Francis Bacon Friends, if we be honest with ourselves, we shall be honest with each other. â¢George Macdonald A friend is, as it were, a second self. â¢Cicero Friendship is Love without his wings! â¢Byron To give counsel as well as to take it is a feature of true friendship. â¢Cicero Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find. â¢Shakespeare That friendship will not continue to the end which is begun for an end. â¢Quarles He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength. â¢Joubert Every friend is to the other a sun, and a sunflower also. â¢Richter Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature. â¢Nathaniel Hawthorne The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words. â¢Buddha Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures. â¢Seneca The mind is lowered through association with inferiors. With equals it attains equality; and with superiors, superiority. â¢The Hitopadesa Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer. â¢La Fontaine The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself. â¢Moliere One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim. â¢Henry Brook Adams A friend in need is a friend to be avoided. â¢Lord Samuel While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both of his. â¢Anonymous Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral. â¢Kehlog Albran The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend. â¢Henry David Thoreau There are friendships to one who lives in society; thus our present grief arises from having friendships; observing the evils resulting from friendship, let one walk alone like a rhinoceros. â¢Buddha The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend. â¢Abraham Lincoln If a man does not make new acquaintances, as he advances through life, he soon will find himself alone. A man should keep his friendship in constant repair. â¢Samuel Johnson You should never second-guess the motives of your true friends. You don't even have to analyze their actions because you know, at bottom, that whatever they do or say or think flows in some fundamental way from the fact that they love you. â¢Star Jones True friends visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come without invitation. â¢Theophrastus True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. â¢George Washington But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. â¢Thomas Jefferson True friendship brings sunshine to the shade, and shade to the sunshine
To do a perfectly unselfish act for selfish motives.
I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.
One must be truthful with oneself about one's own motives, especially if one is to survive in the world. It takes rigor, and it takes courage.
I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity. - My Summer in a Garden.
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.
Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.
We would often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives which produced them.
We like so much to hear people talk of us and of our motives, that we are charmed even when they abuse us.
Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
...the crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorem gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to the flag, a leader, a religious faith or political conviction.
...we are apt to forget that the vast majority of men and women who fell under the totalitarian spell was activated by unselfish motives, ready to accept the role of martyr or executioner, as the cause demanded.
This is the constitutional limitation of man's knowledge and interests, the fact that he cannot know more than a tiny part of the whole of society and that therefore all that can enter into his motives are the immediate effects which his actions will have in the sphere he knows.
There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.
