If the motive of writing is for some people a kind of exercise in dirty laundry, that's one thing. I've always thought of my poems as meant to be overheard, as I think all of these poems are. It seems to me if you get experience right, even your most painful or humiliating experiences - if you get those experiences right for yourself and make discoveries as you go along and find for them some formal glue - they will be poems for others.
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.
We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money.
From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,- Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity.
Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.
The motive power of democracy is love
Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
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.
Evolution of consciousness is the central motive of terrestrial existence.
The guiding motive of mankind should be charity towards men, charity towards all animals.
My motive has always been just to be who I am, and play what I love- if that doesn't get me anywhere then at least it wasn't because I tried to be something I'm not.
He who has no passion has no principal or motive to act.
It is the man that makes the motive, and not the motive the man.
Love provides the motive for obeying the commands of the law, but the law provides specific direction for exercising love.
The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them.
It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.
I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.
The motive of success is not enough.
No one since the Garden of Eden - which the serpent forsook in order to run for higher office - has imputed to politicians great purity of motive.