Take away the motive, and you take away the sin.
Capitalism started out with a noble and high motive, but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against.
We can never understand other people's motives, nor their furniture.
It is the man that makes the motive, and not the motive the man.
Pictures are wasted unless the motive power which impelled you to action is strong and stirring.
We like so much to hear people talk of us and of our motives, that we are charmed even when they abuse us.
See a person's means. . . Observe his motives. Examine that in which he rests. How can a person conceal his character?
Words can be worrisome, poeple complex, motives and manners unclear, grant her the wisdom to choose her path right, free from unkindness and fear.
actions whose motives he cannot understand that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit.
Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. Even with no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth.
What I desire of a poem is a clear understanding of motive, and a just evaluation of feeling A poem in the first place should offer us a new perception. . bringing into being a new experience Verse is more valuable than prose for its rhythms are faster and more highly organised and lead to greater compexity.
The saving of labour of the individual should be the object and honest humanitarian considerations, and not greed, the motive.
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.
I know it's not strictly sex that accounts for my straying the motive usually attributed to men. I think it's just too tempting to have two lives rather than one. Some people think that too much travel begets infidelity: Separation and opportunity test the bonds of love. I think it's more likely that people who hate to make choices to settle on one thing or another are attracted to travel. Travel doesn't beget a double life. The appeal of the double life begets travel.
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.
Believe in something big. Your life is worth a noble motive.
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.
Watch your motive before God; have no other motive in prayer than to know Him.
What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.
Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or calorie, or lightening.