Vanity is a motive of immense potency.
A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.
Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
A person who is keen to shake your hand usually has something up his sleeve.
In the fulfillment of your duties, let your intentions be so pure that you reject from your actions any other motive than the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
There was a warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.
Never fear to bring the sublimest motive to the smallest duty, and the most infinite comfort to the smallest trouble.
The distance is nothing when one has a motive.
The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.
Competition whose motive is merely to compete, to drive some other fellow out, never carries very far.
I am suspicious without a motive, and jealous without love; although I feel I ought to love since I desire to be loved.
No one is willing to acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive can be found for the estrangement of his acquaintances.
There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.
We can never understand other people's motives, nor their furniture.
The motive force of history is truth and not lies.
One must know ones enemy as he is, not as one, for whatever motives, wishes him to be.
The desire for legitimate offspring is, in fact, according to the Catholic Church, the only motive which can justify sexual intercourse.
Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
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.
Effort plus motive equals result.