Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Motive
Iago’s soliloquy—the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity—how awful it is!
Coleridge—Shakespeare. Notes on Othello.
What makes life dreary is the want of motive.
George Eliot—Daniel Deronda. Bk. VIII. Ch. LXV.
A good intention clothes itself with sudden power.
Emerson—Essays. Fate.
For there’s nothing we read of in torture’s inventions,
Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.
Lowell—A Fable for Critics. L. 250.
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—Social Maxims. Difference of Opinion no Crime.