Hidden Motives Quotes

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule.

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.

Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks... Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks.

A fox is a wolf who sends flowers.

There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them . . . and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.

The only safety is in the middle of total misunderstanding and deception.

Men frequently do good only to give themselves opportunity of doing ill with impunity.

We often disguise our reflexes as deliberate actions.

Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.

Sometimes you have to shove all the surface stuff to the side in order to see what's underneath.

A person may be very secretive and yet have no secrets.

Spread yourself upon his bosom publicly, whose heart you would eat in private.

You can't learn the truth about a man's intentions by asking him.

There's a dark side to everything.

I think a lot of things are shoved in our face, politically and historically, for money, and that's the motive.

Who is only good that others may know it, and that he may be the better esteemed when 'tis known, who will do well but upon condition that his virtue may be known to men, is one from whom much service is not to be expected.

Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?

For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, They arrive at their conclusions—largely inarticulate. Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none: But sometimes in a smoking-room, one learns why things were done.

beware the Lure of a handsome Face, the all too ready Assumption that the lovely Fa&#231ade must needs have lovely Chambers within; for as 'tis with Great Houses, so, too, with Great Men.

Good intentions can be evil, both hands are full of grease. You know, sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. It can be so, sometimes.