"Motiveless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great ability, and executed it with daring, his good sense and good luck forsook him. He made no use of the crime he had committed; and from that day forward till his own assassination, nothing prospered with him. Indeed, the murder of Alessandro appears to have been almost motiveless, considered from the point of view of practical politics. Varchi assumes that Lorenzino's burning desire of glory prompted the deed; and when he had acquired the notoriety he sought, there was an end to his ambition. This view is confirmed by the Apology he wrote ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... distinguish such a woman as I have described to you from a common thief. There is the insane desire to steal—merely for stealing's sake—a morbid craving. Of course in a sense it is stealing. But it is persistent, incorrigible, irrational, motiveless, useless. ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... weightier matter than the first. Here Iago is a being who hates good simply because it is good, and loves evil purely for itself. His action is not prompted by any plain motive like revenge, jealousy or ambition. It springs from a 'motiveless malignity,' or a disinterested delight in the pain of others; and Othello, Cassio and Desdemona are scarcely more than the material requisite for the full attainment of this delight. This second Iago, evidently, is no conventional villain, and he ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... wasn't it awful? It might have been you or me! I do believe the masked man is on the warpath, only he went for her this time instead. It may be a lunatic, for every act seems so perfectly motiveless." ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... disappeared from the revised edition, as well as some curious outbursts of that motiveless despair which Byron made fashionable not long after. Nor are there wanting touches of fleshliness which strike us oddly as coming ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... object of a very lively maternal affection; so the young man, followed from his childhood by a fatality that he could not explain, had sprung up like a wild shrub, full of sap and strength, but uncultivated and solitary. Besides, from the time when he was fifteen, one was accustomed to his motiveless absences, which the indifference that everyone bore him made moreover perfectly explicable; from time to time, however, he was seen to reappear at the castle, like those migratory birds which always return to the same place but only ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... for Materialism, it appears to require a negative answer both from Spiritualism and from Monism. For, as regards its relation to Spiritualism, when once the ground is cleared of certain errors of statement and fallacies of reasoning, we appear to find that unless the will is held to be motiveless—which would be to destroy not only the doctrine of moral responsibility, but likewise that of universal causation—it must be regarded as subject to law, or as determined in its action by the nature of its past history and present circumstances. Lastly, the theory ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... of answer. And, indeed, we rapidly found an answer satisfactory enough to give us time to breathe, in remembering that Reineke, with all his roguery, has no malice in him .... It is not in his nature to hate; he could not do it if he tried. The characteristic of Iago is that deep motiveless malignity which rejoices in evil as its proper element, which loves evil as good men love virtue. In his calculations on the character of the Moor, he despises his unsuspicious trustingness as imbecility, while he hates him as a man because his nature is the perpetual ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... first say what it is not. It is not a cause. This is nothing more than a prior arrangement of the effect; the reason for an occurrence is never assigned by showing its cause. Nor is it a caprice, that is, motiveless volition, or will as a motor. In this sense, the "will of God" is no good reason for an occurrence. Nor is it fate, or physical necessity. This is denying there ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton |
