A Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Quote Topics

Actions Best Blush Did Done Motives Often Our See Should Very Were Which World

Quote Author

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
French - Writer
September 15, 1613 - March 17, 1680

We should often blush at our noblest deeds if the world were to see all their underlying motives.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

There's a blush for won't, and a blush for shan't, and a blush for having done it: There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught, and a blush for just begun it.

John Keats

sacrifice' was often a cloak for many actions that did not always stem from the highest motives.

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.

Saint Teresa of Avila

The motives to actions and the inward turns of mind seem in our opinion more necessary to be known than the actions themselves; and much rather would we choose that our reader should clearly understand what our principal actors think than what they do.

Sarah Fielding

I was like so many others passion-ately involved in trying to bring those truths to the world's attention. We did our very best to peacefully do that. The city, state, and federal governments did their very best to quell our efforts. They were used to using heavy-handed tactics to silence us.

Leonard Peltier

My actions to promote peace, the mediation missions which I carried out during many conflicts, which very often occurred between brothers of the same country, are not driven by any ulterior motives or any calculations based on personal ambitions.

Omar Bongo

The motives even of our best actions will not always bear examination.

Charlotte Lennox

Most people use two totally different sets of criteria for judging themselves versus others. We tend to judge others according to their actions. It's very cut-and-dried. However, we judge ourselves by our intentions. Even if we do the wrong thing, if we believe our motives were good, we let ourselves off the hook. And we are often willing to do that over and over before requiring ourselves to change.

John C. Maxwell

At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at remembering them.

Leo Tolstoy

There's nothing wrong with being proud of America, believing that America can do great things. America can do great things, it has done great things. I think we have to have the self-awareness to recognize that the world is a very, very big place, that we could be a force for good things in the world, but we have to have the humility to recognize that sometimes even when we think we're acting from the best of motives our own idealism can be infected by self-interest. Other people in other countries can see it sometimes better than we can.

Peter Beinart

The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our observation.

Gustave Le Bon

All governments in all wars have used all the means at their disposal to put their own motives, decisions and actions, and the actions of their military forces, in the best possible light.

Bruce Jackson

In the chapter on study we considered the importance of observing ourselves to see how often our speech is a frantic attempt to explain and justify our actions. Having seen this in ourselves, let's experiment with doing deeds without any words of explanation whatever. We note our sense of fear that people will misunderstand why we have done what we have done. We seek to allow God to be our justifier.