"No one does anything from a single motive"
About this Quote
Coleridge’s line lands like a quiet rebuke to the tidy stories we tell about ourselves. “No one does anything from a single motive” isn’t just psychological realism; it’s an assault on moral bookkeeping. The sentence is stripped down, almost clinical, and that’s the point: it refuses the romance of purity. In an era that prized grand declarations of virtue, faith, patriotism, and artistic calling, Coleridge insists on the mess underneath - the mixture of vanity and conscience, affection and self-interest, duty and desire.
The intent feels double-edged. On one hand, it’s a defense of human complexity: people are not cartoons, and even good acts can be braided with selfishness without becoming meaningless. On the other, it’s a warning aimed at anyone trying to read character like a ledger. If motives are plural, then certainty about them becomes suspect. The subtext is anti-simplification: the moralist who condemns “hypocrisy” and the idealist who demands “authenticity” are both clinging to a fantasy that motivation can be singular, legible, and clean.
Context matters. Coleridge, a Romantic poet with a philosopher’s itch, lived amid political disillusionment (post-French Revolution) and personal struggle - ambition, anxiety, dependency. Romanticism often gets caricatured as all feeling and sincerity; this line shows its sharper intelligence. It’s less a sigh than a scalpel, cutting through the comforting fiction that our reasons come one at a time.
The intent feels double-edged. On one hand, it’s a defense of human complexity: people are not cartoons, and even good acts can be braided with selfishness without becoming meaningless. On the other, it’s a warning aimed at anyone trying to read character like a ledger. If motives are plural, then certainty about them becomes suspect. The subtext is anti-simplification: the moralist who condemns “hypocrisy” and the idealist who demands “authenticity” are both clinging to a fantasy that motivation can be singular, legible, and clean.
Context matters. Coleridge, a Romantic poet with a philosopher’s itch, lived amid political disillusionment (post-French Revolution) and personal struggle - ambition, anxiety, dependency. Romanticism often gets caricatured as all feeling and sincerity; this line shows its sharper intelligence. It’s less a sigh than a scalpel, cutting through the comforting fiction that our reasons come one at a time.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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