Motive (n.) is less important to know than it is to know the fictitious and fanciful motives to which men ascribed their conduct. For a man's inner happiness and misery depends on their faith in this or that motive - not by virtue of the actual motives/
A Motive (n.) publicly declared is a substitute mother — the prince who finds a casus belli after resolving on war foists on his child a mother who is henceforth to count as such.
A Motive (n.) is the reason a murderer's poor reason invents for him: his soul thirsted for the bliss of the knife, so reason talked him into robbery.
A Motive (n.) is just a surface phenomenon of consciousness, an after-the-fact that hides the causes of an act more than it reveals them.
A Motive (n.) among the conscious ones is only a surface phenomenon: behind them stands the struggle of our drives and states for dominion.