“If you had no higher motive than the approval of your fellow mortal, it would do you little good.”
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXXII : Comparisons: Information Rejected; Helen to Ralph
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Anne Brontë 148
British novelist and poet 1820–1849Related quotes

“If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway!”
This is a variant or paraphrase of The Paradoxical Commandments, by Kent M. Keith, student activist, first composed in 1968 as part of a booklet for student leaders, which had hung on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta, India, and have sometimes become misattributed to her. The version posted at his site http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com begins:
Misattributed
Context: People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.
“It's nice to have an approval rating higher than the president's”
Quoted in the Boston Sports Review, Media Special, in which he was ranked the top print writer.
Unsourced

Source: The Greatness Guide: Powerful Secrets for Getting to World Class

Paris Review interview (1958)
Context: Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.
Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 377
General