Full Idea
The motives we actually experience are too close to us to enable us to feel them clearly. They are in a sense unintelligible.
Gist of Idea
Most of us are too close to our own motives to understand them
Source
Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.30)
Book Reference
Fry,Roger: 'Vision and Design' [Penguin 1937], p.30
A Reaction
Fry is defending the role of art in clarifying and highlighting such things, but I am not convinced by his claim. We can grasp most of our motives with a little introspection, and those we can't grasp are probably too subtle for art as well.