John Burroughs

The type of mind of Whitman's, which seldom or never emerges as a mere mentality, an independent thinking and knowing faculty, but always as a personality, always as a complete human entity, never can expound itself, because its operations are synthetic and not analytic; its mainspring is love and not mere knowledge.

American Author

Lysander Spooner

Men's moral principles are weak enough without their being made subordinate to selfishness; and their selfishness is quite active enough, without any such effort as Christianity makes to constitute it the mainspring of all their conduct.

American Philosopher

Marquis de Sade

The imagination is the spur of delights... all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?

French Novelist

Guy Finley

Resistance to revelation, resistance to becoming conscious of all that dwells within us - high and low, light and dark - is the anti-change factor. It is also the mainspring of all our psychological fears.

American Writer

Clarence Day

Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts.

Oriana Fallaci

It is the mainspring of life, courage. And courage has many faces.

Italian Journalist

Max Beerbohm

Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

English Actor

Refers to an essential element in mechanical devices, particularly in timepieces.

Vital Component

In non-technical contexts, 'mainspring' can be used metaphorically to express the importance of an element.

Metaphoric Use

Most common in discussions about watches, clocks, or mechanics.

Technical Context

Signifies the main factor that drives or influences an outcome or situation.

Central Influence

Used to describe non-physical driving forces or motivations.

Figurative Sense

Points to the foundational reason or motivation behind actions or developments.

Underlying Reason

 and that's very central to your concerns. There is something that we know about everyone we meet anywhere in the world, on the street, that is the very mainspring of whatever they do

Mainspring