What motivates a good person?

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There is a story about a man who was truly altruistic. He did a lot of nice things for thousands of people over the course of about 3-1/2 years, and all he ever got in return was a crown of thorns...

My response to your comment may have been based on my misinterpretation of what you wrote. I thought you were saying people don't do things for an internal reward but because of warm fuzzy feelings and because we care about the other person. I was arguing that internal rewards and genuinely caring about the other person are not mutually exclusive but are often one and the same, with the exception of psycho/sociopaths. But as you said/implied, psychopaths may self-generate rewards by doing good deeds because it gives them a strategic advantage over the person, and not because they genuinely care about them.

Something I disagree with you about is when you implied that 'giving up' on helping someone means one never really cared about the person to begin with. Sometimes the emotional burden is too much to ask of us, and it's quite reasonable and ethical (I believe) to help ourselves by, for lack of a better phrase, 'giving up' on them or giving 'the burden' to someone/someplace else. My great-grandfather had Alzheimer's and needed to live in a nursing home. My great-grandmother and their children (my grandparent, grand-aunts and uncles) loved him dearly, but taking care of someone with that level of needs was way too much to reasonably expect any of them to handle every day.

here is a teaser ,, think of the word 'innane' okay now think 'innate ' combine these words and the vagueries of concepts kindness .
Thrown in a dash of survival of the species ... put threw a centrifuge.. distill..
add altruism ,, and presto ...'subject matter of the topic' . might sound abit naive , but am usually guilty of that anyway. distillation processes could include , education , upbringing .. environmental affectations.

Merely my own interpetation.