Mere Quotes

Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere "opiate of the people" have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor.

But the mere truth won't do. You must have a lawyer.

The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves but the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind.

Man's words are mere breath, but the word of the Lord is spirit and life.

My wife has a beastly habit of comparing poetry -- all literature in fact -- to the droppings of the goats among the rocks -- mere excreta that fertilises the ground it falls on.

A mere inference or theory must give way to a truth revealed; but a scientific truth must be maintained, however contradictory it may appear to the most cherished doctrines of religion.

As long as the human race is able to concern itself with more than mere survival, soccer will have its place.

Science transcends mere politics. As recent history demonstrates, scientists are as willing to work for a Tojo, a Hitler, or a Stalin as for the free nations of the West.

Sins cut boldly up through every class in society, but mere misdemeanours show a certain level in life.

Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie; when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.

No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors ... This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.

From mere success nothing can be concluded in favor of any nation upon whom it is bestowed.

Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.

You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself. (Quoted by C.S.Lewis in Mere Christianity)

The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi.

The man who is too set to change is dead already. The funeral is a mere detail.

Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.

Love is not only a feeling, it is also an art. A simple word, a sensitive precaution, a mere nothing reveal to a woman the sublime artist who can touch her heart without withering it.

When a tree, a natural product, is felled, is society put into possession of no greater produce than that of the mere labour of the woodman?

What we mean by Tao is the way or course of Nature. This way has nothing good or bad, it is a mere flowing of things following the development and decline attributes of the moment.

In the search for reality, energy creates its own discipline. But mere discipline, without full comprehension of all this, has no meaning, it is a most destructive thing.

People knowledge is much more important than mere product knowledge.

My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching but...precede it.

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make dspair pause. For in truth, we who are creatures of impulse, are creatures of despair.

For madness must be punished in a world in which mere sanity is prized. The revenge of the ordinary upon the gifted.

It is therefore not true that the mere existence of the Soviet Union is capable of assuring the victory of the revolution in other countries.

Mere brave speech without action is letting off useless steam.

Please go on, make your threats. I don't like to submit to mere implication.

The Cross isn't an ornament, mere symbol. It's the mystery of God's love, that He died for our sins.

In the designs of Providence, there are no mere coincidences.

Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.

Democracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.

Although wisdom is built on life experiences, the mere accumulation of years guarantees nothing.

Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants - the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare becoming a mere lower-class brawl.

Love is not a mere emotion or sentiment. It is the lucid and ardent responses of the whole person to a value that is revealed to him as perfect.

Women aren't as mere as they used to be.

The difference between mere management and leadership is communication.

The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of bread and butter involved. Properly attended to, fuller justice is done to both lawyer and client.

A man got up [after one of Huxley's 'sermons'] and said 'they had never heard anything like that in Norwich before'. Never 'did Science seem so vast and mere creeds so little'.

For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth.

Writing is a mode of agency in the world that is different from mere employment. There has to be some sort of ethical or moral drive, even if you are unaware of it.

in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!

Imagination in poetry, as distinguished from mere fancy is the transfiguring of the real or actual to the ideal.

Cricket, however, has more in it than mere efficiency. There is something called the spirit of cricket, which cannot be defined.

What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life.

So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.

There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.

No theory about our bodies as mere objects of observation and calculation (as distinct from partners in communicative interaction, assumed to be free) can comprehend human nature.

If the student could give up her work on my advice, she had better give it up without it. One does not study for a goal. The goal is a mere accident.

One does not study for a goal. The goal is a mere accident.