“All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy; for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence.” ArtMadeFormPurposeDivineHolyEssenceMereComplexesPatientStorytellingColourMagicianSecrecyMedievalSymbolicPonderingPortraitureTalismans Author:William Butler Yeats
“We are driven to confess that we actually care more for religion than we do for religious theories and ideas: and in merely making that distinction between religion and its doctrine-elements, have we not already relegated the latter to an external and subordinate position? Have we not asserted that "religion itself" has some other essence or constitution than mere idea or thought?” IdeasCareReligiousPositionTheoryElementsEssenceConstitutionMereDrivenDoctrineDistinctionLatterSubordinates Author:William Ernest Hocking
“The sciences that purport to treat of human things -- the new scientific storyings of the social, the political, the racial or ethnic, and the psychic, nature of human beings -- treat not of human things but mere things, things that make up the physical, or circumstantial, content of human life but are not of the stuff of humanity, have not the human essence in them.” HumansPoliticalHumanitySocialStuffHuman BeingsEssenceTreatsMereHuman LifePsychics Author:Laura Riding
“If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.” IfsWantShouldWould BeValuesExistenceEssenceMereBoredBoredomPossessedCravingIntrinsic Value Book:The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism (illustrated) Source: The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism (illustrated)
“A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.” PeopleHomeHappinessLyingPersonalityEssenceMereShelterExpress YourselfTransient Book:PREJUDICES A SELECTION Source: PREJUDICES A SELECTION
“No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy.” IdeasStatesLibertyEssenceUnionsMereLibertarianAnarchyLibertarianismSecession Author:Abraham Lincoln
“Mere numbers cannot bring out ... the intimate essence of the experiment. This conviction comes naturally when one watches a subject at work. ... What things can happen! What reflections, what remarks, what feelings, or, on the other hand, what blind automatism, what absence of ideas! ... The experimenter judges what may be going on in [the subject's] mind, and certainly feels difficulty in expressing all the oscillations of a thought in a simple, brutal number, which can have only a deceptive precision. How, in fact, could it sum up what would need several pages of description!” NeedsFeelsMindMayIdeasFactsFeelingsHandsHappensScienceSimpleNumbersWatchesSubjectsJudgingPagesReflectionEssenceDifficultyBlindMereConvictionAbsenceExperimentsIntimateDescriptionBrutalRemarksPrecisionDeceptiveOscillation Author:Alfred Binet
“Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth” IfsWayGivingMeanWholeTechnologyEssenceMereRealmsRevealingHeed Author:Martin Heidegger
“Because Christian morality leaves animals out of account, they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals; they are mere 'things,' mere means to any ends whatsoever. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coursing, bullfights, and horse racing, and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!” MeanEndsEyeChristianUsedAnimalMoralStruggleSunFailingMoralityEternalStonesEssenceAccountsHorsePhilosophicalShameShiningMereHeavyWorthySignificanceRacingHuntingLiving ThingsCartsInscrutableVivisectionHorse RacingPariahsChristian MoralityEyes That See Author:Arthur Schopenhauer