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Mere Quotes

“Though beauty is, with the most apt similitude, I had almost said with the most literal truth, called a flower that fades and dies almost in the very moment of its maturity; yet there is, methinks, a kind of beauty which lives even to old age; a beauty that is not in the features, but, if I may be allowed the expression, shines through them. As it is not merely corporeal it is not the object of mere sense, nor is it to be discovered but by persons of true taste and refined sentiment.”

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Author:Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke
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“The Nazi danger to our Western world has long ceased to be a mere possibility. The danger is here now--not only from a military enemy but from an enemy of all law, all liberty, all morality, all religion.”

WorldLongLawLibertyEnemyMilitaryDangerPossibilityMoralityMereWesternNaziWestern World
Book:Fireside chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: radio addresses to the American people about the Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War, 1933-1944
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“A great many people (not you) do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds’ song and the frosty sunrise.”

PeopleIfsThinkingGivingStatesSeemsHappensSongEnjoySleepLordOur LivesJokesBirdMereWorriedGreat MenSunriseOur LordLive For OthersBird Song
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.”

IfsMayHas BeensAnswersCenturyIgnoranceProveAuthorityAccountsTwentiesRemainsMereFinalsAcceptedEsteemFollowersTestedSuccessorsTolerableApproximation
Book:The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley
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“A good deal of philanthropy arises in general from mere vanity and love of distinction gilded over to others and to themselves with some show of benevolent sentiment.”

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Book:The Complete Works of Sir Walter Scott: With a Biography, and His Last Additions and Illustrations
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“The insolent civility of a proud man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be; because he shows you, by his manner, that he thinks it mere condescension in him; and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretense to claim.”

IfsThinkingMenShowsProudGoodnessClaimsMereShockingCivilityPretenseRudenessCondescensionInsolentProud Man
Book:The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author
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“Great merit or great failings will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked, in the general run of the world. Examine yourself, why you like such and such people and dislike such and such others; and you will find that those different sentiments proceed from very slight causes.”

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Author:Lord Chesterfield
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“Thus we seem to be on the verge of an expansion of welfare economics into something like a social science of ethics and politics: what was intended to be a mere porch to ethics is either the whole house or nothing at all. In so laying down its life welfare economics may be able to contribute some of its insights and analytical methods to a much broader evaluative analysis of the whole social process.”

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Author:Kenneth E. Boulding
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“The thing that distinguishes social systems from physical or even biological systems is their incomparable (and embarrassing) richness in special cases. Generalizations in the social sciences are mere pathways which lead through a riotous forest of individual trees, each a species unto itself. The social scientist who loses this sense of the essential individuality and uniqueness of each case is all too likely to make a solemn scientific ass of himself, especially if he thinks that his faceless generalizations are the equivalents of the rich vareity of the world.”

IfsThinkingWorldIndividualSocialLosesCasesRichTreeSpecialEssentialsScientistMereSpeciesIndividualityForestsAssUniquenessEmbarrassingRichnessSolemnPathwaysSocial ScienceGeneralizationSocial SystemsIncomparableFaceless
Author:Kenneth E. Boulding
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“Of all the human values, three are most important. The foremost is love of God. Where there is love there is sacrifice. There arises purity of heart. There should be a fusion of love, sacrifice and purity. They are not mere human qualities. They constitute vital organs of a human being. They are as essential for a human being as the head, hands and legs for the body. Without these attributes, no one is a complete human being.”

ShouldHumansHeartImportantBodyHandsValuesThreeHuman BeingsQualitySacrificeEssentialsMereLegsAriseGod LovePurityAttributesOrgansFusionHuman ValuesHuman QualitiesLove Sacrifice
Author:Sathya Sai Baba
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“A life of mere pleasure! A little while, in the spring-time of the senses, in the sunshine of prosperity, in the jubilee of health, it may seem well enough. But how insufficient, how mean, how terrible when age comes, and sorrow, and death! A life of pleasure! What does it look like when these great changes beat against it--when the realities of eternity stream in? It looks like the fragments of a feast, when the sun shines upon the withered garlands, and the tinsel, and the overturned tables, and the dead lees of wine.”

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Author:Edwin Hubbel Chapin
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“Man is a free moral agent and can be magnanimous and deal disinterestedly, humanity is a definite goal, social justice is desirable and possible, individual lives may be gloriously diversified, uniquely individualized, and yet socially useful; or, these are mere phrases, snares to catch gulls, soothing syrup for our troubled souls.”

MenMaySoulHumanityIndividualSocialGoalJusticeDealsMoralSocial JusticeMereAgentsPhrasesDefiniteDesirableAnthropologySoothingSnaresIndividual LifeSyrupGullsMagnanimous
Author:George Amos Dorsey
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“And the reason is found in the first lie - the lie which you hold as the truth about God - that God cannot be trusted; that God's love cannot be depended upon; that God's acceptance of you is conditional; that the ultimate outcome is thus in doubt. For if you cannot depend on God's love to always be there, on whose love can you depend? If God retreats and withdraws when you do not perform properly, will not mere mortals also?”

IfsInspirationalFirstsReasonLyingFoundReligiousDoubtAcceptanceDependsUltimateMereMortalsOutcomesTrustedRetreatGod's LoveConditionalMere Mortals
Author:Neale Donald Walsch
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“Feeling prosperous means paying your utility bills on time and with a smile on your face. Prosperity means not only giving to the homeless person, but having a smile on your face when you do it. Prosperity also means buying fresh produce with a smile on your face instead of buying day-old bread or bargain overripe fruit with a scowl on your face. Still more, being prosperous means tipping generously with a smile on your face when the waiter has given you great service instead of trying to stiff him with a mere percent, or worse, no tip at all.”

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Author:Ernie J Zelinski
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“Whatever the country, capitalist or socialist, man was everywhere crushed by technology, made a stranger to his own work, imprisoned, forced into stupidity. The evil all arose from the fact that he had increased his needs rather than limited them; . . . As long as fresh needs continued to be created, so new frustrations would come into being. When had the decline begun? The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty. . . . Only a moral revolution - not a social or political revolution - only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth.”

MenNeedsLongMadeCountryFactsPoliticalEvilLostSocialLossMoralTechnologyRevolutionMereStrangerStupidityDisasterFrustrationCapitalistDeclineSocialistCrushedUsefulnessPolitical Revolution
Book:Les Belles Images
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“Fashionable women regard themselves, and are regarded by men, as pretty toys or as mere instruments of pleasure; and the vacuity of mind, the heartlessness, the frivolity which is the necessary result of this false and debasing estimate of women, can only be fully understood by those who have mingled in the folly and wickedness of fashionable life.”

MenMindHeartPleasureResultsUnderstoodRegardInstrumentsMereFollyToysWickednessFashionableFrivolityVacuityHeartlessness
Author:Sarah Moore Grimke
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“Intellect is not sexed;... strength of mind is not sexed; and ... our views about the duties of men and the duties of women, the sphere of man and the sphere of woman, are mere arbitrary opinions, differing in different ages and countries, and dependent solely on the will and judgment of erring mortals.”

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Author:Sarah Moore Grimke
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“The alcoholic trance is not just a haze, as though the eyes were also unshaven. It is not a mere buzzing in the ears, a dizzinessor disturbance of balance. One arrives in the garden again, at nursery time, when the gentle animals are fed and in all the world there are only toys.”

WorldEyeAnimalBalanceGardenEarsMereDrinkingAlcoholInnocenceGentleFedsToysAlcoholicsNurseryDisturbanceTranceHaze
Book:The world within the word: essays
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“What more degrades woman today than that she so often seeks marriage as a support? Why is the holy sacrament of love, the sanctity of the family state, so often prostituted and destroyed, but because marriage is entered upon as a necessity or a convenience? And what can so place marriage on its only true basis of mutual love, mutual fitness, mutual esteem, as for woman to make herself independent of it as a mere means of subsistence?”

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Author:Mary C. Ames
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“It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples that there is nothing which may not be thus represented. He will hardly need to be told that everything is not a mere joke.”

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Book:Thoughts and Apophthegms: From the Writings of Archbishop Whateley
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“The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism ... for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe.”

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Book:The Illustrated Book of Tea
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“I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in me not in the external world. I asked, was it a mere nervous impression a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration.”

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Book:The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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“Where philosophy ends, poetry must commence. There should not be a common point of view, a natural manner of thinking which standsin contrast to art and liberal education, or mere living; that is, one should not conceive of a realm of crudeness beyond the boundaries of education. Every conscious link of an organism should not perceive its limits without a feeling for its unity in relation to the whole. For example, philosophy should not only be contrasted to non-philosophy, but also to poetry.”

ThinkingShouldArtEndsPhilosophyWholeFeelingsPoetryNaturalViewsCommonExamplePoetLimitsConsciousRelationPhilosophicalUnityMerePoint Of ViewBoundariesPerceiveRealmsLinksContrastOrganismsLiberal Education
Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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“Science is not sacrosanct. The mere fact that it exists, is admired, has results is not sufficient for making it a measure of excellence. Modern science arose from global objections against earlier views and rationalism itself, the idea that there are general rules and standards for conducting our affairs, affairs of knowledge included, arose from global objections to common sense.”

IdeasFactsResultsViewsCommonModernStandardsExcellenceMereAffairCommon SenseSufficientObjectionsModern ScienceConductingRationalism
Author:Paul Feyerabend
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“The most likely way to kill a tradition is to over-formalize it, which is to carry it on in the same way after everyone has ceased to defer to it. The way to revive it is to show that it has grown out of and is still related to our most cherished values. But this requires radical insight and the stripping away of many things which are mere accretions.”

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Book:In defense of tradition: collected shorter writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963
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“... so large a portion of those who hold much capital, instead of using their various advantages for the greatest good of those around them, employ the chief of them for mere selfish indulgences; thus inflicting as much mischief on themselves, as results to others from their culpable neglect. A great portion of the rich seem to be acting on the principle, that the more God bestows on them, the less are they under obligation to practise any self-denial, in fulfilling his benevolent plan of raising our race to intelligence and holiness.”

SelfSeemsWealthResultsActingRaceResponsibilityPrinciplesRichPlansAdvantageMereVariousSelfishObligationChiefsDenialSelfishnessHolinessNeglectPortionsFulfillingSocial ResponsibilityIndulgenceMischiefBenevolentPractiseSelf-denial
Author:Catharine Beecher
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“When a miner looks at the rope that is to lower him into the deep mine, he may coolly say, "I have faith in that rope as well made and strong." But when he lays hold of it, and swings down by it into the tremendous chasm, then he is believing on the rope. Then he is trusting himself to the rope. It is not a mere opinion - it is an act. The miner lets go of every thing else, and bears his whole weight on those well braided strands of hemp. Now that is faith.”

BelieveWellsLooksMayMadeWholeStrongOpinionMinesBearsLetting GoWeightLaysMereHave FaithSwingsRopeStrandsMinersChasmsHemp
Author:Theodore L. Cuyler
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