Merely A Quotes & Sayings

If the world is an objective reality that exists independently of us, then humans themselves, even in their own eyes, are nothing more than objects, and their life stories merely a series of disconnected historical accidents, which they may wonder at, but which they themselves have nothing to do with. — Imre Kertesz

We imagine "pure" cybernetic systems, but we can prove only that we know how to build fairly dysfunctional ones. We kid ourselves when we think we understand something, even a computer, merely because we can model or digitize it. — Jaron Lanier

The Marquis De Sade said that the most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage. When a boss humiliates an employee, or a man humiliates his wife, he is merely being cowardly or taking his revenge on life, they are people who have never dared to look into the depths of their soul, never attempted to know the origin of that desire to unleash the wild beast, or to understand that sex, pain and love are all extreme experiences. Only those who know those frontiers know life; everything else is just passing the time, repeating the same tasks, growing old and dying without ever having discovered what we are doing here. — Paulo Coelho

It is of the first order of importance to remember this, that the shaman is more than merely a sick man, or a madman; he is a sick man who has healed himself, who is cured, and who must shamanize in order to remain cured. — Terence McKenna

My mood has changed now. And the sun has gone behind the clouds. I'm in this mood I feel occasionally ... this mood where there's a very good friend nearby who I should be phoning. If only I could reach that friend and talk, then everything would be just fine. The dilemma is, of course, I just don't know who that friend is. But in my heart I know my mood is merely me feeling disconnected from my true inner self. — Douglas Coupland

They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurerance of our identities? I tell you, my dear, Narcissus was so egotist ... he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, on seeing his reflection, the beautiful comrade, the only inseparatable love ... poor Narcissus, possibly the only human who was ever honest on this point. — Truman Capote

At the heart of my politics has always been the value of community, the belief that we are not merely individuals struggling in isolation from each other, but members of a community who depend on each other, who benefit from each other's help, who owe obligations to each other. From that everything stems: solidarity, social justice, equality, freedom. — Tony Blair

I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache an about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. — C.S. Lewis

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist. — Henry Adams

The existential attitude is one of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude. "Existential" in this sense can be defined as participating in a situation, especially a cognitive situation, with the whole of one's existence ... There are realms of reality or - more exactly - of abstraction from reality in which the most complete detachment is the adequate cognitive approach. Everything which can be expressed in terms of quantitative measurement has this character. But it is most inadequate to apply the same approach to reality in its infinite concreteness. A self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing. You must participate in a self in order to know what it is. But by participating you change it. In all existential knowledge both subject and object are transformed by the very act of knowing. — Paul Tillich

Little bits of Norwegian came to me by a kind of aural osmosis. The most surprising linguistic fact I learned was the impoverishment of that language in swear words. In fact, there is only one- 'farn'- which merely means something like 'devil take it!', but is considered very rude by a well brought-up Viking. It has to pass muster for most of the everyday tragedies that beset an expedition. If a finger is hammered, you jump up and down and cry 'farn'; if you drop an outstanding fossil irretrievably into the sea, you splutter for a while and then mutter 'farn' under your breath. If all your provisions were carried away by a hurricane and death were guaranteed, all the poor Norwegian could do would be to stand on the shingle and cry 'farn' into the wind. Somehow this does not seem adequate for the occasion. — Richard Fortey

Defining virginity means directly affecting the lives of nearly all women, and many men as well. Despite what some people appear to think, defining virginity is not merely a philosophical exercise. It is an exercise in controlling how people behave, feel, and think, and in some cases, whether they live or die. — Hanne Blank

It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now-familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences. — Hunter S. Thompson

One keeps looking out for innovation in IPL, but of late it hasn't been all that obvious. Lionel Richie as an opening act? Johnny Mathis must have been busy. Matthew Hayden's Mongoose? Looks a bit like Bob Willis' bat with the "flow-through holes"; Saint Peter batting mitts are surely overdue a revival. The only genuinely intriguing step this year, bringing the IPL to YouTube, was forced on Modi by the collapse of Setanta; otherwise what Modi presents as 'innovation' is merely expansion by another name, in the number of franchises and the number of games. — Gideon Haigh

The fatal conceit of most spies is to believe they are loved, in a relationship between equals, and not merely manipulated. — Ben Macintyre

The West Sister Dating Rules were clear on the matter of apologies. On the evolutionary scale of dating, a guy who apologized solely for the sake of ending the argument and getting back into your good graces was on the level of primeval slime - especially if he was clearly doing so merely because he was hoping for sex. The proper response was to unveil the offender's deceit by demanding he explain what exactly he was apologizing for, and then scorn him when he betrayed his ignorance. — Alex Gabriel

As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them. — Tench Coxe

Images, whether on paper or in the mind, are not important for themselves. Merely links. Take a parallel from an infinitely higher sphere. Tomorrow morning a priest will give me a little round, thin, cold, tasteless wafer. Is it a disadvantage - is it not in some ways an advantage - that it can't pretend the least resemblance to that with which it unites me? — C.S. Lewis

God's purpose for the Christian's involvement in the church was radically different from my gas-station approach. The church wasn't merely a place to swing by for a fill-up. The journey of the Christian faith was supposed to be made with other believers. The church isn't a gas station, I realized. It's the bus I'm supposed to be traveling on. — Joshua Harris

Though colour may appear at first a part of painting merely mechanical, yet it still has its rules, and those grounded upon that presiding principle which regulates both the great and the little in the study of a painter. — Joshua Reynolds

What we are now witnessing in the 21st century is the fracture or complete breakdown of families, societies, and governments as a result of centuries of dehumanization that have taken a toll. More natural disasters (tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, etc.) merely uncover the reality of the national disasters we have created by granting sanctuary to dehumanization via the law. — Liza Lugo

Analysis predating [Milton] Friedman's gave a different answer to question of the Fed's policy errors [during the Great Depression] and new scholarship is validating the old wisdom. It now appears that Friedman will be merely an interlude between the sounder analysis of economists contemporary to the Great Depression and those who have rediscovered their insights. --Jeff Herbener — David Howden

What is nonsense, and what is not, then, may be merely a matter of perspective. — Gary Zukav

The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: "My Companions are as stars. Whomsoever of them you follow, you will be rightly guided." When a man looks at a star, and finds his way by it, the star does not speak any word to that man. Yet, by merely looking at the star, the man knows the road from roadlessness and reaches his goal. — Rumi

Religion and its defenders have always been the most insidious enemy of the true faith precisely because they are not glaring opponents; they are impostors. A raving pagan is easier to dismiss than an elder in your church. Before Jesus came along, the Pharisees ran the show. Everybody took what they said as gospel - even though it didn't sound like good news at all. But we wrestle not against flesh and blood. The Pharisees and their brethren down through the ages have merely acted - unknowingly, for the most part - as puppets, the mouthpiece of the Enemy. — John Eldredge

If we wish to stop the atrocities, we need merely to step away from the isolation. There is a whole world waiting for us, ready to welcome us home. — Derrick Jensen

Conversion is not merely a ticket out of hell. It is the beginning of a whole new life, not just an end to the old one. — Aimee Byrd

You cannot have good architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty. — John Ruskin

Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time. — Gary Keller

It's funny the things people say when someone dies.
He's in a better place.
How do you know that?
Life goes on.
That's supposed to comfort me? I'm excruciatingly aware that life goes on. It hurts every damned second. How lovely to know it's going to continue like this. Thank you for reminding me.
Time heals.
No, it doesn't. At best, time is the great leveler, sweeping us all into coffins. We find ways to distract ourselves from the pain. Time is neither scalpel nor bandage. It is indifferent. Scar tissue isn't a good thing. It's merely the wound's other face. — Karen Marie Moning

If you don't try to stop whatever is going on in your mind, but merely observe it, eventually you'll begin to feel a tremendous sense of relaxation, a vast sense of openness within your mind - which is in fact your natural mind, the naturally unperturbed background against which various thoughts come and go. — Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Behind her, Preston grunted and said, "I know it's not the right thing to say to a lady, miss, but you are sweating like a pig!"
Tiffany, trying to get her shattered thoughts together, muttered, "My mother always said that horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies merely glow ... "
"Is that so?" said Preston cheerfully.
"Well, miss, you are glowing like a pig! — Terry Pratchett

A writer is merely a reader that had the guts to be read, and, heard. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It is not a struggle merely of economic theories, or forms of government or of military power. At issue is the true nature of man. Either man is the creature whom the psalmist described as a little lower than the angels ... or man is a soulless, animated machine to be enslaved, used and consumed by the state for its own glorification. It is, therefore, a struggle which goes to the roots of the human spirit, and its shadow falls across the long sweep of man's destiny. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is a dull sensation, your heart breaking, like the sound of a pebble dropping on the sand. Not a shattering, not a tearing apart, there is nothing shrill or grandiose about the sensation. It is merely an internal realization that something treasured you never knew you had is leaving forever. — Samantha Bruce-Benjamin

The aim of this book is not to make atheism a popular belief or even to overcome its invisibility. My object is not utopian. It is merely to provide good reasons for being an atheist. ... My object is to show that atheism is a rational position and that belief in God is not. I am quite aware that atheistic beliefs are not always based on reason. My claim is that they should be. — Michael Martin

Among the women, a spontaneous cheer went up, which Liz was surprised to find herself joining, and this was when (she was on her fifth drink) she realized both that she was completely drunk
not just tipsy, not merely buzzed
and also that she was much happier than she'd been an hour or two before. She felt a retroactive remorse for all the Eligible contestants she'd deemed trashy and idiotic from the comfort of her living room; apparently, like teriyaki pizza and bee venom facials, getting wasted on a reality-TV show was not to be knocked until tried. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Of course, like all over-simple classifications of this type, the dichotomy becomes, if pressed, artificial, scholastic and ultimately absurd. But if it is not an aid to serious criticism, neither should it be rejected as being merely superficial or frivolous: like all distinctions which embody any degree of truth, it offers a point of view from which to look and compare, a starting-point for genuine investigation. — Isaiah Berlin

When people listen to my music, I hope that they will notice that if you take a piece by a composer like Schubert, the major and the minor triad is an extermely important thing not merely as harmony, but in creating melodic lines. Schubert is always walking up and down with arpeggios on C, E, G and so forth. I am not doing anything different really, except using a different system of harmony. — Elliott Carter

The mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal concerns, beholds with the radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the rational mind of God. — Joseph Campbell

Knowledge based on the senses is therefore a subjective judgment, an ever-varying opinion without any absolute foundation. True knowledge, by contrast, is possible only from a direct apprehension of the transcendent Forms, which are eternal and beyond the shifting confusion and imperfection of the physical plane. Knowledge derived from the senses is merely opinion and is fallible by any nonrelative standard. Only knowledge derived directly from the Ideas is infallible and can be justifiably called real knowledge. — Richard Tarnas

Obstacles are not opposing you, but merely and gently re-routing you. It is important not to view that which stands in your way as your 'enemy.' It can often be your best friend, sending you on a detour that takes you around what would have been your biggest stumbling block. — Neale Donald Walsch

Genuine art . . . does not have as its object a mere transitory game. Its serious purpose is not merely to translate the human being into a momentary dream of freedom, but actually to MAKE him free. — Friedrich Schiller

Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality. — Douglas Adams

The tragic sense of life is ironically not tragic at all, at least in the Big Picture. Living in such deep time, connected to past and future, prepares us for necessary suffering, keeps us from despair about our own failure and loss, and ironically offers us a way through it all. We are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us. The tragic sense of life is not unbelief, pessimism, fatalism, or cynicism. — Richard Rohr

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: ... But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays.
MRS CHEVELEY: Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: You prefer to be natural?
MRS CHEVELEY: Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
(Act I., lines 132-140) — Oscar Wilde

When I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing. Filling pages and people with inspiration. When my thoughts don't want to rest on a page, we argue. We argue that one merely is ready just too comfortable playing in The Nile [denial] river. So we compromise. We grow,
water metaphors
and plant simile trees
of golden-almond
manifested love dreams.
Then at that moment, we forgot what we were arguing about.
Beauty can do that for you.
That's the beauty of writing. — Antonia Perdu

War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill? — Guy De Maupassant

History is more than data, more than facts, more than science and scholarship. These things are merely the means to a greater end. History is a story - the story of ourselves. Where do we come from? How have we survived? How can we avoid the mistakes of the past? Do we matter, and if we do, what is our proper place upon the earth? — Justin Cronin

Birth is but the beginning of a trajectory to death; for all their love, parents cannot halt it and in a sense have "given us to death" merely by giving us birth. — Anonymous

In a daze, I saw him stretch out his arms to me. It struck me that never in all my life had I beheld anyone quite as beautiful as he was, and it was not merely the sum of his physical attributes, it was the pure serenity, the essence that I perceived with my innermost soul. A lovely euphoria came over me as he spoke. — Anne Rice

To be sensitive, as ideologically defined, requires that one not merely accept but "affirm" other people's way of life or even "celebrate" diversity in general. Like other demands for "sensitivity," this demand offers no reason - unless fear of being disapproved, denounced, or harassed is a reason. — Thomas Sowell

For many feverish years he was burdened with the sensation, an ancient one to be sure, that the incredible sprawl of human history was no more than a pathetically partial record of an infinitely vast and shadowed chronicle of universal metamorphoses. How much greater, then, was the feeling that his own pathetic history formed a practically invisible fragment of what itself was merely an obscure splinter of the infinite. Somehow he needed to excarcerate himself from the claustral dungeon cell of his life. In the end, however, he broke beneath the weight of his aspiration. And as the years passed, the only mystery which seemed worthy of his interest, and his amazement, was that unknown day which would inaugurate his personal eternity, that incredible day on which the sun simply would not rise, and forever would begin. — Thomas Ligotti

But men are not content merely desire; they like to have a logical or pseudo-logical justification for their desires; they like to believe that when they want something, it is not merely for their own personal advantage, but that their desires are dictated by pure reason, by nature, by God Himself. — Aldous Huxley

The voice is a human sound which nothing inanimate can perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an insinuating property which writing lacks. It is not merely so much air, but air modulated and impregnated with life. — Joseph Joubert

Mysticism was merely virility in a state of liquidation; sperm that had gone bad. — Pitigrilli

When your soul is pricked by compunction and gradually changed, it becomes a fountain flowing with rivers of tears and compunction. If any one of you ever happens to communicate with tears, whether you weep before the Liturgy or in the course of the Divine Liturgy, or at the very time that you receive the Divine Gifts, and does not desire to do this for the rest of his days and nights, it will avail him nothing to have wept merely once. It is not this alone that at once purifies us and makes us worthy; it is daily compunction that does not cease until death. — Symeon The New Theologian

What isn't remembered never happened.

Memory is merely a record...you just need to rewrite that record. — Yoshitoshi ABe

It seems idle to rail at ambition merely because it is a boundless passion; or rather is not this circumstance an argument in its favor? If one would be employed or amused through life, should we not make choice of a passion that will keep one long in play? — William Shenstone

What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. — Thucydides

True holiness, we surely ought to remember, does not consist merely of inward sensations and impressions. It is much more than tears, and sighs, and bodily excitement, and a quickened pulse, and a passionate feeling of attachment to our own favourite preachers and our own religious party, and a readiness to quarrel with everyone who does not agree with us. It is something of "the image of Christ," which can be seen and observed by others in our private life, and habits, and character, and doings. — J.C. Ryle

A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person. — Timothy Keller

Of course, you'll defend Jay," says Rango, He was a part of your former life, of your former values. I will never be able to alter that. I want you to think as I do."
"But Rango, you couldn't respect someone who surrendered an opinion merely to please you . It would be hypocrisy. — Anais Nin

The study of theology is not merely a theoretical exercise of the intellect. It is a study of the living God, and of the wonders of all his works in creation and redemption. We cannot study this subject dispassionately! We must love all that God is, all that he says, and all that he does. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart" (Deut. 6:5). Our response to the study of the theology of Scripture should be that of the psalmist who said, "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!" (Ps. 139:17). In the study of the teachings of God's Word, it should not surprise us if we often find our hearts spontaneously breaking forth in expressions of praise and delight like those of the psalmist. — Wayne A. Grudem

If the universe is a non-spatial computer, a 'time machine' is a program that allows a user to have the same (ontologically non-spatial) feelings or experiences that occurred or s/he merely feels to have occurred in the past, with an in-built function to have different feelings or experiences than those of the past, and thus creating a possibility to change the past or to rewrite history in a pseudo sense. — Kedar Joshi

It seems to me that I cannot afford, as a self-respecting individual, to refuse to do a thing merely because it will make me disliked or bring down a storm of criticism on my head. — Eleanor Roosevelt

We believe that what we possess we don't ultimately own. God is merely entrusting it to us. And one of the conditions of that trust is that we share what we have with those who have less. So, if you don't give to people in need, you can hardly call yourself a Jew. Even the most unbelieving Jew knows that. — Jonathan Sacks

Real intelligence is a creative use of knowledge, not merely an accumulation of facts. The slow thinker who can finally come up with an idea of his own is more important to the world than a walking encyclopedia who hasn't learned how to use this information productively. — Susan Winebrenner

No one's fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, we're not heroines,
they happen in our lives like car crashes,
books that change us, neighborhoods
we move into and come to love.
Tristan and Isolde is scarcely the story,
women at least should know the difference
between love and death. No poison cup,
no penance. Merely a notion that the tape-recorder
should have caught some ghost of us: that tape-recorder
not merely played but should have listened to us,
and could instruct those after us:
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces they had ranged against us,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us,
within us and against us, against us and within us. — Adrienne Rich

The reality of loving God is loving him like he's a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff. — Criss Jami

I like pulling on a baggy bee suit, forgetting myself and getting as close to the bees' lives as they will let me, remembering in the process that there is more to life than the merely human. — Sue Hubbell

Rejection hurts so much because we take it as a damning judgement passed not merely on our physical appeal but on our entire selves, and by extension (at this stage we're crying into our pillow, as something by Bach or Leonard Cohen plays on the stereo) on our very right to exist. 2. — Alain De Botton

Paradoxical thinking requires that we embrace a view of the world in which opposites are joined, so that we can see the world clearly and see it whole ... The result is a world more complex and confusing than the one made simple by either-or thought - but that simplicity is merely the dullness of death. When we think together we reclaim the life force in the world, in our students, in ourselves. — Parker J. Palmer

As a matter of fact, nearly all the greatest work is being, and has always been done, by those who are following photography for the love of it, and not merely for financial reasons. As the name implies, an amateur is one who works for love. — Alfred Stieglitz

Humor, to be comprehensible to anybody, must be built upon a foundation with which he is familiar. If he can't see the foundation the superstructure is to him merely a freak
like the Flatiron building without any visible means of support
something that ought to be arrested. — Mark Twain

Life is a choice. Choose to live and not merely survive. — Debasish Mridha

The copyright industry has managed to kill civil liberties for their own children, ushering in a dystopian surveillance machine, merely to avoid taking responsibility for their own business failures. I lack words to quantify my contempt for these utter parasites. — Rick Falkvinge

In face of this modern nihilism, Christians are often lacking in courage. We tend to give the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not there. But the opposite ought to be true of us, so that people can see that we demand the truth of what is there and that we are not dealing merely with platitudes. In other words, it should be understood that we take this question of truth and personality so seriously that if God were not there we would be among the first of those who had the courage to step out of the queue. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The businessman who wishes to gain a market by throttling a superior competitor, the worker who wants a share of his employer's wealth, the artist who envies a rival's higher talent - they're all wishing facts out of existence and destruction is the only means of their wish. If they pursue it, they will not achieve a market, a fortune, or an immortal fame - they will merely destroy production — Ayn Rand

Dogs' bond with humans is bred into their very cells, their genes; it's written through their entire history, a chronicle that can be read in their eyes. But inside this black wire cage, in the lolling eyes of what remained of a Pekingese, there was nothing legible at all. One could hardly grieve for the dog, because the dog was already gone. To euthanize it - which a BAWA vet mercifully did, moments later, with the customary dose of anesthesia - was merely to acknowledge its departure. — Bill Wasik

Being discontented, we either seek a different job or merely succumb to environment ... instead of causing us to question life, the whole process of existence. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humilation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for-the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler. — Georges Bernanos

A man should begin with his own times. He should become acquainted first of all with the world in which he is living and participating. He should not be afraid of reading too much or too little. He should take his reading as he does his food or his exercise. The good reader will gravitate to the good books. He will discover from his contemporaries what is inspiring or fecundating, or merely enjoyable, in past literature. He should have the pleasure of making these discoveries on his own, in his own way. What has worth, charm, beauty, wisdom, cannot be lost or forgotten. But things can lose all value, all charm and appeal, if one is dragged to them by the scalp. — Henry Miller

Enjoying praise is in some people merely a civility of the heart
and just the opposite of a vanity of the spirit. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You are not merely finding a physical release, you are coming into a new realm, coming into heaven, coming into him, becoming him. — Jasinda Wilder

Worry is evidence of an ill-controlled brain; it is merely a stupid waste of time in unpleasantness. If men and women practiced mental calisthenics as they do physical calisthenics, they would purge their brains of this foolishness. — Arnold Bennett

It is the fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seems to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers. — G.K. Chesterton

Science has to be understood in its broadest sense, as a method for comprehending all observable reality, and not merely as an instrument for acquiring specialized knowledge. — Alexis Carrel

Sometimes the purpose of a day is to merely feel our sadness, knowing that as we do, we allow whole layers of grief, like old skin cells to drop off us — Marianne Williamson

The critic ... should be not merely a poet, not merely a philosopher, not merely an observer, but tempered of all three. — Margaret Fuller

There was some sort of maze-learning experiment involved in my final grade and since I remember the rat who was my colleague as uncooperative, or perhaps merely incompetent at being a rat, or tired of the whole thing, I don't remember how I passed. — Marilynne Robinson

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it - all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary - but love it — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is an unfortunate personal tragedy. However, when compared to the vast ocean of the collective tragedy faced by my people, my illness is merely a pebble. I am deeply sad that I am crippled by this illness, unable to contribute anything substantial towards the alleviation of the immense suffering and oppression of my people. — Anton Balasingham

Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he lives his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy. — George Gurdjieff

Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought. — George Orwell

What is style but a form of silent speech? When I put together an outfit to wear, I am putting together chapters of a story that needs to tell itself to the world in merely a minute! When I choose an outfit to wear, I am choosing a speech, a certain flow of mind-to-skin that is important to be understood. Style is the sentiment that I make without needing to speak to anyone and it's also an internal conversation that I make with myself throughout the day, I share those intimate words every time I look into the mirror or every time I look at my photographs. — C. JoyBell C.

People of very different opinions
friends who can discuss politics, religion, and sex with perfect civility
are often reduced to red-faced rage when the topic of conversation is the serial comma or an expression like more unique. People who merely roll their eyes at hate crimes feel compelled to write jeremiads on declining standards when a newspaper uses the wrong form of its. Challenge my most cherished beliefs about the place of humankind in God's creation, and while I may not agree with you, I'll fight to the death for your right to say it. But dangle a participle in my presence, and I'll consider you a subliterate cretin no longer worth listening to, a menace to decent society who should be removed from the gene pool before you do any more damage. — Jack Lynch

Filling a need is not merely good business; it's a basic attitude towards life. If you see a need, do whatever you can to meet that need. — George Foreman

Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a Party is not to our Party alone, but to the nation, and, indeed, to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom.
So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation's future is at stake.
Let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause
united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future
and determined that this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance. — John F. Kennedy

But what made him still more fortunate, as he said himself, was having a daughter of such exceeding beauty, rare intelligence, gracefulness, and virtue, that everyone who knew her and beheld her marvelled at the extraordinary gifts with which heaven and nature had endowed her. As a child she was beautiful, she continued to grow in beauty, and at the age of sixteen she was most lovely. The fame of her beauty began to spread abroad through all the villages around - but why do I say the villages around, merely, when it spread to distant cities, and even made its way into the halls of royalty and reached the ears of people of every class, who came from all sides to see her as if to see something rare and curious, or some wonder-working image? — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra