Mere Quotes - Page 24

In my fantasies, I was always caught up in heroic struggles, and I saw myself saving lives, sacrificing myself for others. I had far loftier ambitions than mere romance.

Irene Gut Opdyke

Struggle, Ambition, Sacrifice

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Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.

Enoch

Issues, People, Political

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Many writers struggle with exposition in their novels. Often they heap it on in large chunks of straight narrative. Back story – what happens before the novel opens – is especially troublesome. How can we give the essentials and avoid a mere information drop?
Use dialogue. First, create a tension-filled scene, usually between two characters. Get them arguing, confronting each other. Then you can have the information appear in the natural course of things.

James Scott Bell

Struggle, Writing, Character

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But nothing will persuade me that the mere fact of being in a place is enough in itself to justify the effort of getting out of bed to become a tourist, or even a traveller. I don't have the slightest wish to be intrepid. I don't want to prove myself to myself or anyone else. I don't care if no one thinks me brave or hardy. I have no concern at all that I did not have whatever it is I should have had to take a dive out of a plane or off a building. None of that matters to me in the least.

Jenny Diski

Thinking, Should Have, Effort

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Lists help us manage the chaos of our lives—to impose order, if only for a moment. Writing a list clears the mind. … Once everything is written down, it’s easier to see which tasks are important and in what order to tackle them. Tasks that seem overwhelming look easier when reduced to mere lines on paper.

Sasha Cagen

Writing, Order, Mind

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You will be surprised to learn how some very knowing people have misunderstood Plotto. On glancing at it, some of the intelligentia have jumped at the false conclusion, that Plotto is a dictionary of situations, a mechanism that yields a cut and dried plot by the mere use of a thumb index. Plotto, to the contrary, merely suggests the situations for the plot, explains what is to be done through Purpose and Obstacle and even offers suggestions as to the way in which it should be done.

William Wallace Cook

Cutting, Yield, Knowing

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Their task [creative artists], therefore, is to communicate directly from one inward world to another, in such a way that an actual shock of experience will have been rendered: not a mere statement for the information or persuasion of a brain, but an effective communication across the void of space and time from one center of consciousness to another.

Joseph Campbell

Communication, Artist, Space

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The state of mind must be belief, not mere hope or wish. Open-mindedness is essential for belief. Closed minds do not inspire faith, courage, and belief.

Napoleon Hill

Inspire, Mind, Wish

Napoleon Hill, Wallace D. Wattles (2012). “Get Rich Collection”, p.30, Penguin

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Misery does not exist in reality but only in mere imagination.

Ramana Maharshi

Reality, Imagination, Doe

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If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true; this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine.

Swami Vivekananda

Heart, Joy, Suffering

Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Vivekananda Reader”, p.205, Advaita Ashrama (A publication branch of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math)

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The average is the borderline that keeps mere men in their place. Those who step over the line are heroes by the very act. Go.

Henry Rollins

Hero, Men, Average

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Miracles happen. But prayer is needed! Prayer that is courageous, struggling and persevering, not prayer that is a mere formality.

Pope Francis

Christian, Prayer, Struggle

Pope Francis (2015). “The Spirit of St Francis: Inspiring Words on Faith, Love and Creation”, p.72, SPCK

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It is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.

Nikola Tesla

Men, Succeed, Machinery

Nikola Tesla (2013). “The Nikola Tesla Treasury”, p.172, Simon and Schuster

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In a sense, New Age gurus are akin to postmodernists within academia. They dispense meaningless drivel that masquerades as profound truths whilst in reality it is a mere exercise in obscurantism

Gad Saad

Exercise, Reality, Profound

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The kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power, that is, in works and practice. God loves the 'doers of the word' in faith and love, and not the 'mere hearers,' who, like parrots, have learned to utter certain expressions with readiness.

Martin Luther

Expression, Practice, And Love

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Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind.

Sara Sheridan

Character, Sometimes, Left Behind

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No one is ready for a thing until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be BELIEF, not mere hope or wish.

Napoleon Hill

Inspirational, Hope, Attitude

"How to Be Rich".

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Religion, politics, society are exploiting you, and you are being conditioned by them; you are being forced in a particular direction. You are not human beings; you are mere cogs in a machine.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Suffering, Cogs, Machines

"The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti".

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My happiest hours are those in which I think nothing, want nothing, when I do not even dream, but lose myself in some spurious vegetable torpor, moss growing on the surface of life. Without a trace of bitterness I savour my absurd awareness of being nothing, a mere foretaste of death and extinction.

Fernando Pessoa

Dream, Thinking, Vegetables

Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.50, Profile Books

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When you consider all the stars I have managed, mere submarines make me smile.

Charles Frohman

Smile, Stars, Submarines

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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.

Jian Yang

Mean, Taoism, Development

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But what is after all the happiness of mere power? There is a greater happiness possible than to be lord of heaven and earth; that is the happiness of being truly loved.

Lafcadio Hearn

Heaven, Literature, Earth

Lafcadio Hearn (2012). “Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn”, p.84, tredition

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Happiness is not mere pleasure, not the outcome of wealth. It is the result of active work rather than passive enjoyment of pleasure.

Robert Baden-Powell

Outcomes, Wealth, Pleasure

"How to be happy though rich or poor". Preface by Robert Baden-Powell to his book "Rovering to Success" (1922), 1930.

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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.

Charles Horton Cooley

Moving, Pride, Reflection

Charles Horton Cooley, Hans-Joachim Schubert (1998). “On Self and Social Organization”, p.22, University of Chicago Press

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The police officer who puts their life on the line with no superpowers, no X-Ray vision, no super-strength, no ability to fly, and above all no invulnerability to bullets, reveals far greater virtue than Superman - who is only a mere superhero.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

Superhero, Police, Vision

"Superhero Bias" by Eliezer Yudkowsky, lesswrong.com. December 1, 2007.

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