Mere Quotes - Page 25

• The letter we all love to receive is one that carries so much of the writer’s personality that she seems to be sitting beside us, looking at us directly and talking just as she really would, could she have come on a magic carpet, instead of sending her proxy in ink-made characters on mere paper.

  Emily Post

  Character, Talking, Personality

  Emily Post (2007). “Etiquette: In Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home”, p.502, Cosimo, Inc.

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• To write well and speak well is mere vanity if one does not live well.

  Bridget of Sweden

  Writing, Vanity, Doe

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• Alow immortality to work through you. Be but a mere instrument. And that instrument should be so absorbed in the perfect perfection of existence, that it knows not even that it is absorbed.

  Frederick Lenz

  Perfect, Taoism, Immortality

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• Go out of the house to see the moon, and't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Moon, Journey, Light

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.39, Harvard University Press

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• Knowledge for its own sake was meaningless, its mere accumulation a waste of time. Knowledge must lead to understanding.

  Moses Finley

  Understanding, Sake, Waste

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• I think that the mere fact that I'm doing it ought to inspire someone. In junior high school the counselor suggested that I focus on wood shop and metal shop.

  Christopher Darden

  Moving, School, Thinking

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• We may worship a picture as God, but not God as the picture. God in the picture is right, but the picture as God is wrong. God in the image is perfectly right. There is no danger there. This is the real worship of God. But the image-God is a mere Pratika.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Real, May, Idol Worship

  Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Addresses on Bhakti Yoga: Art of living”, p.33, editionNEXT.com

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• The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, College, Men

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• The distance between the earth and her satellite is a mere trifle, and undeserving of serious consideration. I am convinced that before twenty years are over one-half of our earth will have paid a visit to the moon.

  Jules Verne

  Distance, Future, Moon

  Jules Verne, Jules VERNE (2016). “From the Earth to the moon/De la Terre à la lune (Bilingual edition/Édition bilingue)”, p.112, Jules Verne

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• Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it offers, life would become a mere syllogism and hence too metallic to be borne.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Success, Lying

  H. L. Mencken (1924). “Prejudices Fourth Series”

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• Those who have a why to live for can bear almost any how. The necessary premise is that a person is somehow more than his or her "characteristics," all the emotions, strivings, tastes, and constructions which it pleases us to call "My Life." We have grounds to hope that a Life is something more than a cloud of particles, mere facticity. Go through what is comprehensible and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light.

  Saul Bellow

  Life, Clouds, Light

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• I will burn, but this is a mere incident. We shall continue our discussion in eternity.

  Michael Servetus

  Progressive, Eternity, Incidents

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• Intelligence increases mere physical ability one half. The use of the head abridges the labor of the hands.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Science, Hands, Use

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

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• Mere physical sitting is not enough. You have to sit carefully and attentively. Let your body and breathing sit. Let your mind and emotions sit. Let your blood circulation sit. Let everything sit. Then your sitting becomes indestructible, immovable.

  Taizan Maezumi

  Inspiration, Blood, Practice

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• Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Talking, Class

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.174, Knopf

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• By liberty of conscience, we understand not only a mere liberty of the mind, in believing or disbelieving this or that principle or doctrine; but the exercise of ourselves in a visible way of worship, upon our believing it to be indispensably required at our hands, that if we neglect it for fear of favor of any mortal man, we sin and incur divine wrath.

  William Penn

  Believe, Exercise, Men

  William Penn (1782). “The Select Works of William Penn....”, p.11

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• The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Christian, Liberty, Stranger

  Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, baron de, Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu (2005). “The Spirit of Laws”, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• These are no ordinary claims; and it seems hardly possible for a rational being to regard them with even a subdued interest; much less to treat them with mere indifference and contempt. If not true they are little else than the pretensions of a bold imposture, which not satisfied with having already enslaved millions of the human race, seeks to continue its encroachments upon human liberty, until all nations be subjected under its iron rule.

  Simon Greenleaf

  Iron, Race, Liberty

  Simon Greenleaf (1995). “The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence”, p.10, Kregel Publications

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• Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve; it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent.

  Alan Watts

  Truth, Lying, Heart

  Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.38, New World Library

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• Men endure the losses that befall them by mere casualty with more patience than the damages they sustain by injustice.

  Walter Raleigh

  Loss, Men, Damage

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• He didn't know whether we created God in our own image or whether God created us without quite knowing what he was doing. He believed that God, or whatever brought us here, lives in each of our deeds, in each of our words, and manifests himself in all those things that show us to be more than mere figures of clay.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Knowing, Clay, Our Words

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• Education, in its highest sense, is conscious training of mind or body to act unconsciously. It is conscious formation of mental habits, not mere acquisition of information.

  William George Jordan

  Education, Training, Mind

  William George Jordan (2007). “The Majesty of Calmness”, p.36, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• The dullard finds even wine tasteless, while the sorcerer is intoxicated by the mere sight of water.

  Hakim Bey

  Wine, Sight, Water

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• Psychedelic drugs undoubtedly open the doors to the mind's panopticon, but what we see in the mental mirrors are mere distortions of reality, not reality itself.

  Georg Feuerstein

  Reality, Mirrors, Doors

  Georg Feuerstein, Ph.D. (1997). “Lucid Waking: Mindfulness and the Spiritual Potential of Humanity”, p.8, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co

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• Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came, And the puff a dunce, he mistook it for fame; Till his relish grown callous, almost to displease, Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Puff, Peppers, Flattery

  Oliver Goldsmith (1839). “Poetical Works”, p.145

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