Mere Quotes - Page 3

• I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Blood, Flesh, Helping

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.83, Penguin

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• Unlike a fountain that circulates the same water in an enclosed, perpetually recycling system, a human being circulates thoughts in an unlimited reservoir of self. Don't limit yourself to being a mere fountain when you contain an ocean.

  Vera Nazarian

  Ocean, Self, Water

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• To achieve accurate knowledge of others, if such a thing were possible, we could only ever arrive at it through the slow and unsure recognition of our own initial optical inaccuracies. However, such knowledge is not possible: for, while our vision of others is being adjusted, they, who are not made of mere brute matter, are also changing; we think we have managed to see them more clearly, but they shift; and when we believe we have them fully in focus, it is merely our older images of them that we have clarified, but which are themselves already out of date.

  Marcel Proust

  Believe, Thinking, Focus

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• God seemed to be having a hard time killing him, and he'd be damned if he was going to make the job easy for mere mortals

  Mario Puzo

  Jobs, Hard Times, Killing

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• The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating. (pg. 326, The Pleasures of Eating)

  Wendell Berry

  Morning, Memories, Garden

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.151, Counterpoint Press

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• It is said that boys fall in love with their eyes, because they can be initially struck to their very core by a girl's mere physical beauty, while girls tend to fall in love with their ears. The outward handsomeness of the lad notwithstanding, a girl most of all likes to hear words of love everlasting, of how he will be kind and gentle with her and protect her from harm and want to always hold her in the highest respect and esteem.

  L.A. Meyer

  Girl, Falling In Love, Eye

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• 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.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Essence, Boredom, Would Be

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism (illustrated)”, p.22, Full Moon Publications

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• WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM? "Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?" NO "Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact." THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN. ... "Really? Then what would have happened, pray?" A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.

  Terry Pratchett

  Believe, Balls, World

  "Hogfather". Book by Terry Pratchett, 1996.

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• I have in this War a burning private grudge — which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  War, Inspiration, Light

  Letter to his son Michael Tolkien on June 09, 1941. "The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien", 1981.

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• in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!

  Alexandre Dumas

  Prayer, Heaven, Sublime

  Alexandre Dumas (2016). “The Count Of Monte Cristo (Illustrated Edition of the Adventure Classic): Historical Thriller from the renowned French writer, known for The Three Musketeers, The Black Tulip, Twenty Years After, La Reine Margot and The Man in the Iron Mask”, p.158, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• [Aldous Huxley] compared the brain to a 'reducing valve'. In ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain then filters down to a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man has become so rational, so utilitarian, that the trickle becomes most pale and thin. It is efficient, for mere survival, but it screens out the most wondrous part of man's potential experience without his even knowing it. We're shut off from our own world.

  Tom Wolfe

  Men, Knowing, Perception

  Tom Wolfe (1999). “The electric kool-aid acid test”, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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• I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Children, Men, Echoes

  "Fictional character: Humbert". "Lolita", www.imdb.com. 1997.

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• Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain (except the mind of a pedant), perfection is the mere repudiation of that ineluctable marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious inmost quality of Being

  H. G. Wells

  Perfection, Mind, Quality

  H. G. Wells (2016). “A Modern Utopia”, p.31, H. G. Wells

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• Have your dream...What you need now more than anything is discipline. Cast off mere words. Words turn into stone. (from Thailand)

  Haruki Murakami

  Dream, Discipline, Needs

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• Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

  William Shakespeare

  Stupidity, You Like It, Folly

  'As You Like It' (1599) act 2, sc. 7, l. 174

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• We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  War, Hate, Struggle

  Franklin D. Roosevelt's Address at Madison Square Garden, New York City, October 31, 1936).

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• Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against a gathering wind.

  Lauren Oliver

  Beautiful, Butterfly, Wind

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• Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another. We erect edifices in our minds about the flimsy framework of word and deed, mere totems of the true person, who, like the gods to whom the temples were built, remains hidden. We understand our own construct; we know our own theory; we love our own fabrication. Still . . . does the artifice of our affection make our love any less real?

  Rick Yancey

  Real, Mind, Temples

  Rick Yancey (2010). “The Monstrumologist: The Terror Beneath”, p.300, Simon and Schuster

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• The incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry, the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon, are always blowing evil’s whole structure away.

  C. S. Lewis

  Girl, Song, Sight

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• The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian

  David Hume

  Passion, Heart, Profound

  David Hume (1772). “An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An. inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion”, p.5

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• It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Supposing That, Mind, Brain

  "Possible worlds, and other essays". Book by J. B. S. Haldane, 1927.

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• The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.

  John Ruskin

  Selfish, Struggle, Vanity

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• Everyone was a rose but even more complex than a mere flower. Everyone was made up of infinitely layered petals. And everyone had something indescribably precious at the heart of their being. No one was shallow. Not really.

  Mary Balogh

  Flower, Heart, Rose

  Mary Balogh (2010). “A Secret Affair”, p.142, Delacorte Press

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• I have no way and therefore want no eyes I stumbled when I saw. Full oft 'tis seen our means secure us, and our mere defects prove our commodities.

  William Shakespeare

  Mean, Eye, Want

  William Shakespeare (2010). “King Lear”, p.111, Broadview Press

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• When you succeed in awakening the Kundalini, so that it starts to move out of its mere potentiality, you necessarily start a world which is totally different from our world. It is the world of eternity.

  Carl Jung

  Moving, Our World, Awakening

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