Mere Quotes - Page 32

• Poetry and the arts can’t exist in America. Mere exposure to the arts does nothing for a mentality which is incorrigibly dialectical. The vital tensions and nutritive action of ideogram
  remain inaccessible to this state of mind.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Art, America, Mind

  Marshall McLuhan, Matie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan, William Toye (1987). “Letters of Marshall McLuhan”, Oxford University Press, USA

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Women are never landlocked: they're always mere minutes away from the briny deep of tears.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Tears, Cry, Minutes

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.53, BookBaby

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A mere nothing suffices — and the lightning strikes.

  Hermann Hesse

  Lightning, Strikes, Steppenwolf

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.55, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everyone aimed at security: no one accepted responsibility. What was plainly lacking, long before the barbarian invasions had done their work, long before economic dislocations became serious, was inner go. Rome’s life was now an imitation of life: a mere holding on. Security was the watchword – as if life knew any other stability than through constant change, or any form of security except through a constant willingness to take risks

  Lewis Mumford

  Responsibility, Rome, Long

  7 Copy quote

• Mere experience, if it is not matched by deep concentration, does not translate into excellence.

  Matthew Syed

  Excellence, Doe, Concentration

  8 Copy quote

• In our own time we have seen domination spread over the social landscape to a point where it is beyond all human control. Compared to this stupendous mobilization of materials, of wealth, of human intellect, of human labor for the single goal of domination, all other recent human achievements pale to almost trivial significance. Our art, science, medicine, literature, music and charitable acts seem like mere droppings from a table on which gory feasts on the spoils of conquest have engaged the attention of a system whose appetite for rule is utterly unrestrained.

  Murray Bookchin

  Art, Medicine, Goal

  27 Copy quote

• Death has an opposite, but the opposite is not mere living. It is not courage or faith or human will. The opposite of death is love. How had I missed that? How does anyone miss that? Love is our only weapon. Only love can turn mere life into a miracle, and draw precious meaning from suffering and fear

  Nando Parrado

  Love Is, Opposites, Miracle

  10 Copy quote

• My love affair with nature is so deep that I am not satisfied with being a mere onlooker, or nature tourist. I crave a more real and meaningful relationship. The spicy teas and tasty delicacies I prepare from wild ingredients are the bread and wine in which I have communion and fellowship with nature, and with the Author of that nature.

  Euell Gibbons

  Meaningful, Real, Wine

  144 Copy quote

• Rooting in work is crucial to any accomplishment. Rooting in mere enthusiasm will in the long run force illusory measures to keep the fires of empty enthusiasm going. And this makes politics and politicians.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Running, Fire, Long

  Writings by Wilhelm Reich, April 19, 1951.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Without their money, the Jews will shrink into mere shadows of themselves, and the nightmare will be over.

  Israel Shamir

  Shadow, Nightmare, Jew

  7 Copy quote

• To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth…but only a problem of art is solved in poetry.

  Laura Riding

  Art, Problem, Poet

  4 Copy quote

• Trench says a wild man is a willed man. Well, then, a man of will who does what he wills or wishes, a man of hope and of the future tense, for not only the obstinate is willed, but far more the constant and persevering. The obstinate man, properly speaking, is one who will not. The perseverance of the saints is positive willedness, not a mere passive willingness. The fates are wild, for they will; and the Almighty is wild above all, as fate is.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Perseverance, Fate, Men

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.179, Yale University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• More than a mere alternative strategy, regenerative agriculture represents a fundamental shift in our culture’s relationship to nature.

  Charles Eisenstein

  Agriculture, Alternatives, Fundamentals

  "We need regenerative farming, not geoengineering" by Charles Eisenstein, www.theguardian.com. March 9, 2015.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lives are mere blips on the canvas of eternity.

  Robin Sharma

  Canvas, Eternity

  Robin Sharma (2003). “Who Will Cry When You Die?: Life Lessons From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”, p.3, Jaico Publishing House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness.

  C. S. Lewis

  Kindness, Definitions, God Is Love

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “The Problem of Pain”, p.23, Harper Collins

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It thunders, howls, roars, hisses, whistles, blusters, hums, growls, rumbles, squeaks, groans, sings, crackles, cracks, rattles, flickers, clicks, snarls, tumbles, whimpers, whines, rustles, murmurs, crashes, clucks, to gurgle, tinkles, blows, snores, claps, to lisp, to cough, it boils, to scream, to weep, to sob, to croak, to stutter, to lisp, to coo, to breathe, to clash, to bleat, to neigh, to grumble, to scrape, to bubble. These words, and others like them, which express sounds are more than mere symbols: they are a kind of hieroglyphics for the ear.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Blow, Sound, Cracks

  10 Copy quote

• Efforts depend on individuals, but results rely on mere conditions.

  Anuj

  Effort, Individual, Results

  10 Copy quote

• It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing.

  Mary McCarthy

  Hippie, Law, Marketing

  Mary McCarthy (1968). “Hanoi”, George Weidenfeld & Nicholson

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• One way for attaining Bhakti is by repeating the name of God a number of times. Mantras have effect: the mere repetition of words.... To obtain Bhakti, seek the company of holy men who have Bhakti, and read books like the Gita and the Imitation of Christ; always think of the attributes of God.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Book, Men, Thinking

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.2616, Manonmani Publishers

  74 Copy quote

  Show source

• Disease is the misery of our belief, happiness is the health of our wisdom, so that man's happiness or misery depends on himself. Now, as our misery comes from our belief, and not from the thing believed, it is necessary to be on the watch, so as not to be deceived by false guides. Sensation contains no intelligence or belief, but is a mere disturbance of the matter, called agitation, which produces mind, and is ready to receive the seed of error. Ever since man was created, there has been an element called error which has been busy inventing answers for every sensation.

  Phineas Quimby

  Health, Men, Errors

  47 Copy quote

• Others, again, give us the mere carcass of another man’s thoughts, but deprived of all their life and spirit, and this is to add murder to robbery. I have somewhere seen it observed, that we should make the same use of a book, as a bee does of a flower; she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it; and those sweets she herself improves and concocts into honey. But most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, nor industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared from the hive.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Sweet, Flower, Book

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.232

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• He, general or mere captain, who employs every one in the storming of a position can be sure of seeing it retaken by an organized counterattack of four men and a corporal.

  Ardant du Picq

  Military, Men, Four

  Sun Tzu, Julius Caesar, Einhard, Niccolò Machiavelli, Carl von Clausewitz (2016). “Strategy Six Pack”, p.448, Lulu.com

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Please go on, make your threats. I don't like to submit to mere implication.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  History, Historical, Goes On

  8 Copy quote

• Remind me: who was the greater mass murderer, Stalin or Hitler? Well, Stalin is thought to have been responsible for about 50 million deaths, and Hitler for a mere 25 million. What Hitler did in his concentration camps was equalled if not exceeded in foulness by the Soviet gulags, forced starvation and pogroms. What makes the achievements of communist Russia so special and different, that you can simper around in a CCCP T-shirt, while anyone demented enough to wear anything commemorating the Third Reich would be speedily banged away under the 1986 Public Order Act?

  Boris Johnson

  War, Order, Russia

  17 Copy quote

• Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.

  Samuel Smiles

  Evil, Political, Reform

  "Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Work Ethic". Book by Timothy Travers, 1987.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source