Mere Quotes - Page 33

• See how peaceful it is here. The sea is everything. An immense reservoir of nature where I roam at will.... Think of it. On the surface there is hunger and fear. Men still exercise unjust laws. They fight, tear one another to pieces. A mere few feet beneath the waves their reign ceases, their evil drowns. Here on the ocean floor is the only independence. Here I am free.

  Earl Felton

  Ocean, Fighting, Exercise

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• In societies where modern conditions of productions prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into representation. The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be re-established. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation . . . The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

  Guy Debord

  Reality, People, Unity

  Guy Debord (2012). “Society Of The Spectacle”, p.30, Bread and Circuses Publishing

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• The moment a mere numerical superiority by either states or voters in this country proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and for their own selfish purpose or advancement, hamper or oppress that minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights-that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Country, Selfish, Rights

  Radio broadcast, March 2, 1930.

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• Virtue is not to be considered in the light of mere innocence, or abstaining from harm; but as the exertion of our faculties in doing good.

  Joseph Butler

  Light, Innocence, Action

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• Beauty does not lie in the face. It lies in the harmony between a person and his or her industry. Beauty is expression. When I paint a mother I try to render her beautiful by the mere look she gives her child.

  Jean-Francois Millet

  Beauty, Beautiful, Mother

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• Jesus was certainly not a mere enunciator of permanent truths, like the modern liberal preacher; on the contrary He was conscious of standing at the turning-point of the ages, when what had never been was now to come to be.

  John Gresham Machen

  Jesus, Age, Modern

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• It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready made.

  H. L. Mencken

  Food, Land, Pork

  H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.11, 谷月社

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• The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation's pulse, you can't be sure that the nation hasn't just run up a flight of stairs.

  E. B. White

  Running, People, Politics

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.165, Cornell University Press

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• It is beneath human dignity to lose one's individuality and become a mere cog in the machine.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Individuality, Cogs, Machines

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Homer A. Jack (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi”, p.134, Courier Corporation

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• We have to make truth and non-violence not matters for mere individual practice but for practice by groups and communities and nations. That at any rate is my dream. I shall live and die in trying to realize it. My faith helps me to discover new truths every day.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Dream, Practice, Community

  Mahatma Gandhi (1968). “The Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi: The voice of truth”

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• I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of the individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing to the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evil instincts.With the help of favourable measures great individuals might be reared who would be both different from and higher than those who heretofore have owed their existence to mere chance. Here we may still be hopeful: in the rearing of exceptional men.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Struggle, Mean, Men

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• Nevertheless, whether in occurrences lasting days, hours or mere minutes at a time, I have experienced happiness often, and have had brief encounters with it in my later years, even in old age.

  Hermann Hesse

  Years, Age, Encounters

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• Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown.

  Petrarch

  Style, Language, Elegance

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• Bravery ceases to be bravery at a certain point, and becomes mere foolhardiness.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Bravery, Certain, Cease

  Rabindranath Tagore, Mohit Kumar Ray (2007). “Plays, stories”, p.106, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Time, Wealth, Clock

  Rabindranath Tagore, Mohit Kumar Ray (2007). “Poems”, p.412, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• The mere wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses-not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while the horses draw.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Horse, Jingles, Bells

  Henry Ward Beecher (1850). “Industry and idleness: with causes of dishonesty : to which are appended six warnings”, p.97

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• Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Color, Wealth

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.80, Courier Corporation

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• Life is not a thing of knowing only--nay, mere knowledge has properly no place at all save as it becomes the handmaiden of feeling and emotions.

  Learned Hand

  Knowledge, Knowing, Feelings

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

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• Prison is not a mere physical horror. It is using a pickaxe to no purpose that makes a prison.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Purpose, Horror, Prison

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• No truth is proved, no truth achieved, by argument, and the ready-made truths men offer you are mere conveniences or drugs to make you sleep.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Truth, Sleep, Men

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• 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, Miracle, Suffering

  Nando Parrado (2009). “Miracle In The Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home”, p.115, Hachette UK

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• The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.

  Walter Lippmann

  Ambition, Men, Animal

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.129, Harvard University Press

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• I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Grieving, Space

  Mark Twain (1871). “The Innocents Abroad, Or, The New Pilgrims' Progress: Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker City's Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land : with Descriptions of Countries, Nations, Incidents and Adventures, as They Appeared to the Author”, p.239

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• The human passions transform man from a mere thing into a hero, into a being that in spite of tremendous handicaps tries to make sense of life.

  Erich Fromm

  Hero, Passion, Men

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.28, Open Road Media

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• The materialistic idealism that governs American life, that on the one hand makes a chariot of every grocery wagon, and on the other a mere hitching post of every star, lets every man lead a very enticing double life.

  Louis Kronenberger

  Stars, Men, Hands

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