Mere Quotes - Page 38

• Your national greatness, swelling vanity; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

  Frederick Douglass

  Religious, Prayer, Greatness

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

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• I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom, panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life under the tropic forest, Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil, and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of; some law, or even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact; but explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them all with each other and with the mighty whole, till order and meaning shoots through some old Chaos of scattered observations.

  Charles Kingsley

  Science, Men, Isis

  Charles Kingsley (1873). “Selections from Some of the Writings of the Rev. C. Kingsley, M.A.”, p.336

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• All material Things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid Particles ... variously associated with the first Creation by the Counsel of an intelligent Agent. For it became him who created them to set them in order: and if he did so, it is unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature.

  Isaac Newton

  Nature, Science, Intelligent

  Isaac Newton (2004). “Isaac Newton: Philosophical Writings”, p.138, Cambridge University Press

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• Da Vinci was as great a mechanic and inventor as were Newton and his friends. Yet a glance at his notebooks shows us that what fascinated him about nature was its variety, its infinite adaptability, the fitness and the individuality of all its parts. By contrast what made astronomy a pleasure to Newton was its unity, its singleness, its model of a nature in which the diversified parts were mere disguises for the same blank atoms.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Notebook, Nature, Science

  Jacob Bronowski (2011). “The Common Sense of Science”, p.16, Faber & Faber

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• Judge not of actions by their mere effect; Dive to the center, and the cause detect. Great deeds from meanest springs may take their course, And smallest virtues from a mighty source.

  Alexander Pope

  Spring, Judging, Deeds

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• What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Heart, Fancy, Matter

  Alfred Lord Tennyson (2013). “Idylls of the King”, p.133, Simon and Schuster

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• Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models; and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Latin, Poet, Satire

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• The possession of great powers no doubt carries with it a comtempt for mere external show

  James A. Garfield

  Doubt, Ability, Possession

  "President Garfield and Education : Hiram College Memorial". Book by B. A Hinsdale, p. 420, 1881.

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• There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is--to teach; the function of the second is--to move, the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Moving, Understanding, Literature

  Thomas De Quincey (1873). “Leaders in literature”, p.5

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• Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Struggle, Majority, Lasts

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• Many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise--the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods. . . . There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Character, Heart, Men

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.90

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• In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are when the orator is lifted above himself; when consciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence the term "abandonment" to describe the self- surrender of the orator. Not his will, but the principle on which he is horsed, the great connection and crisis of events, thunder in the ear of the crowd.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Self, Triumph

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.25, Harvard University Press

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• The future works out great men's destinies; The present is enough for common souls, Who, never looking forward, are indeed Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age Are petrified forever.

  James Russell Lowell

  Destiny, Men, Work Out

  James Russell Lowell (1844). “Poems”, p.178

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• I am living a new and exalted life of late. It steeps me in a sacred rapture to see a portrait develop and take soul under my hand. First, I throw off a study - just a mere study, a few apparently random lines - and to look at it you would hardly ever suspect who it was going to be; even I cannot tell, myself.

  Mark Twain

  Hands, Soul, Portraits

  Mark Twain (1933). “Mark Twain's works”

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• In practical matters the end is not mere speculative knowledge of what is to be done, but rather the doing of it. It is not enough to know about Virtue, then, but we must endeavor to possess it, and to use it, or to take any other steps that may make.

  Aristotle

  Matter, Steps, Use

  Aristotle (1885). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.185, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Mere enthusiasm is the all in all... / Passion and expression are beauty itself.

  William Blake

  Passion, Expression, Enthusiasm

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• Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Progress, Robinson Crusoe

  In Hester Lynch Piozzi 'Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson' (1786) p. 281

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• Obedience is our universal duty and destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break; too early and too thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that "would," in this world of ours, is a mere zero to "should," and for most part as the smallest of fractions even to "shall.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Zero, Destiny, World

  Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.192, CUP Archive

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• In New York and New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith. The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice; a rumor in the air for two or three days before it takes visible shape before you.

  John Burroughs

  New York, Air, Two

  John Burroughs, Charlotte Zoë Walker (2001). “The Art of Seeing Things: Essays”, p.49, Syracuse University Press

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• But conversation, choose what theme we may,
  And chiefly when religion leads the way,
  Should flow, like waters after summer show'rs,
  Not as if raised by mere mechanic powers.

  William Cowper

  Summer, Water, May

  William Cowper, “Conversation”

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• All zeal for a reform, that gives offence To peace and charity, is mere pretence.

  William Cowper

  Giving, Reform, Charity

  William Cowper (1872). “Table talk, Truth, Expostulation, Hope, Charity, and other poems”, p.108

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• As a great part of the uneasiness of matrimony arises from mere trifles,, it would be wise in every young married man to enter into an agreement with his wife, that in all disputes of this kind the party who was most convinced they were right should always surrender the victory. By which means both would be more forward to give up the cause.

  Henry Fielding

  Wise, Giving Up, Party

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• You know how often the turning down this street or that, the accepting or rejecting of an invitation, may deflect the whole current of our lives into some other channel. Are we mere leaves, fluttered hither and thither by the wind, or are we rather, with every conviction that we are free agents, carried steadily along to a definite and pre-determined end?

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Wind, Agents, May

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Delphi Classics)”, p.4165, Delphi Classics

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• There is a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride, beyond mere skill, almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art - which is art.

  Joseph Conrad

  Love, Art, Inspiration

  Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Complete Novels of Joseph Conrad - All 20 Works in One Premium Edition: Including Unforgettable Titles like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes and Many More (With Author’s Letters, Memoirs and Critical Essays)”, p.4390, e-artnow

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• Here is the beginning of philosophy: a recognition of the conflicts between men, a search for their cause, a condemnation of mere opinion .. . and the discovery of a standard of judgement.

  Epictetus

  Philosophy, Men, Discovery

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