Mere Quotes - Page 5

• For though Duncan was a mere mortal, flawed as well, he'd accomplished a daring feat. Aye, he'd captured an angel. And she belonged to him.

  Julie Garwood

  Angel, Duncan, Accomplished

  Julie Garwood (2010). “Honor's Splendour”, p.374, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie--or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?

  H. G. Wells

  Art, Lying, Believe

  H. G. Wells (2016). “The Time Machine”, p.90, H. G. Wells

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil and obliging Young Woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her -- she was only an Object of Contempt

  Jane Austen

  Young, Contempt, Objects

  'Love and Freindship' (written 1790) 'Letter the 13th'

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.

  Eric Hoffer

  Reality, Men, Despair

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Reason, Poet, Mathematician

  Edgar Allan Poe, Stuart Levine, Susan Levine (1976). “The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition”, p.232, University of Illinois Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years," she announced with some small sense of achievement. "I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.

  Jasper Fforde

  Teacher, Eight, Years

  4 Copy quote

• In a way, the futile excuses many people use to cover their superstitions are demolished. They think it is enough to have some sort of religious fervor, however ridiculous, not realizing that true religion must be according to God's will as the perfect measure; that He can never deny Himself and is no mere spirit form to be changed around according to individual preference.

  John Calvin

  Religious, Thinking, People

  4 Copy quote

• My dowry is thirty-five. A year.” His brows climbed. “You’re joking.” “I would never joke about money with a notorious thief. Just imagine, in a mere two years you’re at a profit.” “How I adore a woman who does mathematics in her head.” “I can forge signatures as well.” “Splendid. Exactly the bride I’ve been hoping for.

  Shana Abe

  Years, Two, Signatures

  49 Copy quote

• Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Instruments, Circumstances

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “The Beautiful and Damned: American Literature”, p.207, VM eBooks

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The secret of attraction is to love yourself. Attractive people judge neither themselves nor others. They are open to gestures of love. They think about love, and express their love in every action. They know that love is not a mere sentiment, but the ultimate truth at the heart of the universe.

  Deepak Chopra

  Love, Relationship, Communication

  90 Copy quote

• I love the book. I love the feel of a book in my hands, the compactness of it, the shape, the size. I love the feel of paper. The sound it makes when I turn a page. I love the beauty of print on paper, the patterns, the shapes, the fonts. I am astonished by the versatility and practicality of The Book. It is so simple. It is so fit for its purpose. It may give me mere content, but no e-reader will ever give me that sort of added pleasure.

  Susan Hill

  Book, Simple, Hands

  FaceBook post by Susan Hill from Feb 05, 2013

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall. Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Children, Wall, Real

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2009). “The Dispossessed”, p.6, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility...According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Teacher, Inspiration

  18 Copy quote

• Several times I asked myself, "Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone?" And I searched for an answer to my questions in every area of knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on my painstaking search; I did not search casually, out of mere curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying man seeking salvation. I found nothing.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Night, Men, Long

  "Confession". Book by Leo Tolstoy. Part 1, Chapter 5, 1882.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• You may think you don't want to throw your life away for mere fleeting euphoria. But, once you get a taste, it doesn't feel so mere. From then on the planet becomes a waiting room. The rest of your life devolves to no more than the time between highs.

  Jerry Stahl

  Thinking, Waiting Rooms, Fleeting

  9 Copy quote

• The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Water, Design

  C. S. Lewis (2010). “A Year with C. S. Lewis: 365 Daily Readings from his Classic Works”, HarperCollins UK

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to insist on saying no to what you believe is wrong, becomes at a stroke refuse, an insurmountable pile of garbage.

  Ian Mcewan

  Stress, Believe, Opportunity

  Ian McEwan (1999). “Amsterdam”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic.

  Frances Hardinge

  Children, Exercise, Imagination

  Frances Hardinge (2011). “Fly By Night”, p.21, Pan Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile.

  John Green

  Hurt, Love You, Sadness

  7 Copy quote

• We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value.

  Jonathan Sacks

  Believe, Indulge In, Challenges

  10 Copy quote

• There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Gnats, Civilization

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “Christian Reflections”, p.11, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.

  Terry Pratchett

  Stupid, Animal, Pyramids

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “Pyramids: (Discworld Novel 7)”, p.165, Random House

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.

  Annie Dillard

  Hands, Simplicity, Healthy

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.17, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• You, sir, are the most phantom-like of all; you are a mere dream

  Charlotte Bronte

  Dream, Phantoms

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.228, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sam could not help but be pleased. "So. Astrid needs me." Brianna rolled her eyes. "Yeah, Sam, you're still necessary. You're like a god to us mere mortals. We can't live without you. Later we're going to build you a temple. Satisfied?

  Michael Grant

  Eye, Needs, Temples

  4 Copy quote