Mere Quotes - Page 9

• People who expect deference resent mere civility.

  Mason Cooley

  People, Civility, Deference

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• Should this my firm persuasion of the soul's immortality prove to be a mere delusion, it is at least a pleasing delusion, and I will cherish it to my last breath.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Time, Soul, Lasts

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1839). “The Orations”, p.261

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• The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Peace, War, Believe

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• There's some end at last for the man who follows a path; mere rambling is interminable.

  Seneca the Elder

  Journey, Men, Hiking

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• The insincerity of man-all men are liars, partial or hiders of facts, half tellers of truths, shirks, moral sneaks. When a merely honest man appears he is a comet-his fame is eternal-needs no genius, no talent-mere honesty

  Mark Twain

  Honesty, Liars, Men

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.205, Courier Corporation

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• What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of mind, for the moment realizes itself.

  Anna Brownell Jameson

  Inspirational, Dream, Mind

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• The right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness.

  George Eliot

  Lawlessness, Revolution, Rebellion

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.5886, Delphi Classics

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• The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self- education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Museums, Self, Intellectual

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• Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Effort, Understanding, Impatient

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.174, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.

  Joseph Butler

  Sorrow, World, Satisfaction

  Joseph Butler (1852). “The Analogy of Religion ... A new edition, with an introductory essay, by Rev. Albert Barnes; and a complete index”, p.437

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• The computer is the most extraordinary of man's technological clothing; it's an extension of our central nervous system. Beside it, the wheel is a mere hula-hoop.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Technology, Men, Hula

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• A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Happiness, Lying, Home

  H.L. MENCKEN (1958). “PREJUDICES A SELECTION”

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• The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Friendship, Best Friend, Together

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• The necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate.

  Samuel Johnson

  Office, Humanity, Thousand

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Rambler”, p.469

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• Ideological talk and phrase mongering about political liberties should be disposed with; all that is just mere chatter and phrase mongering. We should get away from those phrases.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Political, Liberty, Phrases

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• Ah! I need solitude. I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon - to behold and commune with something grander than man. Their mere distance and unprofanedness is an infinite encouragement. it is with infinite yearning and aspiration that I seek solitude, more and more resolved and strong; but with a certain weakness that I seek society ever.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Encouragement, Strong, Distance

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.135, Courier Corporation

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• The religious urge in man is not a mere passing phase in the history of his spiritual development, but the ultimate source of all his ethical thought and all his concepts of morality; not the outcome of primitive credulity which a more "enlightened" age could outgrow, but the only answer to a real, basic need of man at all times and in all environments. In another word, it is an instinct.

  Muhammad Asad

  Spiritual, Religious, Real

  Muhammad Asad (1961). “The Principles of State and Government in Islam”, p.10, Univ of California Press

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• A poem is but a thought, a mere memory caught at play. From hand onto paper, bleeding thoughts emerge.

  Robert M. Hensel

  Memories, Hands, Play

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• Lobbying' is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators. It is the result and creation of a mixed economy-of government by pressure groups. Its methods range from mere social courtesies and cocktail-party or luncheon "friendships" to favors, threats, bribes, blackmail.

  Ayn Rand

  Party, Government, Pressure Groups

  Ayn Rand (1990). “The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought”, p.241, Penguin

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• It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.

  Edmund Burke

  Loss, Men, Political

  Edmund Burke (1999). “The Portable Edmund Burke”, p.433, Penguin

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• No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Essence, Ideas, Liberty

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• If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Views, Numbers, Liberty

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1861

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• Chemistry is yet, indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested; experiments seem contradictory; their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses; and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an age too soon to propose the establishment of a system.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Science, Mind, Age

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”

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• When talking about unicorns, minotaurs, or compassionate conservatives, one does not normally have to prove their non-existence; the mere lack of any evidence is sufficient reason not to believe in any of them.

  Peter Stone

  Believe, Talking, Religion

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• It is our task-our essential, central, crucial task-to transform ourselves from mere social creatures into community creatures.

  M. Scott Peck

  Community, Essentials, Tasks

  M. Scott Peck (2010). “The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace”, p.165, Simon and Schuster

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