Browsing Topic Best Mere Quotes

Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things.

To write well and speak well is mere vanity if one does not live well.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.

My advice to any young person at the beginning of their career is to try to look for the mere outlines of big things with their fresh, untrained and unprejudiced mind.

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections…a mere heart of stone.

Do not judge men by mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace and joy.

By the mere fact that we do not go forward, we go backward.

I care far more how humanity lives than how long. Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a contemptible ideal.

Swear words and profanities are mere abbreviations of speech, similar to the abbreviations in writing.

The soft bonds of love are indifferent to life and death. They hold through time so that yesterday’s love is part of today’s and the confidence in tomorrow’s love is also part of today’s. And when one dies, the memory lives in the other, and is warm and breathing. And when both die – I almost believe, rationalist though I am – that somewhere it remains, indestructible and eternal, enriching all of the universe by the mere fact that once it existed.

Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority.

Kindness-mere kindness-cannot tolerate suffering. Love can.

There is hope in honest error; none in the icy perfections of the mere stylist

Love of goodness without love of learning degenerates into simple-mindedness. Love of knowledge without love of learning degenerates into utter lack of principle. Love of faithfulness without love of learning degenerates into injurious disregard of consequences. Love of uprightness without love of learning degenerates into harshness. Love of courage without love of learning degenerates into insubordination. Love of strong character without love of learning degenerates into mere recklessness.

Patriotism has become a mere national self assertion, a sentimentality of flag-cheering with no constructive duties.

Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.

They do not depend upon mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine and that the Japanese people are superior to other races.

At the beginning of World War II the U.S. had a mere 600 or so first-class fighting aircraft. We rapidly overcame this short supply by turning out more than 90,000 planes a year. The question at the start of World War II was: Do we have enough funds to produce the required implements of war? The answer was No, we did not have enough money, nor did we have enough gold; but we did have more than enough resources. It was the available resources that enabled the US to achieve the high production and efficiency required to win the war. Unfortunately this is only considered in times of war.

Life does not mean mere karma or mere bhakti or mere jnana.

in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!

Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically; they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom.

. . . if I had been a man, self-respect, family pressure and the public opinion of my class would have pushed me into a money-making profession; as a mere woman I could carve out a career of disinterested research.

Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.

Grace is an energy; not a mere sentiment; not a mere thought of the Almighty; not even a word of the Almighty. It is as real an energy as the energy of electricity. It is a divine energy; it is the energy of the divine affection rolling in plenteousness toward the shores of human need.

The thief you must fear the most is not the one who steals mere things.

The West needs to relearn what the rest of the world has never forgotten – that there is nothing sinful in leisure as long as it does not degenerate into mere sloth.

The mere physical man is like the ant crawling on the paper, who observes black lettering and attributes its production to the pen and nothing more.

The corruption of religions comes from turning them to mere words and appearances.

It may be true, that men, who are mere mathematicians, have certain specific shortcomings, but that is not the fault of mathematics, for it is equally true of every other exclusive occupation.

We shall do well ever to remember, that Christianity is not a mere speculative theory, that is to inform the mind; but a great practical lesson, to renew the heart, and to bring us back to the state from whence we are fallen.

The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion.

Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves – and be free.

Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.