Top 262 Mere Quotes

The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler.

Any form of media is an opportunity to be a mirror and reflection of what we are experiencing more in the details of our life. What makes it fun and unique in a lot of ways is how that journey is changing just by the mere fact of the current time.

If elected, I would not be the mere president of a party – I would endeavor to act independent of party domination and should feel bound to administer the government untrammeled by party schemes.

Hedge fund managers charge so much more than mutual fund managers; alpha is even harder to come by. They end up selling a variety of things beyond mere outperformance.

Reflection is only a partial understanding of truth if it does not translate itself in practice into commitments to the common good and justice. Truth is not mere abstraction but something to be done and is only apprehended when this is realized.

If you are sentenced to torture for a crime, yes, that is a cruel punishment. But the mere fact that somebody is tortured is – is unlawful under – under our statutes, but the Constitution happens not to address it, just as it does not address a lot of other horrible things.

I belong to a nation which over the past centuries has experienced many hardships and reverses. The world reacted with silence or with mere sympathy when Polish frontiers were crossed by invading armies and the sovereign state had to succumb to brutal force.

‘Band on the Run’ is a carefully composed, intricately designed personal statement that will make it impossible for anyone to classify Paul McCartney as a mere stylist again.

I’m an absolute connoisseur of cheeseburgers and like to think that I can detect even mere percentages of shift in fat content in ground meat in a burger and can actually name the temperature to which it was actually cooked to the degree if I’m, you know, really on my game.

Whatever brief delights it provides, mere strangeness in poetry and prose eventually leaves us cold, especially when we suspect the writer is stretching for effect to avoid the actual life before his eyes.

Neuroscience is a baby science, a mere century old, and our scientific understanding of the brain is nowhere near where we’d like it to be. We know more about the moons of Jupiter than what is inside of our skulls.

More often than not, the experience of shooting the movie has been disappointing and the end product has been a mere shadow of what I hoped it would be. But immersing myself in the story – that’s what I like best of all.

If our dreams are sincere desires to achieve, not mere pipe-dreams, there is something deep within ourselves which comes out to meet them and helps to make them realities.

Social media and smart phones have become an inevitable part of our lives. We shouldn’t be under their control, which is wrong. It is mere stupidity, and we must be aware of everything around us.

Textbook science is beautiful! Textbook science is comprehensible, unlike mere fascinating words that can never be truly beautiful. Elementary science textbooks describe simple theories, and simplicity is the core of scientific beauty. Fascinating words have no power, nor yet any meaning, without the math.

Don’t become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.

When you consider all the stars I have managed, mere submarines make me smile.

The universe is more than mere matter in motion. It and we were brought into being by a Creator who seeks our good.

We do not accost a physician as we do any mere nobody; nor a magistrate as we do a private individual. We try to get some advantage from the skill of the one and the position of the other. Walk in the sun, and your shadow will follow you, whether you will or not.

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

There was a perception that reality-show people are just mere personalities, that they don’t have real talent, and I worked real hard to change peoples’ minds, one show at a time, and proved a lot of people wrong. I’m proud I was the first to do that for ‘Idol’ on Broadway!

Mere goodness can achieve little against the power of nature.

The censor boards are mere redundant forces conspiring to keep the ‘bold’ films out of reach of the audience.

I’ve been intrigued by ‘Le Monde’ ever since work took me to Paris once, and I noted that on a day when there was some huge worldwide story, the paper led its front page on some cabinet changes in Turkey. It implied a magnificent disdain for the quotidian folderol of mere news.

Man – life in general – seems irrelevant to the workings of the universe: a mere smudge of water, grease, and carbon on a pinpoint planet circling a star of no special consequence.

Computer hackers do not need to know each other’s real names, or even live on the same continent, to steal millions in mere hours.

UNIX always presumes you know what you’re doing. You’re the human being, after all, and it is a mere operating system.

The Moon and Mars were the two most likely candidates for life in the solar system; what exists beyond our solar system is mere guesswork.

It always seemed to me ironic that the McCain campaign kept referring sneeringly to Obama’s meager resume – ‘a mere community organizer!’ – before he entered electoral politics. It was Obama’s experience as a community organizer that proved such a killer app when he applied that skill to the Internet.

When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.

Rian Malan was one of the first younger writers to perceive and write about a darkness in the South African psyche that goes deeper than mere politics. To some extent, that’s my territory, too.

My keen love of travel was seldom hindered by Father. He permitted me, even as a mere boy, to visit many cities and pilgrimage spots.

The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

One time, I was given an essay topic: to describe a perfect horse, whom the mere sight of the rider’s whip would make obedient. I depicted this perfect horse throwing his rider at the sight of the whip.

Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!

My other bodily ailments have become mere matters of history.

Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express.

Centenarians are still living near their children and feel loved and the expectation to love. Instead of being mere recipients of care, they are contributors to the lives of their families. They grow gardens to contribute vegetables, they continue to cook and clean.

I know by experience that Jesus Christ is a very powerful spirit – I know by experience that he is probably the most powerful spirit in the universe. I know by experience he is not a mere human being. He is something beyond that.

It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.

It is right for us not to want our country transformed into a mere corridor, a giant railway station.

Words are mere shadows cast by ideas. But the ideas they represent are real.

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

The Tea Party folks may be sincere, loyal citizens, but their notions about how the economy works are exactly that: mere notions. Their core notion is that government needs to do nothing more than get out of the way of business in order for the economy to boom and bloom.

Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth’s marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

While I appreciated the educational advantages I enjoyed in the school and was proud of what I could show in mental culture, I had an earnest desire for something more than a mere business education… I desired to study for a profession, and this prompted me to leave my native state.

The police force has repeatedly demonstrated an inability and unwillingness to carry out its fundamental mandate: to serve and protect the people of Hong Kong. It has been reduced to a mere instrument of repression subservient to the political agenda of Beijing’s regime in Hong Kong.

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

Commercials certainly pay more than films. I was pleasantly surprised at the profitability of commercials when I did my first ad for a popular soap brand years ago. I was paid a huge amount of money for a mere 30 seconds of screen presence. After that, ads have been a regular feature in my career.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

I am certainly proud to add ‘Korra’ to the pantheon of TV characters, which is perpetually sorely lacking in multifaceted female characters who aren’t sidekicks, subordinates or mere trophies for male characters.

Our culture has always been about treating women as mothers. It is sad that women are treated as mere sex objects by many.

A system of education is not one thing, nor does it have a single definite object, nor is it a mere matter of schools. Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.

The mere thought of divorce terrified me. To me, divorce symbolized failure.

A song has a life of its own. It’s an autonomous thing, separate from your own experience, almost. And the mere repetition of it means it’s subject to change; it means approaching it differently, expressing different emotional aspects of it. It doesn’t feel like wallowing.

A philosopher goes where the truth leads and has no patience with mere emotion.

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.

In fiction, as in real life, love might inspire acts that are at best foolish and at worst life-threatening, but in the best romances, love is the final, secret ingredient that turns mere mortals into heroes and heroines.

The mere acknowledgment that ‘God is watching’ can act as a trap, fueling bad behavior, corruption, and guilt, all remedied by God’s forgiveness. No personal responsibility is needed – someone on the outside sees whatever we’re doing and makes it all OK.

And let a scholar all earth’s volumes carry, he will be but a walking dictionary: a mere articulate clock.

The idea that Americans favor politicians who either remind them of themselves or can imagine what their selves are like because they too have struggled and sung the blues, is, like very best theories of human behavior, immune to falsification by mere evidence.

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

The mere suggestion that not speaking for a day can give you an appreciation of the social isolation that comes with the experience of disability, particularly those whose impairments prohibit them from communicating verbally, is insensitive at best.

I’m truly excited to be a part of ‘Tu Mere Agal Bagal Hai’ and SAB TV. This will be my first tryst with a comedy TV series on the small screen.

The more I think about the Olympics, even from afar, its mere concept stuns me. I can’t think of any other line of work where, every four years, people gather to be ranked one, two, and three, then are more or less told to evaporate until the next go-around.

The dearest friend on earth is a mere shadow compared to Jesus Christ.

If one accepts Hezbollah’s self-description as a resistance movement, in which case one must, in light of the fact that Hezbollah never ceases to provoke, view Israel’s mere existence as a continuing act of aggression, then Hezbollah has indeed shown that it can initiate conflict, resist, and survive.

I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money-making has never been my goal, I had an ambition to build.

If the elections are a mere fraud, why are terrorists being trained and infiltrated into India at the command of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency of Pakistan to kill election candidates and to intimidate voters?

The mere imparting of information is not education.

All good performance pieces have some philosophical validity. That’s the difference between mere theater and performance art.

Let me make one thing clear. I have never considered mere survival in power as any achievement, just as I have never seen coming to power as an achievement in itself.

I’ve been experimenting more and more with LN2, liquid nitrogen. I’ve used it in battle on ‘Iron Chef America,’ but have also made some great ice creams at home for my family. Since it freezes basically on contact, you can have ice cream ready in mere minutes.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

If you’ve been wondering where the next gold rush is going to take place, look up at the night sky to our closest celestial neighbor. The next economic boom might just be a mere 240,000 miles away on the bella luna.

There’s a historical milestone in the fact that our Apollo 11 landing on the moon took place a mere 66 years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight.

Even if my mother had no qualms of conscience concerning ownership of negroes, her sense of duty carried her far beyond the mere supplying of their physical needs, or requiring that they render faithful service.

Each Dreamer in our country is more than a mere statistic; he or she is a proud American in everything but official documentation.

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

I have been a part of Ae Mere Hamsafar’ which was a recreated track from one of the cult movies, but I think that was the requirement of the film and the makers wanted to recreate that song.

Destiny is not designed by mere mortals like us. It is crafted by God.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

When a man has emerged from slavery, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.

In my view, the biggest investment risk is not the volatility of prices, but whether you will suffer a permanent loss of capital. Not only is the mere drop in stock prices not risk, but it is an opportunity. Where else do you look for cheap stocks?

President Obama is perhaps the most ideologically-motivated president in American history. But according to the ultimate authority, Barack Obama, he’s a mere pragmatist.

The early Stones were adolescent rockers. They were self-conscious in an obvious and unpretentious way. And they were committed to a musical style that needed no justification because it came so naturally to them. As they grew musically the mere repetition of old rock and blues tunes became increasingly less satisfying.

Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.

I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.

All that was once directly lived has become mere representation.

Yet, it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully – love, lust, longing; joy, rage, fear; triumph, yearning and confusion.

Many of us are experiencing a phase of change, shedding outdated patterns and liberating ourselves from the old by moving on to the new. The year 2012 is an important one for mankind, a pivotal year. The potential for this exists in the mere fact that the majority of us are yearning for change.

Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.

The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.

The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life.

God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given utterance, but he is in himself pure Life.

Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory.

Though designed as a mere convenience, clothing sizes establish an unintended norm, an ideal from which deviations seem like flaws. There’s nothing like a trip to the dressing room to convince a woman – fat, thin, or in between – that she’s a freak.

Wherefore the mere practical architect is not able to assign sufficient reasons for the forms he adopts; and the theoretic architect also fails, grasping the shadow instead of the substance.

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

My red patent-leather, 5-inch peep-toe slingbacks are not mere shoes. They are fine art. They make me feel tall. They make me feel sexy. They make me feel powerful. I call them my ‘special-day shoes.’

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

Manoj Muntashir is a fantastic lyricist of this generation and he has penned my indie number ‘Ae Mere Dil’ very nicely.

Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny.

Mere heathen morality, and not Jesus Christ, is preached in most of our churches.

Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.

Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.

We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable’s handbook, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they are overloaded.

A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.

The 21st century will be quite unlike the preceding two centuries, in which power was located in Europe and the U.S., and the rest of the world consisted of mere supplicants and bit players.

I was only 13 years old when I was forced to face the fragility of my own life. A routine surgery landed me in a medically induced coma for two weeks with a mere 1% chance of surviving. But survive I did.

How players react to questions that you ask can give definitive information as to the strength of their hand. Even an opponent who says nothing at all might be sending a silent signal. A mere shrug, an awkward smile, or even a frozen stare can be meaningful.

As a callow 18-year-old leaving for college, I’d seen my home town as a mere launching pad for a life in worldlier locales, a place to be from rather than a place to be.

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

The Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere ‘calculating machines.’ It holds a position wholly its own, and the considerations it suggests are more interesting in their nature.

Until we perceive the meaning of our past, we remain the mere carriers of ideas, like the Nomads.

Liberalism can only be defined negatively. It is a mere critique, not a living idea.

Rightfully given near-deity status in the early days of industrial America, the J.P. Morgans, Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Vanderbilts of the world not only ran our country, they were also revered – and often despised – as larger-than-life personalities who could perform feats mere mortals could only dream of.

The Nature Lover is not looking for mere facts but for meanings, for something he can translate into terms of his own life.

A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further back – it is already so far.

If I examine the circumstances which inspired me to write – and this is not mere self-indulgence, but a desire for accuracy – I see clearly that the starting point of it all for me was war.

The mere drawing and painting world of the pattern designer and the applied artist must become a world that builds again.

If Al Gore had allowed us and if the Florida Supreme Court had not intervened and rewritten the law, which they’re not supposed to do, we could have certified, which is a mere procedural action, and then after that, they could have petitioned any justice for a recount statewide with uniform standards.

Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

I couldn’t be happier starting 2019 with this film ‘Haathi Mere Saathi.’ It’s the first time that I am doing a trilingual film which I’m excited about. It will be my Tamil and Telugu debut.

Far from being a mere consequence of winning, strong team spirit is an essential ingredient of sporting success; it comes before, not afterwards.

The film’s dramatic requirements should always take precedence over the mere aesthetics of editing.

From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.

We cannot be mere consumers of good governance, we must be participants; we must be co-creators.

What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.

According to some tallies, since 1776, the United States has been at war 93 percent of its existence, passing through a mere 21 years of peace.

I had a couple of releases including Dil Ka Rishta,’ Koi Mere Dil Mein Hai,’ Madhoshi,’ and Julie,’ but they were badly released and went unnoticed.

The difference between one man and another is not mere ability it is energy.

Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing.

The mere fact of my novel being filmed means very little to me. For a long while after ‘The Crimson Petal’s publication in 2002, it looked as though Hollywood was going to adapt it.

A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.

In fact, technology has been the story of human progress from as long back as we know. In 100 years people will look back on now and say, ‘That was the Internet Age.’ And computers will be seen as a mere ingredient to the Internet Age.

In the Navy, I slept mere feet from a nuclear reactor, so I have no knee-jerk opposition to traditional reactors.

The harming of animals for any reason is shameful, but torturing them for mere vanity is senseless. Slaughtering animals for their fur or harming them for cosmetic purposes is disgusting and not worth the perfect shade of lipstick.

The powers, aspirations, and mission of man are such as to raise the study of his origin and nature, inevitably and by the very necessity of the case, from the mere physiological to the psychological stage of scientific operations.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

How good is man’s life, the mere living! How fit to employ all the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.

I abhor mere prettiness.

To jump and break the sound barrier will not be a mere record breaking experience or another extreme event that ends once the mission is accomplished.

All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.

The letters and journals we leave behind and the impressions we have made on our contemporaries are the mere husk of the kernel of our essential life. When we die, the kernel is buried with us. This is the horror and pity of death and the reason for the inescapable triviality of biography.

When the Soul that is sprung from God’s Word and Will is entered into its own desire to will of itself, it will run in mere uncertainty till it return to its Original again.

Real love is the love that sometimes arises after sensual pleasure: if it does, it is immortal; the other kind inevitably goes stale, for it lies in mere fantasy.

We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product.

To express to you in mere words, our personal feelings on this occasion you must know to be impossible, and particularly so for one who normally has to describe only things outside himself.

As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.

What is at stake in the debate over health care is more than the mere crafting of policy. The issue is now the identity of the Democratic Party.

Models now need to promote themselves, think like businesswomen and diversify their careers by doing other things. Chances are very slim that a mere model will become a household name today.

If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest.

I know that those who esteem these little organised associations to be the churches of God, see nothing but mere meetings of men in every other gathering of God’s children.

I have discovered that my interest in my dear pupil, Mabel, has ripened into a far deeper feeling than that of mere friendship. In fact, I know that I have learned to love her very sincerely.

In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Certainly, I find that ‘Mere Christianity’ speaks to me. So why am I still an agnostic? Beats me.

I hate flying. My stomach churns at the mere thought of it.

I don’t want to just traffic in sensationalism or in mere blood.

The difference between psychedelia and digitalia ages will seem like a smooth blending in years to come and will be a mere blip on the screen.

I crave and seek a natural explanation of all phenomena upon this earth, but the word ‘natural’ to me implies more than mere chemistry and physics. The birth of a baby and the blooming of a flower are natural events, but the laboratory methods forever fail to give us the key to the secret of either.

A woman is very sensitive and knows exactly when she is loved or not. Mere words don’t work.

Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

I am in Deepak Ramsay’s ‘Koi Mere Dil Mein Hain,’ where I am a modern girl who wears bold outfits. She makes heads turn wherever she goes. She is not a brat. She nurses this false belief that she can get any man she wants.

The more I see of democracy the more I dislike it. It just brings everything down to the mere vulgar level of wages and prices, electric light and water closets, and nothing else.

Gonjasufi may sound at first like a rambling hip-hop crackpot, but there’s more to the California rapper and singer than mere eccentricity: What appears messy and thrown together is anything but.

If Christianity is a mere invention of man, and the Bible is not from God, how can infidels explain Jesus Christ? His existence in history they cannot deny. How is it that without force or bribery, without arms or money, He has made such an immensely deep mark on the world as He certainly has?

Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we’ve not only survived, we’ve used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges.

Happiness, to some, elation; Is, to others, mere stagnation.

The once inviolate frame within which programs or commercials were displayed on television – always separately – has been violated to a pulp. Program content is seen increasingly as a mere backdrop on which ads are posted like billboards on a fence.

In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts.

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

For the record: Quantum mechanics does not deny the existence of objective reality. Nor does it imply that mere thoughts can change external events. Effects still require causes, so if you want to change the universe, you need to act on it.

Research! A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved, and will never achieve any results of the slightest value.

Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.

I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you’ll recognize that and make the necessary revisions.

Some literary types subscribe to the notion that being a writer like Salinger entitles a person to remain free of the standards that might apply to mere mortals.

The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere ‘stick’ in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.

As poverty has been reduced in terms of mere survival, it has become more profound in terms of our way of life.

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual’s total development lags behind?

The extent to which not just state legislatures but the Congress of the United States are now run by large corporate special interests is beyond mere recognition as fact. The takeover is complete.

They definitely mean to maintain that the process called death is a mere severence of soul and body, and that the soul is freed rather than injured thereby.

It’s important to recognize that forgiveness is more than mere words; it’s a heart attitude that induces a spiritual transformation.

A novel is no mere assemblage of gears; it is a wild and living being. And how are you to discern the intentions of a creature – to discover its true nature – other than by close and respectful observation?

Thrones, dominations, principalities know now with a terrible certainty that mere force of arms has no power which compares with that living word of the crucified Nazarene, that bears with it Eternal Life, and directs the duty of a world of men whom he can lead, but who bend no knee to power.

Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.

My hope and prayer is that the body of Christ in America will awake with holy boldness, a boldness content neither with silence nor mere words but that backs up those words with action and results.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

One does not study for a goal. One sings because one can’t help it! The ‘goal’ nine times out of ten is a mere accident.

Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.

Why does everyone cling to the masculine imagery and pronouns even though they are a mere linguistic device that has never meant that God is male?

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

To qualify as a recession, economic activity must decline in an absolute sense; a mere slowdown in real growth is not enough.

The mere fact that I’m former head of state and former under-secretary in the U.N. system, it means that I can get in touch with anybody in the world, in theory.

Mere longevity is a good thing for those who watch Life from the side lines. For those who play the game, an hour may be a year, a single day’s work an achievement for eternity.

A rule I have had for years is: to treat the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal friend. His is not a creed, a mere doctrine, but it is He Himself we have.

In such a case secrecy must be absolute to be effective, and although mere vague curiosity induced many persons of my intimate acquaintance to ask to be allowed to just go in and have a peep, I never admitted anyone.

Pythagoras took the next important step by subordinating the mere matter of nature to its essential principle of form and order, identifying the latter with reason or the soul.

Resilience is distinct from mere survival, and more than mere endurance. Resilience is often endurance with direction.

Canada’s total exports into global markets reached a record high of $528.8 billion in 2014, the last year with fully available figures. A mere $18.8 billion of those exports went to China.

The best partnerships aren’t dependent on a mere common goal but on a shared path of equality, desire, and no small amount of passion.

What used to be called ‘good manners’ is now regarded as mere affectation. Open a door for a young woman, and she’s likely to call security.

Mere recording of an event will not make it a historical document. It will become obsolete with time. Only those that emotionally connect with the audience will stand the test of time.

The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes.

In theory, at least, all presidents are servants of the people who elected them. In the case of Barack Obama, it has seemed from the start that the idea as applied to him was more than mere metaphor. He is the first president in my lifetime whom the country felt obligated to remind that he know his place.

Great VCs are more than mere investors; they are often seasoned leaders who have built companies themselves.

A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that’s what freedom is all about.

Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned and separately managed.

Hope, decency, and unity are not mere catchwords.

We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology.

The proposition of an established classification of states as slave states and free states, as insisted on by some, and into northern and southern, as maintained by others, seems to me purely imaginary, and of course the supposed equilibrium of those classes a mere conceit.

People far too often associate derivatives markets with mere speculation, but there are very legitimate businesses that need derivatives to protect themselves against risk.

For the mob, habituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbors, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honors, produces a reign of mere violence.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago.

The man who is gloomy, taciturn and lives in a world of doubt seldom achieves more than a bare living. There have been a few who have groaned their way through to a competence, but in proportion to that overwhelming number of souls who carry cheer through life, they are as nothing – mere drops in the bucket.

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

The record business has always mystified me. Sometimes there are reasons why things sell or don’t sell that can’t be understood by mere mortals.

The way life manages information involves a logical structure that differs fundamentally from mere complex chemistry. Therefore chemistry alone will not explain life’s origin, any more than a study of silicon, copper and plastic will explain how a computer can execute a program.

Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.

The value of a man is in his intrinsic qualities: in that of which power cannot strip him and which adverse fortune cannot take away. That for which he is indebted to circumstances is mere trapping and tinsel.

The awesomeness of God is that even in the works of the Beach Boys, Beatles, etc., the beauty of the music is a mere reflection of what God does everyday. He creates music of all kinds and moods.

By mere burial man arrives not at bliss; and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here – the Infinite.

Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter mush. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

I’ve never really played everyday people. I’ve played realist roles, but not mere daily life. There was always something incredible happening to my characters.

Can’t step from one movie set to the next. Only Samuel L. Jackson can do that. All us mere mortals can’t do that!

Minimalism had to be born, not out of a mere spur-of-the-moment idea or yearning for a new lifestyle, but from an earnest desire and fervent need to rethink our lives.

I then realized that I could never be satisfied again with the mere natural charm of my voice, that I had to constantly paint when singing, melting all the colors, expressing reds and blacks that had to be less primary but bursting with subtly colored combinations.

The inspiration for ‘Ai Dil Mere’ happened at 4:30 A.M. on a Sunday.

I quit drinking in 2002, mere months before my college graduation.

Simply because I did not fit in their mold of what an independent working woman should be, the media and political elite have sought to relegate my sense of civic responsibility to mere sideshow antics.

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.

Amusement is a way of boredom-avoidance through external stimulation that fails to exercise our minds. It’s mere diversion.

He has a number of curious facts in illustration of the power of mere goodness to protect against outrage.

We are more than the work we perform. In fact, I’d say that our work is a mere representation of who we are underneath.

A network neutrality rule could result in mere ‘slaps on the wrist’ or involve such expensive and difficult litigation procedures that no small company or consumer could ever bring a case.

True love is not a strong, fiery, impetuous passion. It is, on the contrary, an element calm and deep. It looks beyond mere externals, and is attracted by qualities alone. It is wise and discriminating, and its devotion is real and abiding.

Most of my story ideas come from my childhood. Sometimes they hatch from stories my parents told me, sometimes they come from experiences in my own life, and sometimes they are inspired by mere moments.

The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as from the need to impart mere information, or mirror anything. I am not a realist writer, even if I seem like one.

My inspiration came especially in the 1950s through the Vienna Group founded by writer H.C. Artmann. It showed me that if you want to say something, you have to let the language itself say it, because language is usually more meaningful than the mere content that one wishes to convey.

Experience alone can give a final answer. The knowledge gained in a few years by a commission of the kind suggested would be worth more than volumes of mere assertions and contradictions.

The mere existence of ‘Buffy’ proves the declinists wrong about one thing: Hollywood commercialism can produce great art. Complex and evolving characters. Playful language. Joy and sorrow, pathos and elation. Episodes that dare to be different – to tell stories in silence or in song. Big themes and terrible choices.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.

As relationships progress, the time you spend smooching diminishes. Where kissing was once an enjoyable entree unto itself, it becomes a mere appetizer couples hasten through on the way to the main course.

The tendency of philosophers who know nothing of machinery is to talk of man as a mere mechanism, intending by this to imply that he is without purpose. This shows a lack of understanding of machines as well as of man.

True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance. It is far deeper than that – it is spiritual transaction with the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

A person’s mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not give rise to probable cause to search that person.

If Dubai could be built over mere sand and is one of the richest countries in the world today – why not make the most of the country we’ve been blessed with?

The mere toleration of the slave trade could not make slavery itself – the right of property in man – lawful any where; not even on board the slave ship. Toleration of a wrong is not law.

If you want to lose weight, you must make sure your appetite for life is far bigger than your appetite for mere food.

I think that the mere fact that I’m doing it ought to inspire someone. In junior high school the counselor suggested that I focus on wood shop and metal shop.

The history of the Internet is, in part, a series of opportunities missed: the major record labels let Apple take over the digital-music business; Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix for a mere fifty million dollars; Excite turned down the chance to acquire Google for less than a million dollars.

NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world’s premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.