Quotes on Mere

When your mother asks, 'Do you want a piece of advice?' it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.

If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.

Duty is heavier than a mountain, Dai Shan.' That time, Lan did flinch. How long had it been since someone had been able to do that to him with mere words? He remembered teaching that same concept to a youth out of the Two Rivers. A sheepherder, innocent of the world, fearful of the fate laid out before him by the Pattern.

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.

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.

Joy is not gush. Joy is not mere jolliness. Joy is perfect acquiescence ~ acceptance, rest ~ in God’s will, whatever comes.

Philosophy should always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the walls of cities and murders the women and children amid the flames and the purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.

It is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.

Not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes; tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice.

Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere. The self is so self-confident that unless it is totally discouraged it will not give up. Mere verbal conviction is not enough. Hard facts alone can show the absolute nothingness of the self-image.

Our society has reoriented itself to the present moment. Everything is live, real time, and always-on. It’s not a mere speeding up, however much our lifestyles and technologies have accelerated the rate at which we attempt to do things. It’s more of a diminishment of anything that isn’t happening right now—and the onslaught of everything that supposedly is.

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.

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

The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves but the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind.

It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute.

The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings. His passions are mere appearances, being sterile. They are dissipated in futile imaginings, producing nothing external to themselves.

I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.

For 'Tis not in mere death that men die most.

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.

Any piece of knowledge which the pupil has himself acquired- any problem which he has himself solved, becomes, by virtue of the conquest, much more thoroughly his than it could else be. The preliminary activity of mind which his success implies, the concentration of thought necessary to it, and the excitement consequent on his triumph, conspire to register the facts in his memory in a way that no mere information heard from a teacher, or read in a schoolbook, can be registered.

Not just in China, but everywhere in the world without exception, one either leans to the side of imperialism or the side of socialism. Neutrality is mere camouflage; a third road does not exist.