Merely Quotes

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.

Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.

Men like me, who merely wish to establish political freedom, will in such circumstances lose all their influence, and others will get influence who may become dangerous to all established interests whatsoever.

Creativity often consists of merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?

Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects.

The atom bomb was no "great decision." It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.

East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

Upholding human rights is not merely compatible with fighting terrorism, it is essential.

Travel, instead of broadening the mind, often merely lengthens the conversation.

Most of the things we decide are not what we know to be the best. We say yes, merely because we are driven into a corner and must say something.

Most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business.

We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

The doctrine of original sin claims that all men sinned in Adam; but whether they did or whether it is merely a fact that all men sin does not basically affect the problem of suffering.

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.

The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics.

The employee is regarded by the employer merely in the light of his value as an operative. His productive capacity alone is taken into account.

Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions; it's walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.

Self-deception ultimately explains Japan's plight. The Japanese have never accepted that change is in their interest - and not merely a response to U.S. criticism.

In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.

Our second remark is, that the office is of divine appointment, not merely in the sense in which the civil powers are ordained of God, but in the sense that ministers derive their authority from Christ, and not from the people.

War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.

The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art.

There are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely.

I believe we should reframe our response to climate change as an imperative for growth rather than merely being a way of being green or meeting environmental commitments.

Which, of course, isn't the point of writing - but it would be nice if, along with the creative satisfaction of writing and seeing my work in print, I could do more than merely scrape a living. Okay, moaning over.

It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.

Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.