Merely Quotes

If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing 'real' was at risk, what would you do? You'd live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That's what the ghosts want us to do - all the exciting things they no longer can.

Children with Hyacinth's temperament don't know better as they grow older; they merely know more.

Ambition never is in a greater hurry that I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.

To boast of a performance which I cannot beat is merely stupid vanity. And if I can beat it that means there is nothing special about it. What has passed is already finished with. What I find more interesting is what is still to come.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

Barry seems to be more flamboyant merely because he gets more interviews to talk about it.

My point is, if you want to achieve anything in life, it is not enough to merely wish for it. You must develop that kind of 4:30 AM discipline that distinguishes you from others.

A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.

She did not admire him any more than she had. It was merely that she considered him the Lesser of two evils.

Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death.

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.

I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.

The British system denied any role for human creativity, and instead argued, that if man merely followed his hedonistic desires, pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, objective laws would naturally guide society to achieve the best allocation of wealth.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

In my books I might hold the mirror to my own face. If others would like to borrow the mirror, they're welcome. The books aren't there to accuse others - merely to raise issues and keep the debates alive.

It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness.

Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.

Basically the school system sets you up with what it wants to set you up with. They're really good at it. I think they're too good. Problem is, what they're doing is conditioning kids to merely accept the culture at hand. But the rebels won't accept it.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.

It's not merely that conservatives are better at selling their product, or that they happen to have an easier-and undoubtedly simpler-ideological product to sell. It's that they know what they are selling. Liberals in general and Obama in particular cannot say the same.

It must be able to assist in devising the method of solution of problems and not merely solve them.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

America is not just a democracy, it represents a certain culture of competitive mobility and personality aspirations, politics is not merely a clash of interests, but a clash of dreams.

Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

A visual image in the hand of an artist is merely a tool to trigger a mental image.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Coercion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him.