Merely Quotes

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.

The bass player's function, along with the drums, is to be the engine that drives the car... everything else is merely colours.

Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.

Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he lives his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.

Nothing comes merely by thinking about it.

Sex without love is merely healthy exercise.

It hardly seems worthwhile to point out the shortsightedness of those practitioners who would have us believe that the form of the poem is merely its shape.

Getting people to like you is merely the other side of liking them.

Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.

With the brush we merely tint, while the imagination alone produces colour.

If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material. It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.

Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.

Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.

Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.

Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely like exercising authority usually lose it.

Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.

You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don't let yourself indulge in vain wishes.

My mission was always intended to be slightly outside the public eye, because that makes me appear more interesting than I really am. A lot of people don't realise that merely by staying away, you can create a myth.

Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.

Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject.

Hence, even in the domain of natural science the aid of the experimental method becomes indispensable whenever the problem set is the analysis of transient and impermanent phenomena, and not merely the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects.

Good means not merely not to do wrong, but rather not to desire to do wrong.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

It is not enough to merely defend democracy. To defend it may be to lose it; to extend it is to strengthen it. Democracy is not property; it is an idea.

Good manners have much to do with the emotions. To make them ring true, one must feel them, not merely exhibit them.

Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.

In physics, to be in two places at the same time would be a miracle; in politics it seems not merely normal, but natural.

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.