Mere Quotes

1764 Mere quotes by 1115 unique authors

Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown. — Petrarch
Bravery ceases to be bravery at a certain point, and becomes mere foolhardiness. — Rabindranath Tagore
Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth. — Rabindranath Tagore
The mere wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses-not expected to draw the load, but only to… — Henry Ward Beecher
Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science. — Henry David Thoreau
Life is not a thing of knowing only--nay, mere knowledge has properly no place at all save as it becomes the handmaiden of feeling and… — Learned Hand
Prison is not a mere physical horror. It is using a pickaxe to no purpose that makes a prison. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
No truth is proved, no truth achieved, by argument, and the ready-made truths men offer you are mere conveniences or drugs to make you sleep. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Love is our only weapon. Only love can turn mere life into a miracle, and draw precious meaning from suffering and fear. — Nando Parrado
The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere… — Walter Lippmann
I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is… — Mark Twain
The human passions transform man from a mere thing into a hero, into a being that in spite of tremendous handicaps tries to make sense… — Erich Fromm
The materialistic idealism that governs American life, that on the one hand makes a chariot of every grocery wagon, and on the other a mere… — Louis Kronenberger
How much there is in books that one does not want to know, that it would be a mere weariness and burden to the spirit… — John Burroughs
Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism. — Jean Cocteau
Someone praising a man for his foolhardy bravery, Cato, the elder, said, ''There is a wide difference between true courage and a mere contempt of… — Plutarch
I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly… — Gilbert K. Chesterton
I have heard it said that living out of our vision is more powerful than living out of our circumstance. Holding on to a vision… — Marianne Williamson
Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; 'tis in us, and planted in our bowels; and the mere fact that we do not… — Seneca the Younger
Chastity more rarely follows fear, or a resolution, or a vow, than it is the mere effect of lack of appetite and, sometimes even, of… — Andre Gide
A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and… — Samuel Johnson
I thought how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its… — Wallace Stevens
Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation… — Joseph Conrad
The films of The Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar always seemed to me mere thin skims of the story lines, and I never did see… — Herman Wouk
No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown… — James Bryce

Who Wrote These Mere Quotes

1,115 authors contributed a total of 1,764 Mere Quotes, led by these top contributors: