Mere Quotes - Page 9

• If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Real, Data

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.263, Ballantine Books

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• All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being. As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attachments, and aversions, and apart from them there is no "I" except as a mere possibility, an unfulfilled potential, a seed that has not yet sprouted.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Happiness, Spiritual, Thinking

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, p.31, New World Library

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• For I have shown from the Scriptures, that no one of the sons of Adam is as to everything, and absolutely, called God, or named Lord. But that He is Himself in His own right, beyond all men who ever lived, God, and Lord, and King Eternal, and the Incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets, the apostles, and by the Spirit Himself, may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth. Now the Scriptures would not have testified these things of Him, if, like others, He had been a mere man.

  Irenaeus of Lyons

  Jesus, Kings, Son

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• Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life's over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Meaningful, Cancer, Waiting Rooms

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.4, Grove Press

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• Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.... A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, May, Belief

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.11, Vintage

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• Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie; when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Ties, Remember, Tradition

  Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The death of the heart”, Viking Pr

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• Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form is a wrapping of traditions, hearsay's, and mere words.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Tradition, Form, Notion

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• Male, A member of the unconsidered or negligible gender. The male of the human race is commonly known to the female as Mere Man. The Genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Men, Race, Two

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.78, Courier Corporation

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• A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being.

  Charles Lamb

  Children, Parent, Serious

  Charles Lamb (1845). “The Essays of Elia: First Series. [Second Series.]”, p.167

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• Change as change is mere flux and lapse; it insults intelligence. Genuinely to know is to grasp a permanent end that realizes itself through changes.

  John Dewey

  Progress, Lapses, Insult

  William James, John Dewey, John M. Capps, Donald Capps (2005). “James and Dewey on Belief and Experience”, p.181, University of Illinois Press

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• I have seen youths bright eyed and fair groping after bubbles in rapture, and conceiving them diamonds and the glitter of fine jewels, until their hand closed over a something that was not to be felt nor longer seen, mere colored air.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Success, Air, Hands

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• In nothing more is the English genius for domesticity more notably declared than in the institution of this festival-almost one may call it-of afternoon tea...the mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose.

  George Gissing

  Food, Grandmother, Cooking

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• Don't say that you want to give, but go ahead and give! You'll never catch up with a mere hope.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Generosity, Giving, Want

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• We have all been hearing from childhood of such things as love, peace, charity, equality, and universal brotherhood; but they have become to us mere words without meaning, words which we repeat like parrots, and it has become quite natural for us to do so. We cannot help it.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Childhood, Brotherhood, Charity

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Practical Vedanta Philosophy”, p.57, editionNEXT.com

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• Observation by means of the microscope will reveal more wonderful things than those viewed in regard to mere structure and connection: for while the heart is still beating the contrary (i.e., in opposite directions in the different vessels) movement of the blood is observed in the vessels-though with difficulty-so that the circulation of the blood is clearly exposed.

  Marcello Malpighi

  Heart, Mean, Science

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• It was a reaction from the old idea of "protoplasm", a name which was a mere repository of ignorance.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Ignorance, Science, Names

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• People who expect deference resent mere civility.

  Mason Cooley

  People, Civility, Deference

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• The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Peace, War, Believe

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• There's some end at last for the man who follows a path; mere rambling is interminable.

  Seneca the Elder

  Journey, Men, Hiking

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• The right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness.

  George Eliot

  Lawlessness, Revolution, Rebellion

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.5886, Delphi Classics

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• 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.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Museums, Self, Intellectual

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• As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.

  Joseph Butler

  Sorrow, World, Satisfaction

  Joseph Butler (1852). “The Analogy of Religion ... A new edition, with an introductory essay, by Rev. Albert Barnes; and a complete index”, p.437

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• The computer is the most extraordinary of man's technological clothing; it's an extension of our central nervous system. Beside it, the wheel is a mere hula-hoop.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Technology, Men, Hula

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• The religious urge in man is not a mere passing phase in the history of his spiritual development, but the ultimate source of all his ethical thought and all his concepts of morality; not the outcome of primitive credulity which a more "enlightened" age could outgrow, but the only answer to a real, basic need of man at all times and in all environments. In another word, it is an instinct.

  Muhammad Asad

  Spiritual, Religious, Real

  Muhammad Asad (1961). “The Principles of State and Government in Islam”, p.10, Univ of California Press

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• A poem is but a thought, a mere memory caught at play. From hand onto paper, bleeding thoughts emerge.

  Robert M. Hensel

  Memories, Hands, Play

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