To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth, but only a problem of art is solved in poetry.
Laura Riding

To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.
Joseph Conrad

To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.
Thomas Browne

To express to you in mere words, our personal feelings on this occasion you must know to be impossible, and particularly so for one who normally has to describe only things outside himself.
Melvin Calvin

Until we perceive the meaning of our past, we remain the mere carriers of ideas, like the Nomads.
Stephen Gardiner

Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.
Jean Paul

We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology.
Ron Reagan

We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable's handbook, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they are overloaded.
Charles Kingsley

We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it.
Hans Urs von Balthasar

We want a vernacular in art. No mere verbal or formal agreement, or dead level of uniformity but that comprehensive and harmonizing unity with individual variety which can be developed among people politically and socially free.
Walter Crane

We were now back at Smith Landing, and fired with a desire to make another Buffalo expedition on which we should have ampler time and cover more than a mere corner of the range.
Ernest Thompson Seton

Well it seems to me, that all real communities grow out of a shared confrontation with survival. Communities are not produced by sentiment or mere goodwill. They grow out of a shared struggle. Our situation in the desert is an incubator for community.
Larry Harvey

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'
Edgar Allan Poe

What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.
Abraham Cahan

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment realizes itself.
Anna Jameson

Whatever man uses without the fear of God, whatever he applies to the mere gratifying of his flesh, cannot fail to operate as a poison to the soul, however pleasant and salutary it may appear to be to the body.
Johann Arndt

When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.
Lao Tzu

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.
George Eliot

When you consider all the stars I have managed, mere submarines make me smile.
Charles Frohman

When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.
Erma Bombeck