And when did mere preaching do any good? Put something in the place of these things. Fill the vacuum of the mind.
Francis Wright

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.
Benjamin Haydon

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Carl Jung

As poverty has been reduced in terms of mere survival, it has become more profound in terms of our way of life.
Raoul Vaneigem

As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.
William Godwin

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

At some point we must make a decision not to allow the mere threat of charges of cultural or religious insensitivity to stop us from dealing with this evil.
Armstrong Williams

Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.
John Updike

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
Thomas Jefferson

Both expectations and memories are more than mere images founded on previous experience.
Samuel Alexander

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.
E. M. Forster

But what is after all the happiness of mere power? There is a greater happiness possible than to be lord of heaven and earth; that is the happiness of being truly loved.
Lafcadio Hearn

But you are alone. Yet I never tell what you are. And if your face lights up my world as no other can - well, this feeling too, when viewed as the mere psychologist has to view it, appears to be simply what all the other friends report about their friends.
Josiah Royce

By mere burial man arrives not at bliss; and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here - the Infinite.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
William James

Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.
David Herbert Lawrence

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.
Henry Ellis

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.
James MacGregor Burns

Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.
Isaac Watts

Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?
Ellen Glasgow