We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.
Friedrich Nietzsche

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
William Shakespeare

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
William Shakespeare

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
Nelson Mandela

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
Henry David Thoreau

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.
Henry David Thoreau

A man cannot become an atheist merely by wishing it.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Ambition never is in a greater hurry that I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Oscar Wilde

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
Oscar Wilde

Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.
Sigmund Freud

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.
Karl Marx

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.
Karl Marx

In day-to-day commerce, television is not so much interested in the business of communications as in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers. People are the merchandise, not the shows. The shows are merely the bait.
Les Brown

The intellect is a cold thing and a merely intellectual idea will never stimulate thought in the same manner that a spiritual idea does.
Ernest Holmes

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.
Leo Tolstoy

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
Carl Sagan

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.
Niccolo Machiavelli

Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?
John Calvin

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward.
Amelia Earhart