Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
William James

If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
William James

Prayer is commitment. We don't merely co-operate with God with certain things held back within. We, the total person, co-operate. This means that co-operation equals committment.
E. Stanley Jones

The German language speaks Being, while all the others merely speak of Being.
Martin Heidegger

The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art.
Alfred Stieglitz

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.
Charles Horton Cooley

Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.
Henri Frederic Amiel

I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.
Harriet Beecher Stowe

I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.
Nora Ephron

The feeble soul merely whines and complains.
Taylor Caldwell

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville

Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one.
Baltasar Gracian

Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death.
Rollo May

Good means not merely not to do wrong, but rather not to desire to do wrong.
Democritus

Would you rather have butter or guns? Preparedness makes us powerful. Butter merely makes us fat.
Hermann Goering

Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.
Steven Biko

The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often merely the will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible.
David Viscott

It is love rather than sexual lust or unbridled sexuality if, in addition to the need or want involved, there is also some impulse to give pleasure to the persons thus loved and not merely to use them for our own selfish pleasure.
Mortimer Adler

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.
Zora Neale Hurston

Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.
John Updike