#mere

Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit. ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#being #beneath #buried #common #dust

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#account #fat #fat man #him #hippopotamus

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being. ↗

— May Sarton

#being #decent #hero #human #human being

Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale. ↗

— Elsa Schiaparelli

#contributes #eating #gives #goodwill #great

A great novel is concerned primarily with the interior lives of its characters as they respond to the inconvenient narratives that fate imposes on them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration. ↗

— Richard Schickel

#become #characters #concerned #decoration #exercises

Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late. ↗

— Felix Frankfurter

#comes #late #merely #never #often

I will burn, but this is a mere event. We shall continue our discussion in eternity. ↗

— Michael Servetus

#continue #discussion #eternity #event #i

The proposition of an established classification of states as slave states and free states, as insisted on by some, and into northern and southern, as maintained by others, seems to me purely imaginary, and of course the supposed equilibrium of those classes a mere conceit. ↗

— William H. Seward

#classification #conceit #course #equilibrium #established

The word liberal distinguishes whatever nourishes the mind and spirit from the training which is merely practical or professional or from the trivialities which are no training at all. ↗

— Alan K. Simpson

#liberal #merely #mind #nourishes #practical

The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper... no one cared what he believed about its origin. ↗

— William Robertson Smith

#apparatus #believed #cared #ceremonies #connected