#mere

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

Yet, it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love, lust, longing; joy, rage, fear; triumph, yearning and confusion. ↗

— Tony Snow

#confusion #experiences #express #fear #generally

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true. ↗

— Socrates

#conception #emotional #illusion #mere #morality

Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. ↗

— Valerie Solanas

#collection #community #family #isolated #merely

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory. ↗

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#force #freedom #heart #interference #intrusion