Top 100 Not Merely Quotes
#1. It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.
Henry Ward Beecher
#2. Waste is unjustified, and especially the waste of time limited as that commodity is in our days of probation. One must live, not only exist; he must do, not merely be; he must grow, not just vegetate.
Spencer W. Kimball
#3. [A] book is not merely a book, it is the sun as well.
Steve Hagen
#4. The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.
H.L. Mencken
#5. Holiness is not merely a feeling, state of mind, or good intention. It involves practical separation from sin and real separation unto God.
Paul Washer
#6. The first precept in Buddhism is "Do not kill." This precept is not merely a legalistic prohibition, but a realization of our affinity with all who share the gift of life. A compassionate heart provides a firm ground for this precept.
Dhammananda Bhikkhuni
#7. The bush is not merely a holiday destination; it's where you learn how insignificant you truly
Tess Gerritsen
#8. I stand for the square deal. I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.
Theodore Roosevelt
#9. I don't even like to talk about it. I hated being a number and not merely because I was a very small one. I let them bellow at me for just as long as it took me to find enough pluck to bellow back at them.
George Grosz
#10. The health of a church depends not merely on the creed which it professes, not even on the wisdom and holiness of a few great ecclesiastics, but on the faith and virtue of its individual members.
Charles Kingsley
#11. In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world.
Frederick Douglass
#12. The belly will not listen to advice; it makes demands, it importunes. And yet it is not a troublesome creditor; you can send it away at small cost, provided only that you give it what you owe, not merely all you are able to
Seneca.
#13. When the long awaited solution to the UFO problem comes, I believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum jump.
J. Allen Hynek
#14. Racism is not merely about individual chauvinism, prejudice, or bigotry. Ruth Glimore reminds us that it is about the ways different groups are 'vulnerable to premature death,' whether at the hands of the state or structures that kill.
Jeff Chang
#15. Virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.
Aristotle.
#16. Congress has the responsibility to ensure that any international trade agreement entered into by the United States must serve the national interest, not merely the interests of those crafting the proposal in secret.
Jeff Sessions
#17. We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer for his folly, selfishness and tyranny; but to assert that he deserved to suffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language but to any healthy moral sense.
Andrew Coyle Bradley
#18. Laguna prided itself on being an artist's colony that accepted all classes and cultures, not merely tolerating eccentrics but delighting in them.
Dean Koontz
#19. The philosopher is lacking who interprets the deed and does not merely transpose it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#20. Men are paid, not merely for what they know, but more particularly for WHAT THEY DO WITH THAT WHICH THEY KNOW.
Napoleon Hill
#21. The senses are a kind of reason. Taste, touch and smell, hearing and seeing, are not merely a means to sensation, enjoyable or otherwise, but they are also a means to knowledge - and are, indeed, your only actual means to knowledge.
Joseph Campbell
#22. Slavery is a wrong to each individual enslaved; and not merely to the first of a series. Natural law, therefore, as much forbids the enslaving of the child, as if the wrong of enslaving the parent had never been perpetrated.
Lysander Spooner
#23. 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
#24. Where everyman is participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year but everyday, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.
Thomas Jefferson
#25. The life of an individual is a constant struggle, and not merely a metaphorical one against want or boredom, but also an actual struggle against other people. He discovers adversaries everywhere, lives in continual conflict and dies with sword in hand.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#26. The blood of Jesus did not merely "cover" the sins of your wicked heart ... leaving a stain! It completely remove them all wiping them out as if they never existed there in the first place! It's called redemption!
John Paul Warren
#27. Worship is our rehearsal for how to live today and how to glorify God in heaven. It is not merely a Sunday morning exercise meant to make us feel good.
Rosaria Champagne Butterfield
#28. We will have to repent, in this generation, not merely for the hateful words and actions of bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good,' King said,
Ken Follett
#29. Our neighbors are not merely our associates and special friends; they are not simply those who belong to our church, or who think as we do. Our neighbors are the whole human family. We
Ellen G. White
#30. If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing: it is an infinitely foolish thing.
Phillips Brooks
#31. 22Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.m
Anonymous
#32. Books are the windows of the truth, but they are not the door; they point out things and yet they do not impart them. It is within that we should write, think, and speak, not merely on paper.
Louis Claude De Saint-Martin
#33. Genuine art . . . does not have as its object a mere transitory game. Its serious purpose is not merely to translate the human being into a momentary dream of freedom, but actually to MAKE him free.
Friedrich Schiller
#34. The novel, I submit, is not merely the ultimate goal. It is also the place to start.
Lawrence Block
#35. There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.
David Lehman
#36. Taken with the archaeological data, we can say that the old hypothesis of an invasion of people - not merely their language - from the steppe appears to be true.
Spencer Wells
#37. Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.
Henry David Thoreau
#38. Life is far more interesting than it needs to be, because the forces that guide it are not merely practical.
David Rothenberg
#39. The average Nigerian person has come to reconcile himself with the fact that his or her social progress remain essentially in his or her hands in collaboration with other fellow Nigerians and not merely relying on what government alone could provide for him or her.
Ibrahim Babangida
#40. If your wish is to become really a man of science and not merely a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
#41. An assault on an ideology is not merely different from a threat made to a person; it is the opposite of a threat made to a person. The whole end of liberal civilization is to substitute the criticism of ideas for assaults on people.
Adam Gopnik
#42. Fact was not merely true about the lives of human beings; it was also true of every living entity on the planet, from the largest creation down to the humblest. It was
Elizabeth Gilbert
#43. Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#44. 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
#45. For what is Mysticism? It is not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition? Is it not merely a hard word for 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within'? Heaven is neither a place nor a time.
Florence Nightingale
#46. I believe that peace is not merely an absence of war but the nurture of human life, and that in time this nurture would do away with war as a natural process.
Jane Addams
#47. The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#48. The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable.
Aldous Huxley
#49. Faith is not merely a journey for the feet, but it is also a journey for the heart.
Aiden Wilson Tozer
#50. 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
#51. I believe it is the photographer's function to reveal that which is concealed, even if it be repugnant to the majority, not merely to record what we see around us.
Arthur Tress
#52. Parks, plazas, gardens, and rooftops are culture-producing places, not merely place for retreat. Sidewalks and bridges become ends in themselves instead of just a means of getting from one place to another.
Sally A. Kitt Chappell
#53. Where is your compassion when i need it most? Open your eyes, love, and see what is right before you: that I am not merely a friend, but a man deeply, desperately, in love with you.
Julianne Donaldson
#55. The call to protect life - and not merely life but another's identity; it is perhaps not too much to say another's soul - was obvious in its sacredness.
Paul Kalanithi
#56. Since the business of politics is the conciliation of differing interests, justice must not merely be done, but to be seen to be done.
Bernard Crick
#57. To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat- and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going.
Upton Sinclair
#58. I know that Nature designs that this whole continent, not merely these thirty-six states, shall be, sooner or later, within the magic circle of the American union.
William S. Burroughs
#59. What ages is not merely your functions and organs, but the whole of your nature, that particular person you have come to be and already were years ago.
James Hillman
#60. To be truly Catholic is not merely to be correct according to an abstractly universal standard of truth, but also and above all to be able to enter into the problems and the joys of all, to understand all, to be all things to all.
Thomas Merton
#61. The statistics were not merely inadequate; they lied. And the lies they told led the people who ran major league baseball teams to misjudge their players, and mismanage their games.
Michael Lewis
#62. Apparently, the most difficult feat for a Cambridge male is to accept a woman not merely as feeling, not merely as thinking, but as managing a complex, vital interweaving of both.
Sylvia Plath
#63. Proof, one might say, does not merely shew that it is like this, but: how it is like this. It shows how 13+14 yield 27.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#64. Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
#65. Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide.
Tom Robbins
#66. Good manners have much to do with the emotions. To make them ring true, one must feel them, not merely exhibit them.
Amy Vanderbilt
#67. A true forest is not merely a storehouse full of wood, but, as it were, a factory of wood.
Theodore Roosevelt
#68. But I hope that it will also be demonstrated soon that in my experiments in the West I was not merely beholding a vision, but had caught sight of a great and profound truth.
Nikola Tesla
#69. Unless you intend your wife to be a true missionary, not merely a wife, home-maker, and friend, do not join us.
Hudson Taylor
#70. It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.
Walker Percy
#71. Living is not merely a matter of staying alive, is it? It is what you do with your life and the fact of your survival that counts.
Mary Balogh
#72. Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.
Phyllis McGinley
#73. For people, 'here' signifies not merely a physical space, but also an historical space." "Those who are served by the present limit-situation regard the untested feasibility as a threatening limit-situation which must not be allowed to materialize, and act to maintain the status quo.
Paulo Freire
#74. Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others ...
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#75. The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is, it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited, but was defined before it existed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#76. What humanity needs today is not merely philosophy or theology, but a message or reassurance.
Dada Vaswani
#77. The ancient writers were not merely convinced of Moses' existence: they saw him as one of the formative figures of world history.
Paul Johnson
#78. Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way.
Roger Ebert
#79. True worship is not merely an emotional reaction to external circumstances; true worship leads us beyond the emotion and experience into a deeper realization of the nature and character of God.
Teri Lynne Underwood
#80. This is what I would like to hold on to. Please help me memorize this feeling of contentment and help me always support it. I'm putting this happiness in a bank somewhere, not merely FDIC protected but guarded by my four spirit brothers, held there as insurance against future trials in life.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#81. To please God ... to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness ... to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son- it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.
C.S. Lewis
#82. Snobbery is not merely a silly human weakness but something basic in the mentality of modern man-a symptom which reflects the general sickness, the dislocation of social and cultural values in contemporary civilization.
Arthur Koestler
#83. It does not merely indicate something about her behavior, but about her desires. She is not reward motivated. Yet she is extremely good at directing her thoughts and actions toward her goals. This explains both her tendency toward harmful-but-selfless behavior
Veronica Roth
#84. The message was clear for baby boomers everywhere: Kurt Cobain was not merely some rock 'n' roll icon who couldn't handle drugs. In ways that were important to recognize, he was every parent's child.
Kurt St. Thomas
#85. Did you notice the phrase by his power in that last Bible verse? This is what makes The Daniel Plan different from other approaches. It is built on trusting in God's power to help you change, not merely your own willpower.
Rick Warren
#86. It's no accident that capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge. Egoism and competition are, alas, stronger forces than public spirit and sense of duty.
Albert Einstein
#87. Father, we ask that you give us a passion for the truth and not merely a hatred of falsehood. Keep us concerned for the spiritual health of people but open to your own rebukes from your mighty Word.
Max Anders
#88. The proposition that the meek (that is the adaptable and serviceable), inherit the earth is not merely a wishful sentiment of religion, but an iron law of evolution.
Kenneth E. Boulding
#89. Respect for human rights is not social work; it is not merely an act of compassion. It is the first obligation of government and the source of its legitimacy.
Ronald Reagan
#90. It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#91. To live is not merely to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, senses, faculties - of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#92. The proper thing, then, is not merely to be styled Christians, but also to be such.
Ignatius Of Antioch
#93. The governing ideal was not merely to keep up with the Joneses, but to be the Joneses - to own the same model of car or dishwasher or lawn mower.
Chris Anderson
#94. Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator.
Vsevolod Pudovkin
#95. Mystery is not merely a way of saying that reason has not yet completed its victory. It is the goal where reason arrives when it attains its perfection by becoming love.
Elizabeth A. Johnson
#96. Christians in community must again show the world, not merely family values, but the bond of the love of Christ.
Edmund Clowney
#97. The point of meditation is not merely to be an honest or good person in the conventional sense, trying only to maintain our security. We must begin to become compassionate and wise in the fundamental sense, open and relating to the world as it is.
Chogyam Trungpa
#98. As a publishing magnate and then as a postmaster, he was one of the few to view America as a whole. To him, the colonies were not merely disparate entities. They were a new world with common interests and ideals.
Walter Isaacson
#99. It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living: how to make getting a living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not.
Henry David Thoreau
#100. Peace as a positive condition of society, not merely as an interim between wars, is something so unknown that it casts no images on the mind's screen.
Denise Levertov
