Famous quotes containing the word mere:
“The memory ... experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one’s mere personal life, that one has merely lived.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Much of our reading, much of our labor, seems mere waiting: it was not that we were born for. Any other could do it as well or better. So little skill enters into these works, so little do they mix with the divine life, that it really signifies little what we do, whether we turn a grindstone, or ride, or run, or make fortune, or govern the state.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogeniture and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels,
But by degree stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)