Mere Quotes (page 44)
Her library would have been valuable to a bibliophile except she treated her books execrably. I would rarely open a volume that she had not desecrated by underlining her favorite sections with a ball-point pen. Once I had told her that I would rather see a museum bombed than a book underlined, but she dismissed my argument as mere sentimentality. She marked her books so that stunning images and ideas would not be lost to her.
Pat Conroy
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Biship Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. i observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it--"I refute it thus.
James Boswell
From Martin Eden on submitting manuscripts: "There was no human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript from one envelope to another and stuck on the stamps. It was like the slot machines wherein one dropped pennies, and, with a metallic whirl of machinery had delivered to him a stick of chewing-gum or a tablet of chocolate. It depended upon which slot one dropped the penny in, whether he got chocolate or gum. And so with the editorial...
Jack London
O night in which the stars feign light, O night that alone is the size of the Universe, make me, body and soul, part of your body, so that—being mere darkness—I’ll lose myself and become night as well, without any dreams as stars within me, nor a hoped-for sun shining with the future.
Fernando Pessoa
...she merely wished to find a way out of the maze. She knew that she had become a burden to him: she took things too seriously, turning everything into a tragedy, and failed to grasp the lightness and amusing insignificance of physical love. How she wished she could learn lightness! She yearned for someone to help her out of her anachronistic shell.
Milan Kundera
* to learn that money makes life smooth in some ways, and to feel how tight and threadbare life is if you have too little. * to despise money, which is a farce, mere paper, and to hate what you have to do for it, and yet to long to have it in order to be free from slaving for it. * to yearn toward art, music, ballet and good books, and get them only in tantalizing snatches.
Sylvia Plath
I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. . . . Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely...
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The Persian Version. Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon. The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon. As for the Greek theatrical tradition. Which represents that summer's expedition. Not as a mere reconnaisance in force. By three brigades of foot and one of horse(Their left flank covered by some obsolete. Light craft detached from the main Persian fleet)But as a grandiose, ill-starred attempt. To conquer Greece - they treat it with contempt; And only incidentally refute. Major Greek...
Robert Graves