All the ills of mankind all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books all the political blunders all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation we must not merely talk we must act big.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.

The labour movement had the best opportunity in 50 years to transform not merely an industrial situation and win an important battle for workers in struggle but an opportunity to change the government of the day.

Husbands never become good they merely become proficient.

Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions it's walled and roofed with them. Yes and furnished too.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

It is not God's will merely that we should be happy but that we should make ourselves happy.

Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous stupid and cruel life.

My passion for gardening may strike some as selfish or merely an act of resignation in the face of overwhelming problems that beset the world. It is neither. I have found that each garden is just what Voltaire proposed in Candide: a microcosm of a just and beautiful society.

A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.

As long as our civilisation keeps trundling along generally forwards then there is the possibility of a future where ethnicity is merely an interesting badge not a uniform you can't take off.

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.

Men like me who merely wish to establish political freedom will in such circumstances lose all their influence and others will get influence who may become dangerous to all established interests whatsoever.

Widespread state control over art and culture has left no room for freedom of expression in the country. For more than 60 years anyone with a dissenting opinion has been suppressed. Chinese art is merely a product: it avoids any meaningful engagement. There is no larger context. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity.