Robert Baden-Powell

Happiness doesn't come from being rich, nor merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man.

English Soldier

John Wooden

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

American Coach

Neil Gaiman

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.

British Author

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

English Writer

Rabindranath Tagore

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.

Indian Poet

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.

American Poet

Chuck Palahniuk

To merely observe your culture without contributing to it seems very close to existing as a ghost.

American Novelist

Henry Ford

Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.

American Businessman

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

American Leader

Charles Darwin

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone.

English Scientist

Use 'mere' to make something seem less important or smaller than it is, often to highlight contrast.

Understated Impact

'Mere' can be used ironically to imply something is important when labeled as 'mere'.

Irony or Sarcasm

'Mere' might minimize feelings or the seriousness of a situation in emotional contexts.

Emotional Minimization

'Mere' as a noun refers to natural water bodies, smaller than lakes, in British English.

Geographical Feature

The use of 'mere' for a pond is most common in the UK, rarely used in other English-speaking countries.

Localized Use

In literature, a 'mere' often sets a scene, evoking tranquility and natural beauty.

Nature Descriptions

 allows us to empathize with others' feelings at a deeper level. Scientists discovered this empathetic response to yawning while testing the first hypothesis we mentioned, fixed action pattern. This study was set up to show that dogs would enact a yawn reflex at the mere sound of a human yawn.

Why is yawning...

 was the benefactor and Brunelleschi made a mere three gold florins per month to head the project incredibly the cupola was built in 16 years everything that went into building the cupola had an effect on the civilized world the cupola

The building of...

 Afraid of being eaten, or just to avoid further suffering, they committed suicide or starved themselves, believing that in death, their souls would return home. Those who survived were completley dehumanized, treated as mere cargo.

The Atlantic slave...

 or is math the native language of the universe itself, existing whether we find its truths or not? Are numbers, polygons and equations truly real, or merely ethereal representations of some theoretical ideal?

Is math discovered or...

 Eternal truths. But it isn't always easy to know the difference between an eternal truth, or theorem, and a mere conjecture. You need proof. For example, let's say I have a big, enormous, infinite field.

Eduardo Sáenz de...

 or spooky action at a distance. He decided that quantum mechanics must be incomplete, a mere approximation of a deeper reality in which both particles have predetermined states that are hidden from us.

Einstein's brilliant...

 By reducing platelet activity, aspirin may decrease the levels of a certain protein that helps cancer cells spread. These discoveries have transformed aspirin from a mere pain reliever

How aspirin was...

 Oh, no sir. I've already solved it. PROFESSOR Leave, now. On what offense? PROFESSOR Your mere presence spoils the respect of the class for me! That is not an objective reason. Out!

Time Is But a Stubborn...

 deep inside is the queen her role is to replenish the colony by laying two million eggs a month she is merely an egg-laying machine

Mere

Only, simply, nothing more than.

Often appears as...

Usage tips

A small lake or pond.

Often appears as...

Understated Impact

Irony or Sarcasm

Emotional Minimization

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