Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level.
A. N. Wilson
I have never been able to read Agatha Christie - the pleasure is purely in the puzzle, and the reader is toyed with by someone who didn't decide herself who the killer was until the end of the writing.
A. S. Byatt
I announced my retirement from international cricket in May 2018 because I wanted to reduce my workload and spend more time with my wife and young sons. Some have insisted I was motivated purely by money. They are wrong.
AB de Villiers
People always talk about the implication and applications of a process, but for me, the goal is purely about knowledge. Knowledge can become practical today, in 20 years, or in 500 years. Ask Newton. He didn't know there would be space research based on his accident with the apple.
Ada Yonath
It's a lot of work and I also feel like I've done it. I miss comedy. And I also think that, from purely a logistical standpoint, that the day-to-day schedule on a comedy allows you to have a life, much more of a life, than on a drama.
Adam Arkin
Successful givers secure their oxygen masks before coming to the assistance of others. Although their motives may be less purely altruistic, their actions prove more altruistic, because they give more.
Adam Grant
Every now and again, it doesn't hurt to utter some home truths as long as it is not personal, just purely professional.
Adam Lallana
An ethical action, like an unethical action, is usually analyzed by politicians purely in pragmatic terms.
Adam Michnik
I never grew up on a staple diet of Hindi cinema. In fact, when I was a VJ, I was averse to it. Purely because I could never imagine myself being an actor.
Aditya Roy Kapur
When I work, I'm thinking in terms of purely visual effects and relations, and any verbal equivalent is something that comes afterwards. But it's inconceivable to me that I could experience things and not have them enter into my painting.
Adolph Gottlieb
The real Amazons were long believed to be purely imaginary. They were the mythical warrior women who were the archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Every Greek hero or champion, from Hercules to Theseus and Achilles, had to prove his mettle by fighting a powerful warrior queen.
Adrienne Mayor
More and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England's back forever and free Europe itself. It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
Agnes Smedley
The sad reality is that there are no purely domestic issues in Israel. Issues that would be dealt with by municipalities in other countries - such as how to deal with a dangerous bridge or how to resolve conflicts between religious and secular bus riders - become major international issues when they occur in Israel.
Alan Dershowitz
To some degree Satanism is purely a kind of disease of Christianity. You've got to really be Christian to believe in Satan.
Alan Moore
Way back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces.
Imgur has always been profitable right from the very beginning, and the only time I ever had to spend money on it was for the initial domain name because as soon as I released it, people liked it so much that they were donating, and so Imgur survived for the first six months just purely on donations.
Alan Schaaf
People ask, 'What are the scientific questions you're going to answer?' New Horizons doesn't have any of those; it's purely about raw exploration... We're not 'rewriting the textbook' - we're writing the textbook from scratch.
Alan Stern
From a purely selfish, batting point of view, I couldn't bat any better than the 2010-11 Ashes and then in India in 2012. That was as good as I could play.
Alastair Cook
I love looking at the old Bond films. Maybe it's purely out of reminiscence, the nostalgic things you think about. But there were some very good films made, and I think that the public has enjoyed them, too.
Albert R. Broccoli
John Boehner was and is an unprincipled ward-heeler who simply couldn't weather the transition of the Republican Party from a corporatist party with a sizable conservative base to a purely conservative party.
Alex Pareene
If you're designing out of a purely creative place, not thinking of the girl, then the consumer's not going to take notice.
If every country's climate policy was driven purely by environmental science, we may have no need for international agreements.
I think there's an instinct to make grotesque horror films that are purely carnal, like the 'Saw' movies.
I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.
When we heard that America is pulling out of the Paris Agreement, that's unfortunate, but frankly - speaking purely from my competitive juices point of view - we are delighted that somebody's not going to look at these opportunities. They'll be all there for us.
But Iran has gone far beyond what is necessary for a purely civilian programme. It has concealed several nuclear facilities from the International Atomic Energy Agency, played hide-and-seek with the international community, and rejected all offers of co-operation from the U.S., the EU, and others.
The great esteem in which the Nobel prizes are universally held is due to the fact that for several generations they have been given purely on scientific merit and not through lobbying and politicking. I do hope that it will stay this way, and the prizes will never be given according to the number of votes in live TV contests!
Dreaming is a phenomenon of purely individual consciousness, and consequently impossible to thoroughly deconstruct by a community of researchers. But dreaming matters.
I've done a lot of films that are purely live-action roles, and even if I hadn't come across performance capture as a technology, I think I'd always consider myself a sort of mercurial actor.
For me, I've never drawn a distinction between live-action acting and performance-capture acting. It is purely a technology.
When I read, I'm purely a reader.
Interestingly enough, not all feelings result from the body's reaction to external stimuli. Sometimes changes are purely simulated in the brain maps.
At a purely practical level, history is important because it provides the basic skills needed for students to go further in sociology, politics, international relations and economics. History is also an ideal discipline for almost all careers in the law, the civil service and the private sector.
I'm not a jukebox; I don't play exactly what the crowd wants to hear - that doesn't make sense. But, I do look at people requests. At the end of the day, they are the ticket payers and they are the ones that come to the show. If I played music that purely entertains me, I'd play very weird music.
The impulse for me to want to make sculpture is because I want to make statements, really, on a purely emotional level. And it's also somewhat of a challenge to see how that can be done with materials and objects that really are not emotional, in and of themselves.
When I began my career, I worked purely for the money.
The magic in 'Sholay' was purely because of Salim-Javed. I didn't do anything.
Our nuclear weapons are meant purely as a deterrent against nuclear adventure by an adversary.
I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.
If we get to the point where we damage the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.
Tokenization applies to scarce assets. Today, the most appropriate thing to tokenize is something that's purely digital. Bitcoin and ethereum are the canonical.
I have passed on on a lot of roles. I purely and simply do what I like.
Street artists want to add something to the environment. They consider the audience, whereas graffiti writers don't care about anyone except themselves, they do it purely for the kick.
My analysis was directed toward purely physical conditions, such as defective wiring, presence of lack of air spaces between metal flues and woodwork, etc., and the results were presented in these terms.
When I first began studying prices, it wasn't a topic that mathematicians were working on. Purely by accident, I saw a set of data on price changes presented in a lecture and realized they behaved similarly to the geometric models I was already studying.
I have always been of opinion that all the political workers should be indifferent and should never bother about the legal fight in the law courts and should boldly bear the heaviest possible sentences inflicted upon them. They may defend themselves but always from purely political considerations and never from a personal point of view.
I'm not emotional about investments. Investing is something where you have to be purely rational and not let emotion affect your decision making - just the facts.
A world without newspapers or a world where the newspapers are purely electronic and you read them on a screen is not a very appealing world.
The movie business is very much like that: people in authority making purely emotional decisions instead of interesting rational ones.
The only definition by which America's best days are behind it is on a purely relative basis.
