Sentence examples for mere formal from inspiring English sources

Real leadership is never a matter of mere formal authority.

As it was, Australia could anticipate something rather more than the mere formal completion of hostilities at Durham and The Oval.

Still, Mr. Calderón has had mixed feelings about the global success of "Neva," worrying that it would become a mere "formal, co-opted objet d'art".

They mark the emergence of new practices of self-directed agency as a lived experience, going beyond mere formal permissibility and theoretical possibility.

Van Sant's "Psycho" experiment, by replicating Hitchcock's style frame for frame, exposes how meaning arises in films in ways that transcend mere formal structure or technique.

True, Madison himself, in Federalist No. 48, disparaged mere formal limitations with his famous phrase "parchment barriers," declaring that strong words on fancy paper will have no power to deter tyranny and support the rule of law.

The 27 member states must still give formal approval to the plan, though officials at the Parliament say that is a mere formality because members had voted in favor of a previously agreed compromise.

Prescriptions are mere formalities.

These are not mere virtuoso formal exercises, however; their emotional undercurrents are as strong as their technical qualities.

The issue isn't a mere lack of formal training -- pop musicians have always been self-taught; neither Elvis nor the Beatles nor Jimi Hendrix could read music -- but a more profound lack of conventional musical skills.

An eye-popper and brain-boggler, "Razzle Dazzle" is also, remarkably, a thing to stir the soul, delivering in its final stretch an astonishing, unexpected political jolt that elevates what appeared to be a mere (if marvelous) formal triumph into a shattering confrontation.