Life cannot be lived through, it seems, not totally, not fully; we merely skim the surface, dip into foam.
I can amplify facts that the newspapers merely skimmed over in the first story.
Even when handed Flint's own opus, a potential key to his idol's mysteries, Martin merely skims it in search of the character based on himself.
At the apartment he'd merely skimmed it.
Gerasimov had already read this one several times, and merely skimmed until he reached the most recent information.
Nearly all of these artificial small satellites merely skimmed the top of the atmosphere.
The thought merely skimmed the surface of his mind.
I merely skimmed along the polished floor.
Most of the articles they merely skimmed.
Hadley's stories frequently manage to compress a novel's-worth of development into 20-odd pages without seeming rushed or to be merely skimming the surface.