Quotes About Merit

The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us.

Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.

I have seen quite a few folk whom I know to be both fair minded and, as it happens,[Bob] Dylan fans, take up cudgels for this position. To them, it's not necessarily that Dylan doesn't merit the highest honour. It's that he doesn't merit this specific highest honour [Nobel prize], in the way a champion pole vaulter shouldn't be given a medal for the long jump. It is in this group that the Wahey!s are mainly to be found, firing off jests, or mock solemnly reciting Dylan's sillier lyrics as if these are entirely representative of his oeuvre.

There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in some books which is very rare to find, and yet looks cheap enough. There may benothing lofty in the sentiment, or fine in the expression, but it is careless country talk. Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. Some have this merit only.

The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

For the most part I pick movies based on the merit of the script, and the merit of the script only.

He that has once concluded it lawful to resist power, when it wants merit, will soon find a want of merit, to justify his resistance to power.

Give nobly to indigent merit, and do not refuse your charity even to those who have not merit but their misery.

If the soul would know the merit which one acquires in temptations suffered in patience and conquered, it would be tempted to say: "Lord, send me temptations."

We are all pirates at heart. There is not one of us who hasn't had a little larceny in his soul. And which one of us wouldn't soar if God had thought there was merit in the idea? So, when we see one of those great widespread pirates soaring across the grain of sea winds we thrill, and we long, and, if we are honest, we curse that we must be men every day. Why not one day a bird! There's an idea, now, one day out of seven a pirate in the sky. What puny power a man can attain by comparison. Compare a 747 with a bird and blush!

It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness, except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast; it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat.

We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves.

No knowledge, however thorough and extensive, no brilliance and perspicuity, no dialectic sophistication, will preserve us from the commmonness of thought and will. It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish.

The merit in action lies in finishing it to the end.

Where we can compete on merit, we do very well.

The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.

In hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell.

The entire merit of a man can never be made known; nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names; as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.

The empirical is very important, but merit is inherent and not acquired. A university is massively important because you can see where you stand naturally in the ranks, and try yourself out, but education is just reading and understanding what you read.

You rave about the Holy Place (Masjid al-Haram) and say you've visited God's garden but where is your bunch of flowers? There is some merit in the suffering you have endured but what a pity you have not discovered the Makkah thats inside

Australia as a nation, as a set of cities and some regional centres, that project died a death and we didn't get it up, but I still think there's merit in that.

Children sweeten labours. But they make misfortune more bitter. They increase the care of life. But they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts. But memory, merit and noble works are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.

There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar. In each case it is special knowledge.

... we must drive them [Jews] out like mad dogs, so that we do not become partakers of their abominable blasphemy and all the their other vices and thus merit God's wrath and be damned with them.

FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.

I've enjoyed every age I've been, and each has had its own individual merit. Every laugh line, every scar, is a badge I wear to show I've been present, the inner rings of my personal tree trunk that I display proudly for all to see. Nowadays, I don't want a "perfect" face and body; I want to wear the life I've lived.

Stress says that the things we are involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace toward others, or our tight grip of control.

We can speculate on what's likely, but what's needed is an investigation. And speculation is no substitute for facts. As a former prosecutor, I prosecuted antitrust cases civilly. And I can say that antitrust investigations merit searching, penetrating scrutiny and investigation. That's what we need here.

In ethics all individual humans are rightly seen, not only as beings to whom things matter, but as beings who accordingly merit concern and solicitude.

Politics is the art of achieving prestige and power without merit.

If a soul is not clothed with the teachings of the Church he cannot merit to have Jesus seated in him.

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

Praise in the beginning is agreeable enough; and we receive it as a favor; but when it comes in great quantities, we regard it only as a debt, which nothing but our merit could extort.

Fondly we think we honor merit then, when we but praise ourselves in other men.

I do not like the late resurrection of the Jesuits. . . . If ever any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth, and in hell, according to these historians, though, like Pascal, true Catholics, it is this company of Loyolas.

Success in Silicon Valley, most would agree, is more merit-driven than almost any other place in the world. It doesn't matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are. If your idea rocks and you can execute, you can change the world and/or get really, stinking rich.

The bravery founded upon the hope of recompense, upon the fear of punishment, upon the experience of success, upon rage, upon ignorance of dangers, is common bravery, and does not merit the name. True bravery proposes a just end, measures the dangers, and, if it is necessary, the affront, with coldness.

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

For Quality: Stamp out fires, automate, computerize, M.B.O., install merit pay, rank people, best efforts, zero defects. WRONG!!!! Missing ingredient: profound knowledge.

We are saved by grace, through faith in Christ alone! And since there is no room for human merit there can be no grounds for human boasting!

The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.

Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.

Who is the happiest man? He who is alive to the merit of others, and can rejoice in their enjoyment as if it were his own.

Our sense of "open" is that the authority to make decisions about that gets distributed based on merit and understanding and participation and leadership, not solely on employment or a title or a business plan. Technical colleagues will define "open" as "open standards," "interoperable" - you can find it, search it, cut and paste it, view source, mix and match - all those things that we associate with text on the Web, that you can continue to do that with audio and video and whatever's next.

In truth, ideas and principles are independent of men; the application of them and their illustration is man's duty and merit. The time will come when the author of a view shall be set aside, and the view only taken cognizance of. This will be the millennium of Science.

An absolute monarch, who is rich without patrimony, may be charitable without merit; and Constantine too easily believed that he should purchase the favour of Heaven if he maintained the idle at the expense of the industrious, and distributed among the saints the wealth of the republic.

Love is alone sufficient by itself, it pleases by itself and for it's own sake. It is itself a merit, and itself it's own recompense. It seeks neither cause, nor consequences beyond itself. It is its own fruit, its own object and usefulness. I love because I love you, I love that I may love.

The biggest advice is being true to what you want to do. Don't worry if other people understand it or don't understand it. If what you're doing has merit, it will find its way.