Quotes About Merit

Since I have difficulty defining merit and what merit alone means - and in any context, whether it's judicial or otherwise - I accept that different experiences in and of itself, bring merit to the system.

The step that a lot of people miss is a dispassionate evaluation of the reasons [for rejection]. If you can dispassionately evaluate the reasons for rejection and find them with merit, you can address them; if without merit, you can ignore them.

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.

Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.

The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.

We are ever aware that politics is an ugly struggle that determines 'who gets what, when, and how.' It is the favorite occupation of people who serve special interests, who have axes to grind, and public careers to advance. It is a game in which benefits are bestowed according to political skill and connection, rather than merit.

Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for the above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds.

He possessed the rare merit of making a property of his time and not a burden.

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.

...Fatherland without freedom and merit is a large word with little meaning.

Only where there is pecuniary equality can the distinction of merit stand out.

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.

When one, abandoning greed, feels no greed for what would merit greed, greed gets shed from him - like a drop of water from a lotus leaf.

So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.

You can see why there are more people wanting to come from economically-distressed areas, and they can't all come to America. So it gets into the valid, legitimate debate over immigration as to how do we choose. Do we have a diversity lottery and take people from everywhere, do we base it more on merit?

There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is far worse or much harder to win.

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.

We start with gifts. Merit comes from what we make of them.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

Taking advantage of the method, found by me, of the black staining of the elements of the brain, staining obtained by the prolonged immersion of the pieces, previously hardened with potassium or ammonium bichromate, in a 0.50 or 1.0% solution of silver nitrate, I happened to discover some facts concerning the structure of the cerebral gray matter that I believe merit immediate communication.

I don't say 'Tis impossible for an impudent man not to rise in the world, but a moderate merit with a large share of impudence is more probable to be advanced than the greatest qualifications without it.

A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place.

I am told so many ill things of a man, and I see so few in him, that I begin to suspect he has a real but troublesome merit, as being likely to eclipse that of others.

We blame equally him who is too proud to put a proper value on his own merit and him who prizes too highly his spurious worth.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.

Christianity teaches salvation by grace through faith, every other religion teaches salvation through works and merit.

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun.

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.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

Do they merit vitriol, even a drop of it? Yes, because they corrupt the young, persuading them that the mature world, which produced Beethoven and Schweitzer, sets an even higher value on the transient anodynes of youth than does youth itself.... They are the Hollow Men. They are electronic lice.

Human cultures are all experiments in trying to find a form that will fit the matter of our immediacy; but it is absolutely not the case that all such experiments are of equal merit or value. Some cultures - and modernity is patently one - have managed to transmute consciousness into the "disease" that Nietzsche called it, the self-affliction of a self-centeredness that has purged itself of all vestiges of wisdom and value.

[R]est assured that, when you remain thus in the state in which obedience has placed you, the merit of this same obedience extends over everything you do, giving each action inestimable value, even when things do not turn out as you wish.

People talk about 'getting rid of the old image', and I guess there's some merit in that. But the truth is that people loved 'The Wonder Years' - I can't turn my back on it.

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given.

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

Our moral efforts are too feeble and falsely motivated to ever merit salvation.

Charm strikes the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.

Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.

I would suppose I learned how to write when I was very young indeed. When I read a child's book about the Trojan War and decided that the Greeks were really a bunch of frauds with their tricky horses and the terrible things they did, stealing one another's wives, and so on, so at that very early age, I re-wrote the ending of the Iliad so that the Trojans won. And boy, Achilles and Ajax got what they wanted, believe me. And thereafter, at frequent intervals, I would write something. It was really quite extraordinary. Never of very high merit, but the daringness of it was.

Imposed philosophical morality (laws/rules) will not save the world. Only a calculated tangible plan to alter our circumstances so such actions pose no merit will stop immoral behaviour.

Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.

All appointments hurt. Five friends are made cold or hostile for every appointment; no new friends are made. All patronage is perilous to men of real ability or merit. It aids only those who lack other claims to public support.

The institution of representative government to us seems an essential part of democracy, but the ancients never thought of it. Its immense merit was that it enabled a large constituency to exert indirect power, and thus made possible the distribution of political responsibility throughout the great states of modern times.

A Christian anarchist has no business belonging to such a reactionary organization [the Catholic Church]. I do not believe in original sin, indulgences, the infallibility of the pope, or obedience to any church official if it is against my conscience. I am not interested in earning "merit" or in being saved by priestly incantation.

charity is a calm, severe duty; it must be intellectual, to be advantageous. It is a strange mistake that it should ever be considered a merit; its fulfillment is only what we owe to each other, and is a debt never paid to its full extent.

He is always the severest censor of the merit of others who has the least worth of his own.

To be a musician is a great privilege but it is also a very great responsibility. One must think that to be a musician is a gift - a gift from Nature. There is no great merit in us except in loving this gift with respect and devotion and doing everything possible to honor that gift by work and more work. We must work with conviction and humility, searching for beauty, simplicity, and the Truth. And it is for us musicians to do all in our power for a better world. Music must carry the message of beauty, of love and of peace.