Quotes About Merit

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.

All men agree that a just distribution must be according to merit in some sense; they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats identify it with freemen, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence.

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

I appreciate having been promoted for merit, on merit. And then bringing to bear whatever those extra special characteristics that all of us have.

When enlightened people are so poor that they cannot help others, if they speak a word to awaken the confused or to resolve a problem, there is also boundless merit in that.

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.

We all want merit to mean something, and we all may be tempted to reduce that meaning to something measurable and concrete like an SAT score. The reality, though, is that who deserves entry into an institution depends on what the institution exists to do.

Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.

When a man venerates those worthy of veneration, be they Buddhas or their disciples, who have transcended all obstacles and passed beyond sorrow and tears - venerating such as these, whose passions are extinguished and for whom there is no further source for fear, no one can calculate how great his merit is.

I think there's a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they're not sufficient because markets don't look after social needs.

Merit has rarely risen of itself, but a pebble or a twig is often quite sufficient for it to spring from to the highest ascent. There is usually some baseness before there is any elevation.

Each of us is responsible for creating an environment of warmth and consideration for those we love. I have always tried to define a good day not in terms of one in which all things were made right and comfortable for me but rather, as a day in which I have been able to make another's day more loving and special for them. We must treat each other with dignity. Not because we merit it but because we grow best in thoughtfulness.

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?

the most censorious are generally the least judicious; who, having nothing to recommend themselves, will be finding fault with others. No man envies the merit of another, that has any of his own.

And for yourself, whatever there has been either of sin or duty, remember the one and forget the other, and betake yourself wholly to the mercy of God and the merit of Christ.

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

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.

Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature.

I listen to tons of hard rock and metal, like Iron Maiden, Motorhead, etc., but I also listen to Beethoven and Mozart, to Discharge and the Bad Brains, and to Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. So I think there's merit to both the melodic punk and to the hardcore stuff too.

Mr. Lincoln's elevation shows that in America every station in life may be honorable; that there is no barrier against the humblest; but that merit, wherever it exists, has the opportunity to be known.

I propose that a teacher's pay be tied to merit, not tenure. And I propose that a teacher's employment be tied to performance, not just showing up.

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.

When the philosophers despised riches, it was because they had a mind to vindicate their own merit, and take revenge upon the injustice of fortune by vilifying those enjoyments which she had not given them.

A doctor who keeps a person from becoming ill deserves more merit than one who cures him.

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

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.

Charm strikes the sight, but merit wins the soul.

It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblences to merit.

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.

It takes a tremendous amount of merit to meet with the dharma - especially if you have an interest in it.

I seek a diverse spectrum of roles. If I just was in a large-budget feature for a younger audience, then I want to find a smaller, more character-driven piece that might be for a more mature audience. Or if I'm playing a goofier character, then maybe I want to go play a serious, psychopathic character. But at the same time, it's usually a case-by-case basis where I'm judging the merit of a role by the script I'm given, and it usually has less to do with the larger framework and more to do with how the part personally appeals to me in that moment.

God often delays the conclusion of a holy endeavor so that those involved in it might merit its grace by the length of the work, their patience, and their prayers. This is why I beg you not to grow weary in yours. Although He may delay, He will reveal that it is pleasing to Him, if it is done, nevertheless, in a spirit of resignation regarding the outcome.

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.

Truth is not a reward for good behaviour, nor a prize for passing some tests. It cannot be brought about. It is the primary, the unborn, the ancient source of all that is. You are eligible because you are. You need not merit truth. It is your own....Stand still, be quiet.

The grace of God is love freely shown toward guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit.

Praise without merit is more harmful than unearned criticism.

Proper effort is not the effort to make something particular happen. It is the effort to be aware and awake each moment, the effort to overcome laziness and merit, the effort to make each activity of our day meditation.

Evidently the merit depends on the result of the work.

Wanting to work is so rare a merit, that it should be encouraged.

Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn't believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn't prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit.

You know, as Secretary of State, I've been privileged to represent this great country, and I know its strengths, and I know its challenges. One of its strengths is the belief - here and abroad - that this is a place where you get ahead on merit. It doesn't matter where you came from; it matters where you're going.

A collection of plants is not a landscape, any more than a list of choice words is a poem. The merit is in the design, not the material it is expressed in, and the best designs, like the best poems, make ordinary material significant by its arrangement.

How can the unknown merit reverence? In other words how can you revere that of which you are ignorant? At the same time, it would be ridiculous to propose that what we know merits reverence. What we know merits any one of a number of things, but it stands to reason reverence isn't one of them. In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

Can't I another's face commend, Or to her virtues be a friend, But instantly your forehead louers, As if her merit lessen'd yours?

Be humble and you will remain entire. The sages do not display themselves, therefore they shine. They do not approve themselves, therefore they are noted. They do not praise themselves, therefore they have merit. They do not glory in themselves, therefore they excel.

I was induced to establish several orders of merit, from conviction that emulation, well directed, becomes a useful servant; and, that the latent genius of some youth is more easily brought into action this way, than by the more sordid gratification of self-interest.

The artist is today and has been for many years, despite his absence of merit, simply a spoiled child. So many honors, so much money bestowed on men without souls and without education.

If its length be not considered a merit, it hath no other.