Quotes About Merit

It is possible to indulge too great contempt for mere success, which is frequently attended with all the practical advantages of merit itself, and with several advantages that merit alone can never command.

We're not making up merit scores for ourselves. We're making up merit scores so that we can be reborn in a situation where we can really live to benefit ourselves and others.

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

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.

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.

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.

Men sometimes feel injured by praise because it assigns a limit to their merit; few people are modest enough not to take offense that one appreciates them.

To yield readily--easily--to the persuasion of a friend is no merit.... To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.

It is a mystery to me how a theologian can be praised for having brought himself to disbelieve dogmas. I've always thought that those who have brought themselves to believe in dogmas merit the true recognition owing a heroic deed.

Grace is the very opposite of merit... Grace is not only undeserved favor, but it is favor, shown to the one who has deserved the very opposite.

Many have no desire to be in it, because their work does not interest them, providing them with neither challenge nor satisfaction, and has no other merit in their eyes than that it leads to a pay-packet at the end of the week.

I look at a pilot and go, "I see the landscape. I see the characters. I see the direction and the potential of the story." And I also go, "That didn't work. I could change that. Maybe that works. I don't know. We'll see." For me, I look at it, as an actor, as what can I improve upon? So, to have it out there and judged solely on its own merit is really a unique experience for me.

The merit of those who fill a space in the world's history, who are borne forward, as it were, by the weight of thousands whom they lead, shed a perfume less sweet than do the sacrifices of private virtue.

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.

If you are not having good experiences in meditation, then do more seva you will gain merit and your meditation will be deeper. When you bring some relief or freedom to someone through seva, good vibrations and blessings come to you

Those who mistake their good luck for their merit are inevitably bound for disaster.

It wasn't glamorous in my day. In the regions, reporters were seen as such low life that they didn't merit their name in the Radio Times. Now people are interested in being famous. I never gave it a thought.

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 are few things more difficult than to appraise the work of a man suddenly dead in his youth; to disentangle promise from achievement; to save him from that sentimentalizing which confuses the tragedy of the interruption with the merit of the work actually performed.

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.

By meditating on affectionate love and wishing love for just one moment we accumulate greater merit than we would by giving food three times every day to all those who are hungry in the world.

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

Cagey trial lawyers have figured out there's a pretty good likelihood their case - no matter what its merit - will literally get its day in court because of favorable judges.

Man is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end.

The more merit, the less affection.

We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment.

The sacrifices made by veterans and their willingness to fight in defense of our nation merit our deep respect and praise - and to the best in benefits and medical care.

Charm strikes the sight, but merit wins the soul.

The merit of painting lies in the exactness of reproduction. Painting is a science and all sciences are based on mathematics. No human inquiry can be a science unless it pursues its path through mathematical exposition and demonstration.

There is small merit in mocking goodness, tweaking charity; it is much more comic to deprive people of their petty little existence for no reason at all, for a lark.

Though we may sometimes unintentionally bestow our beneficence on the unworthy, it does not take from the merit of the act. For charity doth not adopt the vices of its objects.

The case of Andrews is really a very bad one, as appears by the record already before me. Yet before receiving this I had orderedhis punishment commuted to imprisonmentand had so telegraphed. I did this, not on any merit in the case, but because I am trying to evade the butchering business lately.

I know well, Monsieur, how much you have to endure in your present duty, and I ask Our Lord to strengthen you in your difficulties. It is in such circumstances that we acquire virtue; where there is no suffering, there is little merit. My wish is that God may grant us great indifference with regard to duties. O Monsieur, how sure we would then be of doing His Holy Will, which is our sole aspiration, and how much peace and contentment we would enjoy, or so it seems to me!

An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.

That the question of likability even exists in literary conversations is odd. It implies that we are engaging in a courtship. When characters are unlikable, they don’t meet our mutable, varying standards. Certainly we can find kinship in fiction, but literary merit shouldn’t be dictated by whether we want to be friends or lovers with those about whom we read.

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.

An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.

Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.

One merit of mathematics few will deny: it says more in fewer words than any other science. The formula, e^iπ = -1 expressed a world of thought, of truth, of poetry, and of the religious spirit "God eternally geometrizes."

The Chinese, whom it might be well to disparage less and imitate more, seem almost the only people among whom learning and merit have the ascendency, and wealth is not the standard of estimation.

The thing to do in this lifetime is to create more merit.

Moderation is caused by the fear of exciting the envy and contempt which those merit who are intoxicated with their good fortune; it is a vain display of our strength of mind, and in short the moderation of men at their greatest height is only a desire to appear greater than their fortune.

A task, any task, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance.

It is not a merit to tolerate, but rather a crime to be intolerant.

Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.

Praise without merit is more harmful than unearned criticism.

Praise is a more ingenious, concealed, and subtle kind of flattery, that satisfies both the giver and the receiver, though by verydifferent ways. The one accepts it as a reward due to his merit; the other gives it that he may be looked upon as a just and discerning person.

At Cardozo, study of law is part of a larger culture. You can get a law degree and make a good living, but it is best that you do that having studied the discipline for its own inherent merit, because you love studying.