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.

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.

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.

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.

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 seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one another.

Women are sometimes drawn in to believe against probability by the unwillingness they have to doubt their own merit.

There is no merit in a special talent unless its exercise is of use to others.

A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.

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.

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.

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.

I always hope that young people will think for themselves and also most importantly, understand that they should judge themselves on their own merit, their good deeds, however simple, to not judge themselves by what they have materially, by what other people think of them, through social media.

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

The heart is that which lies at the centre of things, and is also formless. It is simple awareness devoid of movement to and fro, of past and future, within and without, merit and harm. Wherever the centre of a thing lies, there lies its heart, for the word 'heart' means centrality.

Self-love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them; and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.

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.

To those critics who see capitalism as a system of inegalitarian, oppressive structures, its defenders have vaunted its ability to recognize and encourage what they call individual merit and asserted not only the desirability but also the inevitability of differential reward, of earned privilege, so to speak.

Ties of blood are not always ties of friendship; but friendship founded on merit, on esteem, and on mutual trust, becomes more vital and more tender when strengthened by the ties of blood.

Good intentions do not guarantee good results. Somehow Andrew Keates turns works of merit into evenings of entertainment. Don't call him a dramaturge, call him an alchemist.

There is a proud modesty in merit.

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.

Begin with bodhicitta, do the main practice without concepts,Conclude by dedicating the merit. These, together and complete,Are the three vital supports for progressing on the path to liberation.

A few words worthy to be remembered suffice to give an idea of a great mind. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition.

There are people who in spite of their merit disgust us and others who please us in spite of their faults.

Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue

Artists have to believe in the merit of their own work and persevere whether they receive public recognition or not, but it's ever so nice when someone says, "Job well done"!

Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player.

There's this belief with no merit that media with women at the center applies only to women, but media with men at the center applies to everyone.

Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to bestow it in the presence of human merit.

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

Through the dark days of legalized segregation and on into the civil rights era, jazz shone as a beacon for achieving interracial respect and understanding. It seemed as if the dream of a color-blind society was within reach in the jazz world, where musicians were judged on merit and not skin color.

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

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.

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!

It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.

A suspicious person is the rival of him that deceives, both seem to practice a knowledge of cunning device, and equable sense of disengenuous merit.

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

The gospel is the proclamation of free love; the revelation of the boundless charity of God. Nothing less than this will suit our world; nothing else is so likely to touch the heart, to go down to the lowest depths of depraved humanity, as the assurance that the sinner has been loved -- loved by God, loved with a righteous love, loved with a free love that makes no bargain as to merit, or fitness, or goodness.

Real merit of any kind cannot long be concealed; it will be discovered, and nothing can depreciate it but a man exhibiting it himself. It may not always be rewarded as it ought; but it will always be known.

The only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects.

If I cannot narrate a life of adventurous and daring exploits, fortunately I have no heavy crimes to confess: and, if I do not rise in the estimation of the reader for acts of gallantry and devotion in my country's cause, at least I may claim the merit of zealous and persevering continuance in my vocation. We are all of us variously gifted from Above, and he who is content to walk, instead of to run, on his allotted path through life, although he may not so rapidly attain the goal, has the advantage of not being out of breath upon his arrival.

People must know that their ideas will be listened to and, if they have merit, acted upon. If they do, it is possible to mobilize individual creativity on a very broad scale.

The book trade invented literary prizes to stimulate sales, not to reward merit.

The vain man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his disgrace.

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?

Misfortune is the test of a person's merit.

As the people of the United States enjoy the great merit of having established a system of Government on the basis of human rights, and of giving it a form without example, which, as they believe, unites the greatest national strength with the best security for public order and individual liberty, they owe to themselves, to their posterity and to the world, a preservation of the system in its purity, its symmetry, and its authenticity.