Quotes About Merit

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.

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.

When people are judged by merit, not connections, then the best and brightest can lead the country, people will work hard, and the entire economy will grow - everyone will benefit and more resources will be available for all, not just select groups.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I am astonished at the pleasure one experiences in doing good; and I should be tempted to believe that what we call virtuous people have not so much merit as they lead us to suppose.

I don't think women are interesting enough to merit a book. They're more of a pamphlet sex.

It is the merit of a general to impart good news, and to conceal the truth.

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.

When we are dead we are praised by those who survive us, though we frequently have no other merit than that of being no longer alive.

The most successful of the Tartar princes assumed the military command, to which he was entitled by the superiority either of merit or of power. He was raised to the throne by the acclamations of his equals; and the title of Khan expresses, in the language of the North of Asia, the full extent of the regal dignity. The right of hereditary succession was long confined to the blood of the founder of the monarchy; and at this moment all the Khans, who reign from Crimea to the wall of China, are the lineal descendants of the renowned Zingis.

The discovery of the North Pole is one of those realities which could not be avoided. It is the wages which human perseverance pays itself when it thinks that something is taking too long. The world needed a discoverer of the North Pole, and in all areas of social activity, merit was less important here than opportunity.

Whoever gains the palm by merit, let him hold it.

Perpetual modernism is the measure of merit in every work of art.

There is a proud modesty in merit.

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.

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

The sole purpose of life is to gain merit for life in eternity.

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.

The lover's pleasure, like that of the hunter, is in the chase, and the brightest beauty loses half its merit, as the flower its perfume, when the willing hand can reach it too easily. There must be doubt; there must be difficulty and danger.

I am weak, I say with no presumptions. I have no merit, I note it, that is all. There are times that I feel so weak there most be a mistake, and as I don't know what I mean with this, I am not going to say anything else

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"!

Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors', but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit

Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business.

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.

I have sometimes thought that people are, in a sort, happy, that nothing can put out of countenance with themselves, though they neither have nor merit other people's.

Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

Fauvism was our ordeal by fire... colours became charges of dynamite. They were expected to charge light... The great merit of this method was to free the picture from all imitative and conventional contact.

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.

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

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.

Morality is a burglar's tool whose merit lies in never being left behind at the scene of the crime.

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.

Learning is a friend on the journey; a wife in the house; medicine in sickness; and religious merit is the only friend after death.

Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made he (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one...that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

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.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marryA young man not yet, an elder man not at all.

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.

Besides, Rose Bradwardine, beautiful and amiable as we have described her, had not precisely the sort of beauty or merit which captivates a romantic imagination in early youth. She was too frank, too confiding, too kind; amiable qualities, undoubtedly, but destructive of the marvellous, with which a youth of imagination delights to dress the empress of his affections.

A good thought is indeed a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked; next he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us. Whoever adopts and circulates a just thought, participates in the merit that originated it.

Sentimentalists ... adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel.... Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment?

Virtue and merit can become their opposites if they are exacted or compelled.