Quotes About Merit

My first encounters with faith came about the time I was a Boy Scout, at about 14 or 15. I made the logical deduction that they operate the same way; I treated my faith like earning a merit badge, and everything about Christianity was about earning merit badges.

To be an object of hatred and aversion to their contemporaries has been the usual fate of all those whose merit has raised them above the common level. The man who submits to the shafts of envy for the sake of noble objects pursues a judicious course for his own lasting fame. Hatred dies with its object, while merit soon breaks forth in full splendor, and his glory is handed down to posterity in never-dying strains.

If there is truth or merit in the criticism, try to learn from it. Otherwise, let it roll right off you.

If the soul would know the merit which one acquires in temptations suffered in patience and conquered, it would be tempted to say: "Lord, send me temptations."

True merit does not depend on the times or on fashion. Those who have no other advantage than courtly manners lose it when they are away from court. But good sense, knowledge, and wisdom make their possessors knowledgeable and beloved in all ages and in all times.

Peace is never so complete that we may not have something to suffer. . . . Since it is impossible to please all of [those you serve], they offer you the occasion for practices which increase your merit in the measure that you make them meritorious by your patience.

The merit in action lies in finishing it to the end.

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.

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.

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.

We are justified freely, for Christ’s sake, by faith, without the exertion of our own strength, gaining of merit, or doing of works. To the age-old question, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ the confessional answer is shocking: ‘Nothing! Just be still; shut up and listen for once in your life to what God the Almighty, creator and redeemer, is saying to his world and to you in the death and resurrection of his Son! Listen and believe!’

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.

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.

What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.

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.

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

Certainly it is permitted to anyone to put forward whatever hypotheses he wishes, and to develop the logical consequences contained in those hypotheses. But in order that this work merit the name of Geometry, it is necessary that these hypotheses or postulates express the result of the more simple and elementary observations of physical figures.

Who are to be the objects of popular choice? Every citizen whose merit may recommend him to the esteem and confidence of his country.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

No one can bar me from joyfully proceeding on what the great masters have left us; after all, to rediscover everything again, should be understood to be unfounded. But one should however proceed on merit, and not simply repeat wat was. All genius, sincere, deserves his place, even though maybe later in life.

Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.

Fondly we think we honor merit then, when we but praise ourselves in other men.

The good must merit God's peculiar care; But who but God can tell us who they are?

It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.

Things like racism are institutionalized. You might not know any bigots. You feel like "well I don't hate black people so I'm not a racist," but you benefit from racism. Just by the merit, the color of your skin. The opportunities that you have, you're privileged in ways that you might not even realize because you haven't been deprived of certain things. We need to talk about these things in order for them to change.

The very gradual reductions in my weight which I am able to show, may be interesting to many, and I have great pleasure in stating them, believing that they serve to demonstrate further the merit of the system pursued.

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

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

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

The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.

Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.

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.

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.

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

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.

Men were created before women. ... But that doesn't prove their superiority – rather, it proves ours, for they were born out of the lifeless earth in order that we could be born out of living flesh. And what's so important about this priority in creation, anyway? When we are building, we lay foundations on the ground first, things of no intrinsic merit or beauty, before subsequently raising up sumptuous buildings and ornate palaces. Lowly seeds are nourished in the earth, and then later the ravishing blooms appear; lovely roses blossom forth and scented narcissi.

A beautiful soul has no other merit than its own existence.

There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners.

My respect for human beings is based not on the colour of a man’s skin nor authority he may wield, but purely on merit.

Thy modesty 's a candle to thy merit.

Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained.

Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of invention. ... [Do not] share the opinion of those narrow minds who disdain everything in science which has not an immediate application. ... A theoretical discovery has but the merit of its existence: it awakens hope, and that is all. But let it be cultivated, let it grow, and you will see what it will become.

To be loved because of one's merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt; maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me, maybe this, or that - there is always a fear that love could disappear.

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.