Merit famous quotes
05-15-2025
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Wanting to work is so rare a merit, that it should be encouraged.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
envy, as a rule, is of success rather than of merit. No one would have objected to his talent deserving recognition - only to his getting it.
-- Ada Leverson -
Modesty is a valuable merit ... in people who have no other, and the appearance of it is extremely useful to those who have ...
-- Ada Leverson -
Now an infinite happiness cannot be purchased by any price less than that which is infinite in value; and infinity of merit can only result from a nature that is infinitely divine or perfect
-- Adam Clarke -
The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
-- Alain de Botton -
I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy; pray for me.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
-- Alexander Pope -
Envy will merit as its shade pursue, But like a shadow, proves the substance true.
-- Alexander Pope -
The good must merit God's peculiar care; But who but God can tell us who they are?
-- Alexander Pope -
Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.
-- Alexander Pope -
Praise from a friend, or censure from a foe, Are lost on hearers that our merits know.
-- Alexander Pope -
The merit of all things lies in their difficulty.
-- Alexandre Dumas -
It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
Fatherland without freedom and merit is a large word with little meaning.
-- Anders Chydenius -
Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?
-- Anton Chekhov -
True modesty does not consist in an ignorance of our merits, but in a due estimate of them.
-- Augustus William Hare -
My company believes in hiring people based on merit.
-- Azim Premji -
Like pictures, men should be judged by their merits and not by their defects.
-- Bainbridge Colby -
Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.
-- Bertrand Russell -
Democracy has at least one merit, namely that a Member of Parliament cannot be stupider than his constituents, for the more stupid he is, the more stupid they were to elect him.
-- Bertrand Russell -
I [will] not go to heaven because I am a preacher. I am going to heaven entirely on the merit of the work of Christ.
-- Billy Graham -
Nevertheless, the central affirmation of the Reformation stands: through no merit of ours, but by his mercy, WE HAVE BEEN RESTORED to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of his beloved Son. This is the Good News, the gospel of Grace
-- Brennan Manning -
It is Toussaint's supreme merit that while he saw European civilisation as a valuable and necessary thing, and strove to lay its foundations among his people, he never had the illusion that it conferred any moral superiority. He knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were, that there is no oath too sacred for them to break, no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves.
-- C. L. R. James -
Our aim is to appeal to reason. … Prayer is not one of our remedies; it depends on what one is praying for. We consider prayer nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is.
-- Carter G. Woodson -
Assuredly men of merit are never lacking at any time, for those are the men who manage affairs, and it is affairs that produce the men. I have never searched, and I have always found under my hand the men who have served me, and for the most part I have been well served.
-- Catherine the Great -
Merit, however inconsiderable, should be sought for and rewarded. Methods are the master of masters.
-- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand -
It is not faith in Christ that saves you (though faith is the instrument) - it is Christ's blood and merits.
-- Charles Spurgeon -
I've never compromised who I am not ever. If I've gotten anywhere in my life it's been on my own merits.
-- Cher -
Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee -
The best evidence of merit is a cordial recognition of it whenever and wherever it may be found.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee -
Virtue and merit can become their opposites if they are exacted or compelled...
-- Christopher Hitchens -
People talk about 'getting rid of the old image', and I guess there's some merit in that. But the truth is that people loved 'The Wonder Years' - I can't turn my back on it.
-- Danica McKellar -
I know me, and I know that I'm not somebody that particularly merits a lot of screaming and shouting. And there's nothing special about me as opposed to hundreds of thousands of other people everywhere.
-- Daniel Radcliffe -
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."
-- David Eugene Smith -
It is the process of evolution which identifies innovative benefits from any source and selects them on merit without prejudice
-- David Landes -
But the stupidity which is common to all such "explanations" is, of course, simply that of proceeding as though the merits of a theory - such things as truth, or probability, or explanatory power - could not possibly be among the reasons for its currency.
-- David Stove -
It is far more honest to be undeservedly ignored than to be honoured without merit.
-- Denis Fonvizin -
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.
-- Donald Cargill -
These guys, they were so sure of their places in life--so deeply confident of their merit and their future--they didn't need any kind of front at all.
-- E. Lockhart -
I love flexing theater Muscles. Television has merits as well, but there's no substitute for live theater.
-- Eddie Cahill -
If its length be not considered a merit, it hath no other.
-- Edmund Waller -
An absolute monarch, who is rich without patrimony, may be charitable without merit; and Constantine too easily believed that he should purchase the favour of Heaven if he maintained the idle at the expense of the industrious, and distributed among the saints the wealth of the republic.
-- Edward Gibbon -
Felicity, not fluency of language, is a merit.
-- Edwin Percy Whipple -
With children no longer the universally accepted reason for marriage, marriages are going to have to exist on their own merits.
-- Eleanor Holmes Norton -
Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt -
Miller didn't write Death of a Salesman. He released it. It was there inside him, waiting to be turned loose. That's the measure of its merit.
-- Elia Kazan -
He is always the severest censor of the merit of others who has the least worth of his own.
-- Elias Lyman Magoon -
The curse of death for disobedience has been silenced because, for believers, there is no longer any Law we have to obey to merit life. The Law has been silenced, but it can only be silenced when it is has been perfectly fulfilled—when it has been completed. And that’s just what Jesus did.
-- Elyse Fitzpatrick -
The Spider as an Artist Has never been employed- Though his surpassing Merit Is freely certified.
-- Emily Dickinson -
Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men!... The economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution.
-- Emma Goldman -
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.
-- Erich Fromm -
An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.
-- Ernest Rutherford -
If Wells recognized any merit in [Henry] James, it was his undeniable talent for using very long sentences in order to say nothing at all. p. 516
-- Félix J. Palma -
Real merit requires as much labor, to be placed in a true light, as humbug to be elevated to an unworthy eminence; only the success of the false is temporary, that of the true, immortal.
-- Francis Alexander Durivage -
Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.
-- Francis Bacon -
There is merit without rank, but there is no rank without some merit.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
Our merit gains us the esteem of the virtuous-our star that of the public.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
I won't touch on risky, because that's subjective. People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don't necessarily merit fear.
-- Frank Ocean -
I'm not a rubber stamp, and people know that. If you can convince me of the merits, you will have my vote every time.
-- Fred Upton -
Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
A beautiful soul has no other merit than its own existence.
-- Friedrich Schiller -
In the expression of the emotions, originality merits the first consideration... The words used, however, should be old ones.
-- Fujiwara no Teika -
The merit in action lies in finishing it to the end.
-- Genghis Khan -
We acquire the love of people who, being in our proximity, are presumed to know us; and we receive reputation or celebrity, from such as are not personally acquainted with us. Merit secures to us the regard of our honest neighbors, and good fortune that of the public. Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success.
-- George Augustus Henry Sala -
They say fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit.
-- George Eliot -
I shall make it the most agreeable part of my duty to study merit, and reward the brave and deserving.
-- George Washington -
I look upon another's insistence on the merits of his or her life - duties, intellect, accomplishment - and see that most of it is nonsense.
-- Harold Brodkey -
Riches and power are but gifts of blind fate, whereas goodness is the result of one's own merits.
-- Heloise -
The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice.
-- Henry Hazlitt -
...the great merit of the place is that one can arrange one's life here exactly as one pleases...there are facilities for every kind of habit and taste, and everything is accepted and understood.
-- Henry James -
What is merit? The opinion one man entertains of another.
-- Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston -
It need hardly be said that shortness is a merit in words.
-- Henry Watson Fowler -
Evidently the merit depends on the result of the work.
-- Henryk Sienkiewicz -
Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale... Love loves; this is its nature.
-- Howard Thurman -
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.
-- Immanuel Wallerstein -
Those who mistake their good luck for their merit are inevitably bound for disaster.
-- J. Christopher Herold -
The grace of God is love freely shown toward guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit.
-- J. I. Packer -
If I have any merit, it is getting along with individuals, according to their ways and characteristics. At times it involves suppressing yourself. It is painful, but necessary. To be a leader you have got to lead human beings with affection,
-- J. R. D. Tata -
Why was I chosen?' 'Such questions cannot be answered,' said Gandalf. 'You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien -
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.
-- Jacques Rigaut -
Lies don't matter, ... There's no merit to it. It's kind of hard to entertain foolishness when it has no merit.
-- Jalen Rose -
Carelessness is inexcusable, and merits the inevitable sequence.
-- James Anthony Froude -
We can all perceive the difference between ourselves and our inferiors, but when it comes to a question of the difference between us and our superiors we fail to appreciate merits of which we have no proper conceptions.
-- James F. Cooper -
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.
-- James Goldsmith -
Where we can compete on merit, we do very well.
-- James L. Barksdale -
Of my merit On that pint you yourself may jedge: All is, I never drink no sperit, Nor I haint never signed no pledge.
-- James Russell Lowell -
The flatterer easily insinuates himself into the closet, while honest merit stands shivering in the hall or antechamber.
-- Jane Porter -
You must begin to trust yourself. If you do not then you will forever be looking to others to prove your own merit to you, and you will never be satisfied. You will always be asking others what to do, and at the same time, resenting those from whom you seek such aid.
-- Jane Roberts -
We start with gifts. Merit comes from what we make of them.
-- Jean Toomer -
It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
