Top 100 Quotes About Merit
#1. Successful people ask for the criticism of others and consider its merit.
Ray Dalio
#2. Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve?
Julian Barnes
#4. For what is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with vile envy, a man seeks to beg pardon for his excellences and merits from those who have none? For
whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#5. A man of merit owes himself to the homage of the rest of mankind who recognize his worth.
Jules Verne
#7. The merit of the cross does not consist in its heaviness, but in the manner in which we carry it. I would even say that it is sometimes more virtuous to carry a cross of straw than a heavy cross because we have to be more attentive for fear of losing it.
Saint Francis De Sales
#8. It's only merit was in being the first publication which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but that of being under the same king.
Thomas Jefferson
#9. Faith is not in itself a meritorious act; the merit is in the One to Whom it is directed.
Aiden Wilson Tozer
#10. FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
Ambrose Bierce
#11. The Sage expects no recognition for what he does; he achieves merit but does not take it to himself; he does not wish to display his worth.
Laozi
#12. Oh, I get it. You're doing the girlfriend - what's her name? Megan?" "Merit," answered the girl at the table. "And it's a pretty good costume." I opened my mouth to object, to proclaim that I wasn't doing Ethan's girlfriend, I was Ethan's girlfriend, and I was doing Ethan.
Chloe Neill
#13. Frivolous Gossip and Poetry
It's just so much frivolous gossip to dwell upon the moral merits of a poet;
what should only concern the reader is the merit of his words.
Leave moral judgments to the preachers and aesthetic judgments to the critical readers.
Beryl Dov
#14. At the heart of the Protestant faith is the conviction that there is nothing we contribute to our salvation but our sin, no merit we bring but Christ's, and nothing necessary for justification except faith alone.
Kevin DeYoung
#15. Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property of man.
Thomas Carlyle
#16. But some words to men and women, boys and girls alike: The quality of the work must merit the readers' time and money. Do it for yourself, but make yourself a member of your own audience. There is no other way to evaluate your own progress.
Wendy Pini
#17. 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
#18. You wouldn't go to a hospital, you wouldn't go to a law firm where the doctors and lawyers were not retained on merit: where they all had tenure regardless of competence. Parents feel the same way about schools that they send their children to.
David Boies
#19. But I don't mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.
Charlotte Bronte
#22. Each of us has been sent to earth by our Heavenly Father to merit eternal life
Robert D. Hales
#23. It is better not to make merit a matter of reward Lest people conspire and contend.
Laozi
#24. 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.
Max Stirner
#25. Creating a meritocracy requires equal participation by both the hippo, who could rule the day by fiat, and the brave smart creative, who risks getting trampled as she stands up for quality and merit.
Eric Schmidt
#26. And last but not least, reflecting my feelings on proofreading ... excuse any pages on my websites that have misspelled words or grammatical errors ... I'm not a proofreader of any great merit.
Mark Twain
#27. 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
#28. The sole purpose of life is to gain merit for life in eternity.
Saint Augustine
#30. Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.
Lord Chesterfield
#31. My governing principle as a critic is to call attention solely to books and writers that merit such attention, and to avoid whenever possible reviewing books "negatively" except in those instances in which the "negative" is countered by an admiring consideration of earlier books by the same author.
Joyce Carol Oates
#32. There is no merit in a special talent unless its exercise is of use to others.
Sax Rohmer
#33. It is fit that the fortune should be on his side, for I think the merit will be all on hers.
Jane Austen
#34. There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is far worse or much harder to win.
Winston Churchill
#35. The step that a lot of people miss is a dispassionate evaluation of the reasons [for rejection]. If you can dispassionately evaluate the reasons for rejection and find them with merit, you can address them; if without merit, you can ignore them.
Brian Koppelman
#36. God chose to set his love on the Israelites not because of any merit in them but solely because of mercy in him.
David Platt
#37. The earmark favor factory needs to be boarded up and demolished, not turned over to new management that may or may not have a better eye for earmarks with 'merit.'
Tom Coburn
#38. Do not miss the opportunity of offering even a single drop into the ocean of merit or a grain atop the mountain of the roots of beneficial activity.
Dogen
#39. It is no slight testimonial, both to the merit and worth of Christianity, that in all ages since its promulgation the great mass of those who have risen to eminence by their profound wisdom and integrity have recognized and reverenced Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of the living God.
John Quincy Adams
#40. I've learned to judge of men by their own deeds;
I do not make the accident of birth
The standard of their merit.
Sarah Josepha Hale
#41. We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit , power , and love of our Redeemer.
William James
#42. When you are proud of something you have done, and you have made a film you feel has merit, and it's found an audience and is critically well received, that's a pretty pleasurable place to be. I mean, you don't want it gathering dust at the bottom of someone's DVD collection.
Cate Blanchett
#43. The intensity of a national culture should be represented by ... the general education level and ... the exceptional merit of a small elite of pioneers.
George Sarton
#44. Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors.
Plutarch
#45. There's a proud modesty in merit; averse from asking, and resolved to pay ten times the gifts it asks.
John Dryden
#46. For if "Free-will" cannot of itself will good, but wills good by grace alone, (for we are speaking of "Free-will" apart from grace and inquiring into the power which properly belongs to each) who does not see, that that good will, merit, and reward, belong to grace alone.
Martin Luther
#47. The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.
Bernard Crick
#48. Ask any soldier. To kill a man is to merit a woman.
Jean Giraudoux
#49. In the wine world, crusaders would have wine consumers believe that the only wines of merit are something completely indefinable but which they call 'authentic' or 'natural.'
Robert M. Parker Jr.
#50. Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
Mark Twain
#51. You can't maintain discipline that way." Mallow said icily, "I can. There's no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances. I'll have it in the face of death, or it's useless.
Isaac Asimov
#52. In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.
Thorstein Veblen
#53. As a means of dispensing formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without merit; it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without it ...
Ambrose Bierce
#54. 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.
Ajahn Thate
#55. There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally subject to change.
Alexander Pope
#56. For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman; and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf and teach her to live with men have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering, her.
Charles Caleb Colton
#57. When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.
Sarah Kendzior
#58. Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#59. 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.
Henry Allen Ironside
#60. Merit: I am yours until you ban bacon, or otherwise as long as I can put up with you.
Chloe Neill
#61. 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
#62. Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.
Alexander Pope
#66. 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.
William Penn
#67. The Iranian people have a proud past. They merit a great future.
Condoleezza Rice
#68. If a person who can [give a blow] forbears, there is merit in that.
Swami Vivekananda
#69. I do not like the late resurrection of the Jesuits ... If ever any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth, and in hell, according to these historians, though, like Pascal, true Catholics, it is this company of Loyolas.
John Adams
#70. The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.
Samuel Richardson
#71. But if our sex would but well consider and rationally ponder, they will perceive and find that it is neither words nor place that can advance them, but worth and merit.
Margaret Cavendish
#72. 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.
William Banting
#73. 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.
Luc De Clapiers
#74. A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity.
H.L. Mencken
#75. Frege has the merit of ... finding a third assertion by recognising the world of logic which is neither mental nor physical.
Bertrand Russell
#76. Living for the Self [the Soul] is merit karma (you bind merit karma) and living for the worldly life is nothing but demerit karma (you bind demerit karma).
Dada Bhagwan
#77. Titles and mottoes to books are like escutcheons and dignities in the hands of a king. The wise sometimes condescend to accept of them; but none but a fool would imagine them of any real importance. We ought to depend upon intrinsic merit, and not the slender helps of the title.
Oliver Goldsmith
#78. Our bodies are perishable, wealth is not at all permanent and death is always nearby. Therefore we must immediately engage in acts of merit.
Chanakya
#79. A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#80. Great masters merit emulation, not worship.
Alan Cohen
#81. Audiences in every medium are becoming far more savvy. No one goes to watch a Tom Cruise movie any more just because it's starring Tom Cruise. No one gives a toss. Concept is what makes actors raise their game. Everyone's on merit now.
Joe Dempsie
#82. 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.
Jane Austen
#83. Nothing in medicine is so insignificant as to merit attention.
Thomas Sydenham
#84. Not only were the Jewish people beloved, but God himself had taken pains to let them know it. Could there be any clearer sign that he continued to believe in their potential, even without the Temple, to achieve forgiveness and ultimately merit the Temple's rebuilding?
Meir Soloveichik
#85. Whenever he began to see me as something more than a liability or a weapon,
whenever we spoke to each other without the barrier of rank and history between us, he backed away, more often than not insulting me to force the distance. Merit - Chicagoland Vampires
Chloe Neill
#86. My aspiration now is to get by luck what I could not get by merit.
Mason Cooley
#87. We had rather do anything than acknowledge the merit of another if we can help it. We cannot bear a superior or an equal. Hence ridicule is sure to prevail over truth, for the malice of mankind, thrown into the scale, gives the casting weight.
William Hazlitt
#88. When you remove the concept of reward and punishment on merit, the result is the utter destruction of social fabric.
Imran Khan
#89. Lydia is an excellent student! She's a clever girl, only these teachers are such sticklers for having all papers and tests completed, and they leave no room for judging her by her own merit.
Laura Briggs
#90. If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit Awards.
Annie Proulx
#91. I prefer to think of it as a knack for coming to your rescue, he declares huskily and winks, before he proceeds to wipe up my mess. Oh good God. I've made Chris Merit my janitor. And, he winked at me. I can barely breathe.
Lisa Renee Jones
#92. Pure Christian love is not derived from the merit of the object.
Martin Luther
#94. 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.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#95. 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.
Zicheng Hong
#96. The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#97. A lively and agreeable man has not only the merit of liveliness and agreeableness himself, but that also of awakening them in others.
Sir Fulke Greville
#98. Love knows no virtue, no merit; it loves and forgives and tolerates everything because it must. We are not guided by reason ...
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#99. But in love, merit is won blindly and unaccountably, and in this blindness and unaccountability lies happiness.
pp. 445-446
Ivan Goncharov
#100. The scientist-community guy may get a $500,000 grant, and if his equipment works or doesn't work, he still gets a gold star for doing the science experiment. For me, there is no merit in anything for doing an experiment; I have to go home with pictures.
James Balog
