Merit Quotes - Page 29

• Those are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit.

  Plutarch

  Praise, Greedy, Poor

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• By providing cheap and wholesome reading for the young, we have partly succeeded in driving from the field that which was positively bad; yet nothing is easier than to overdo a reformation, and, through the characteristic indulgence of American parents, children are drugged with a literature whose chief merit is its harmlessness.

  Agnes Repplier

  Children, Reading, Parent

  Agnes Repplier (1888). “Books and Men”

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• If we could make up our minds to spare our friends all details of ill health, of money losses, of domestic annoyances, of altercations, of committee work, of grievances, provocations, and anxieties, we should sin less against the world's good-humor. It may not be given us to add to the treasury of mirth; but there is considerable merit in not robbing it.

  Agnes Repplier

  Loss, Ill Health, Anxiety

  Agnes Repplier (1904). “Compromises”

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• Vanity is a strong temptation to lying; it makes people magnify their merit, over flourish their family, and tell strange stories of their interest and acquaintance.

  Jeremy Collier

  Strong, Lying, Vanity

  Jeremy COLLIER (the Nonjuror.), J. E. (1838). “Pearls of Great Price: or, Maxims, reflections, characters and thoughts, on miscellaneous subjects ... Selected from the works of the Rev. Jeremy Collier by the editor of “Sir William Jones's Discourses,” etc. [The editor's preface signed: J. E., i.e. James Elmes.]”, p.122

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• Such a superiority do the pursuits of literature possess above every other occupation, that even he who attains but a mediocrity in them, merits the pre-eminence above those that excel the most in the common and vulgar professions.

  David Hume

  Mediocrity, Literature, Occupation

  David Hume (1782). “The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688”, p.197

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• Man's shortcomings and sins are all due to the substance of the body and not to its form; while all his merits are exclusively due to his form.

  Maimonides

  Men, Substance, Body

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.1009, Moses Maimonides

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• There is no merit in being truthful when one is truthful by nature, or rather when one can be nothing else; it is a gift, like poetry or music. But it needs courage to be truthful after carefully considering the matter, unless a kind of pride is involved; for example, the man who says to himself, "I am ugly," and then says, "I am ugly" to his friends, lest they should think themselves the first to make the discovery.

  Eugene Delacroix

  Pride, Men, Thinking

  "The Journal of Eugene Delacroix: A Selection". Book edited by Hubert Wellington, translated by Lucy Norton, Cornell University Press, June 6, 1824 (p. 45), 1980.

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• How can the unknown merit reverence?

  Harold Pinter

  Reverence

  Harold Pinter (1967). “The Homecoming”, p.52, Grove Press

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• Holiness is not a merit by which we can attain communion with God, but a gift of Christ, which enables us to cling to him, and to follow him.

  John Calvin

  Holiness, Christ, Communion

  John Calvin, Henry Van Andel (2004). “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, p.17, Baker Books

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• Judging people for whom they love (a same sex partner) rather than by whom they harm, should in itself merit a psychiatric diagnosis.

  Harriet Lerner

  Sex, Judging People, Diagnosis

  FaceBook post by Harriet Lerner from Oct 18, 2015

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• Let us not... contend about merit , but let us all be intent on forwarding the common enterprize , and equally enjoy any progress we may make towards succeeding in it; and above all, let us acknowledge the guidance of that Great Being, who has put a spirit in man, and whose inspiration giveth him understanding .

  Joseph Priestley

  Inspiration, Men, Understanding

  Joseph Priestley (1790). “Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air and Other Branches of Natural Philosophy, Connected with the Subject ...: Being the Former Six Volumes Abridged and Methodized, with Many Additions”, p.43

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• I used to think I should like to be a bookbinder or bookseller it seemed to me a most delightful trade and I wished or thought of nothing better. More lately I thought I should be a minister, it seemed so serious and useful a profession, and I entered but little into the merits of religion and the duties of a minister. Every one dissuaded me from the notion, and before I arrived at any age to require a real decision, science had claimed me.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Real, Thinking, Decision

  William Stanley Jevons's reflections on his earlier life, written when he was 27 (December 1862); later published in "Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons" edited by Harriet A. Jevons, his wife (p. 12), 1886.

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• The Iranian people have a proud past. They merit a great future.

  Condoleezza Rice

  Past, People, Proud

  "Condoleezza Rice Holds News Conference on Iran". www.washingtonpost.com. May 31, 2006.

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• In America, what makes us so successful is the innovation, the competition, the focus on merit.

  Joel Klein

  Successful, America, Focus

  "Condoleezza Rice: Education Could Be 'Greatest National Security Challenge'". "PBS Newshour", www.pbs.org. March 19, 2012.

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• Such is life, here today, gone tomorrow! Nothing goes with one, except one's merit and demerit; good and evil deeds follow one even after death.

  Sarada Devi

  Evil, Today, Gone

  Sarada Devi (1963). “At Holy Mother's Feet: Teachings of Shri Sarada Devi”

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• Look at who people are elevating and deifying in the public eye, and ask yourself what those people have done to receive such lauding and what it is they haven't. When you look at that you say, okay, are these people being revered for something of merit, or are they completely hallow? Or even worse, are they being revered for something that is actually destructive?

  Davey Havok

  Eye, People, Looks

  "The Skinnie" Magazine, March 2010.

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• No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.

  John Rawls

  Natural, Starting, Capacity

  John Rawls (2009). “A Theory of Justice”, p.87, Harvard University Press

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• Legal immigration is good for America, if it's controlled and structured via the legal process, of course. But the problem is the system we have in place right now is broken. For example, it is completely family based which means that it's based not on what you can do or what talent you have or what merit you bring or what job you could fill, but rather on whether you know someone who already lives here.

  Marco Rubio

  Jobs, Mean, America

  "EIB Interview: Why, Senator Rubio?". "The Rush Limbaugh Show", www.rushlimbaugh.com. April 18, 2013.

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• 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

  Levels, Pioneers, Culture

  George Sarton (1993). “Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C.”, p.8, Courier Corporation

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• The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.

  Bernard Crick

  Skills, Ideas, Consistency

  Bernard Crick (1993). “In Defense of Politics”, p.143, University of Chicago Press

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• The noble art of losing face may one day save the human race and turn into eternal merit what weaker minds would call disgrace.

  Piet Pieterszoon Hein

  Art, Race, Mind

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• Most complaints, you know, aren't won or lost on their own merits, but rather on larger issues--politics and the position of the planets.

  Walter Wykes

  Issues, Lost, Planets

  Walter Wykes (2006). “Three Plays of the Absurd”, p.81, Lulu.com

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• If merit is not recognised, still it is merit, and it ought to be honoured as such; but if it is rewarded, it becomes valuable in the eyes of all, and everybody is encouraged to pursue that course in which merit obtains its due reward.

  Keshub Chandra Sen

  Eye, Rewards, Valuable

  Speech delivered at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington Butts, London, May 24, 1870.

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• Love is alone sufficient by itself, it pleases by itself and for it's own sake. It is itself a merit, and itself it's own recompense. It seeks neither cause, nor consequences beyond itself. It is its own fruit, its own object and usefulness. I love because I love you, I love that I may love.

  Bernard of Clairvaux

  Love, May, Sake

  Saint Bernard (of Clairvaux) (1895). “Cantica Canticorum: Eighty-six Sermons on the Song of Solomon”

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• Fashion is not a real element of beauty in external objects; and to persons who possess a good endowment of Form, Constructiveness and Ideality, intrinsic elegance is much more pleasing and permanently agreeable, than forms of less merit, recommended merely by being new. Hence there is a beauty which never palls, and there are objects over which fashion exercises no control.

  George Combe

  Fashion, Real, Exercise

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