Quotes and Sayings about Merit
"It wasn't glamorous in my day. In the regions, reporters were seen as such low life that they didn't merit their name in the Radio Times. Now people are interested in being famous. I never gave it a thought."
- Kate Adie
(Related: Life, Thought, People, Being, Day, Famous, Merit, Name, Now)
"What I like least is dealing with publishers who simply don't want collaborations regardless of their merit."
- Piers Anthony
(Related: Merit, Want)
"Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious."
- Thomas Aquinas
"The existence of law is one thing; its merit or demerit is another."
- John Austin
(Related: Existence, Law, Merit)
"Those from whose pocket the salary is drawn, and by whose appointment the officer was made, have always a right to discuss the merits of their officers, and their modes of exercising the duties they are paid to perform."
- Charles Babbage
(Related: Right)
"Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men."
- Francis Bacon
(Related: Men, Merit, Public)
"I am sure that, on the one hand, the Rothschilds appreciate the merits of Marx, and that on the other hand, Marx feels an instinctive inclination and a great respect for the Rothschilds."
- Mikhail Bakunin
(Related: Respect)
"I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure."
- Mikhail Bakunin
(Related: Intelligence, Knowledge, Character, Censure, Criticism, Respect, Right)
"In my grandfather's lab, scientists did independent research, and peers reviewed and commented on its merits. Politics, he taught me, had no place in the scientific process."
- Tammy Baldwin
(Related: Politics, Research, Scientists)
"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
(Related: May, Merit, Pleasure, Weight)
"Where we can compete on merit, we do very well."
- Jim Barksdale
(Related: Merit)
"Whence it is somewhat strange that any men from so mean and silly a practice should expect commendation, or that any should afford regard thereto; the which it is so far from meriting, that indeed contempt and abhorrence are due to it."
- Isaac Barrow
(Related: Men, Abhorrence, Contempt, Practice, Silly)
"The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs."
- Charles Baudelaire
(Related: Poetry, Music, Dance, Being, Dancing, Merit)
"If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits."
- Ruth Benedict
(Related: War, Examination, Will)
"An egalitarian educational system is necessarily opposed to meritocracy and reward for achievement. It is inevitably opposed to procedures that might reveal differing levels of achievement."
- Robert Bork
(Related: Achievement, Reward)
"In ambition, as in love, the successful can afford to be indulgent toward their rivals. The prize our own, it is graceful to recognize the merit that vainly aspired to it."
- Christian Nestell Bovee
(Related: Love, Successful, Ambition, Merit)
"In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at."
- Christian Nestell Bovee
(Related: Politics, Being, Merit)
"Well, just that there would be somebody in the office and the voters - it was more or less an understanding in the entire community, as long as that person was doing a good job on the merits, nobody was going to run against him."
- Stephen Breyer
(Related: Community, Job, Office, Understanding)
"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
(Related: Life, Accomplishment, Intellect, Nonsense)
"If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it."
- Charlotte Bronte
(Related: Nature, Majority, Merit)
"I'm not going to get in to an argument with anyone about the relative merits of Judaism and Christianity, and what it means for a Jewish kid to be a Christian - I'm just not interested in that argument."
- T-Bone Burnett
(Related: Christian, Christianity, Argument, Judaism)
"Her great merit is finding out mine; there is nothing so amiable as discernment."
- George Byron
(Related: Merit, Nothing)
"Her great merit is finding out mine - there is nothing so amiable as discernment."
- Lord Byron
(Related: Merit, Nothing)
"God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation."
- John Calvin
(Related: God, Glory, Justice, Mercy, Merit, Punishment, Race, Salvation, Sin)
"I urge the enactment of a civil service law so explicit and so strong that no partisan official will dare evade it, basing all rewards, promotions and salaries solely on merit, on loyalty and industry in the public service."
- Arthur Capper
(Related: Law, Loyalty, Merit, Public, Service, Will)
"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
(Related: God, Christ, Duty, Forget, Mercy, Merit, Sin)
"It is long since I could have adventured on eternity, through God's mercy and Christ's merits; but death remained somewhat terrible, and that now is taken away; and now death is no more to me, but to cast myself into my husband's arms, and to lie down with Him."
- Donald Cargill
(Related: Death, Lie, God, HusbChrist, Eternity, Mercy, Now)
"The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Merit, Novelty, Originality, Sincerity)
"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
(Related: Sex, Merit, Will, Words, Worth)
"Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty."
- Coco Chanel
(Related: Nature, Merit)
"I no longer have the terrible nightmares that I used to have. Mao had just died in 1976, and China began to open up. For the first time scholarships to go to the West to study were awarded on academic merit."
- Jung Chang
(Related: Time, First, Merit, Open, Study)
"There's always merit to having a debate."
- Ward Churchill
(Related: Debate, Merit)
"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
(Related: Happiness, Nature, Infinite, Infinity, Merit, Now, Result, Value)
"Should slavery be abolished there, (and it is an event, which, from these circumstances, we may reasonably expect to be produced in time) let it be remembered, that the Quakers will have had the merit of its abolition."
- Thomas Clarkson
(Related: Circumstances, May, Merit, Quakers, Slavery, Will)
"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
(Related: Management, Eye, May, Needs)
"Like pictures, men should be judged by their merits and not by their defects."
- Bainbridge Colby
(Related: Men)
"On their own merits modest men are dumb."
- George Colman
(Related: Men, Dumb)
"Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Merit, Posterity, Will)
"Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent."
- Emily Dickinson
(Related: Talent, Celebrity, Merit, Punishment)
"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."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Men, People, Virtue, Ambition, Fortune, Merit, Moderation, Want)
"Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Merit)
"Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits."
- Paul Eldridge
(Related: Love, Jealousy, Passion)
"Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I'm sort of building up to doing something else quite soon."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Being, Building, Fun, Merit)
"Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity."
- Jean Henri Fabre
(Related: Absence, Appearance, Feeling, Ignorance, Learning, Merit, Sincerity)
"I have been a Professor Emeritus since 1958, and have continued my scientific studies."
- Karl von Frisch
"Yes, young men, Italy owes to you an undertaking which has merited the applause of the universe. You have conquered and you will conquer still, because you are prepared for the tactics that decide the fate of battles."
- Giuseppe Garibaldi
(Related: Men, Applause, Fate, Italy, Universe, Will)
"In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters."
- Paul Gauguin
(Related: Art)
"If you wish in this world to advance your merits you're bound to enhance; You must stir it and stump it, and blow your own trumpet, Or, trust me, you haven't a chance."
- William Gilbert
(Related: Trust, Chance, World)
"What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name."
- William Godwin
(Related: Life, Merit, Name)
"It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Related: Fools, Fortune, Merit, United)
"The oak has long been an enduring and mighty tree. It is truly a part of our national heritage and it merits the formal distinction of America's National Tree."
- Bob Goodlatte
(Related: America, Oak)
"In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."
- Stephen Jay Gould
(Related: Time, Science, Possibility, Apples, Merit, Physics, Tomorrow)
"My primary lesson, however, was that I'm a solo writer, happiest when I'm making all the executive decisions. I've always been willing to rise or fall on my own merits."
- Sue Grafton
(Related: Decisions, Writer)
"I could give you some names of Workshop participants who are as good as many who are being published but haven't had the right editor recognize their merit or have not been adequately published."
- James Gunn
(Related: Being, Merit, Names, Right)
"True merit, like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes."
- Edward F. Halifax
(Related: Merit)
"Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work."
- Knut Hamsun
(Related: Work, Debt, Literature, Merit, Names)
"We're in such a volatile climate right now politically. I think they didn't want Assassins to not succeed due to popular opinion and politics, versus on its own merits. I can respect that."
- Neil Patrick Harris
(Related: Politics, Climate, Now, Opinion, Popular, Respect, Right, Succeed, Want)
"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."
- Dennis Hastert
(Related: Court, Day, Judges, Lawyers, Merit, Pretty, Will)
"Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
(Related: Poetry, Artist, Merit)
"Unjust attacks on public men do them more good than unmerited praise."
- Rutherford B. Hayes
(Related: Men, Praise, Public)
"The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything."
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(Related: Positive, Fault, Merit)
"How vain, without the merit, is the name."
- Homer
(Related: Merit, Name)
"It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit."
- Horace
(Related: Man, Merit, Parents)
"There is no consensus even today on the merits of Napoleon - and certainly no agreement on the rights and wrongs of the origins of the First World War."
- Douglas Hurd
(Related: War, Agreement, First, Rights, Today, World, World war, Wrongs)
"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
(Related: Death, Measure, Merit, Waiting)
"The sacrifices made by veterans and their willingness to fight in defense of our nation merit our deep respect and praise - and to the best in benefits and medical care."
- Sue Kelly
(Related: Medical, Benefits, Care, Deep, Defense, Fight, Merit, Nation, Praise, Respect, Veterans)
"At Cardozo, study of law is part of a larger culture. You can get a law degree and make a good living, but it is best that you do that having studied the discipline for its own inherent merit, because you love studying."
- Norman Lamm
(Related: Love, Discipline, Culture, Law, Living, Merit, Study)
"I was induced to establish several orders of merit, from conviction that emulation, well directed, becomes a useful servant; and, that the latent genius of some youth is more easily brought into action this way, than by the more sordid gratification of self-interest."
- Joseph Lancaster
(Related: Genius, Action, Conviction, Merit, Self, Youth)
"An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof."
- Walter Savage Landor
(Related: Mind, Praise)
"We shall never be understood or respected by the English until we carry our individuality to extremes, and by asserting our independence, become of sufficient consequence in their eyes to merit a closer study than they have hitherto accorded us."
- Henry Lawson
(Related: English, Extremes, Eyes, Independence, Individuality, Merit, Study)
"Temerity is not always successful."
- Titus Livius
(Related: Successful)
"Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit."
- James Russell Lowell
(Related: Light, Merit, Reputation, World)
"Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense."
- James Madison
(Related: Education, Parents, Public, Youth)
"The person who knows one thing and does it better than anyone else, even if it only be the art of raising lentils, receives the crown he merits. If he raises all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor of mankind and its rewarded as such."
- Og Mandino
(Related: Art, End, Energy, Mankind)
"We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits."
- W. Somerset Maugham
(Related: Friends)
"You should issue demerits for tree cutting or the destruction of humus."
- Donella Meadows
(Related: Destruction)
"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."
- Mary Wortley Montagu
(Related: Man, Merit, World)
"I further believe that all must be saved through the merits of Christ."
- Daniel Morgan
(Related: Christ)
"We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon."
- Kary Mullis
(Related: Childhood, Enemies)
"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
(Related: Arrogance, Merit)
"With children no longer the universally accepted reason for marriage, marriages are going to have to exist on their own merits."
- Eleanor Holmes Norton
(Related: Marriage, Children, Reason)
"Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Society, Advertising, Economy, Enemies, Freedom)
"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."
- Susan Oliver
(Related: Death, Cities, Merit, Nation, Project)
"What is deservedly suffered must be borne with calmness, but when the pain is unmerited, the grief is resistless."
- Ovid
(Related: Grief, Pain)
"It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other."
- Petrarch
(Related: Fortune, Merit)
"I believe that President Clinton considered the legal merits of the arguments for the pardon as he understood them, and he rendered his judgment, wise or unwise, on the merits."
- John Podesta
(Related: Legal, Arguments, Judgment, President)
"There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few."
- Edgar Allan Poe
(Related: Merit, Popularity, Song)
"Consider the Essay as a political pamphlet on the Revolution side, and the fact that it was the Whig gospel for a century, and you will see its working merit."
- Frederick Pollock
(Related: Fact, Revolution, Merit, Will)
"Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Soul, Eyes, May, Merit, Pretty, Sight)
"Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Soul, Merit, Sight)
"Fondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Men, Honor, Merit, Praise)
"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
(Related: Attention, Awards, Merit, Spirit)
"The sufficiency of merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient."
- Francis Quarles
(Related: Merit)
"Wilderness designations should not be the result of a quid pro quo. They should rise or fall on their own merits."
- Nick Rahall
(Related: Result, Wilderness)
"The market system requires that people be committed and willing to work hard. Inherent with that is what I call a merit system, which I think gives people the greatest opportunity."
- Lee R. Raymond
(Related: Work, People, Opportunity, Merit)
"I was at the Smithsonian for twenty years, and I'm still at the Smithsonian as a curator emeritus, and I still plan to figure out what that means for me at this point in my life."
- Bernice Johnson Reagon
(Related: Life, Years)
"The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level."
- Samuel Richardson
(Related: Delight, Merit, Thinking, World)
"Security for agriculture merits serious concern by not only the agricultural community but our nation as a whole. The risk to the U.S. food supply and overall economy is real."
- Pat Roberts
(Related: Food, Agriculture, Community, Concern, Economy, Nation, Risk, Security)
"Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: People, Faults, Merit)
"People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate, that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: People, Being, Envy, Fortune, May, Merit, Pride)
"Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
(Related: Ambition, Merit)
"The only conduct that merits the drastic remedy of impeachment is that which subverts our system of government or renders the president unfit or unable to govern."
- Charles Ruff
(Related: Government, President)
"Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants, and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits."
- Sallust
(Related: Light)
"Neither soldiers nor money can defend a king but only friends won by good deeds, merit, and honesty."
- Sallust
(Related: Money, Honesty, Deeds, Friends, Merit, Soldiers)
"To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman."
- George Santayana
(Related: War, Quality, Positive, Crime, Delight, Merit)
"The merit of a democratic regime rests on one's continual willingness to exchange views, and to compete on the basis of individual merit and capacities."
- Jose Eduardo Dos Santos
(Related: Merit)
"A book is worth a few francs; we Germans can afford to destroy those. We all may not appreciate artistic merit, but cash value is another matter."
- Paul Scofield
(Related: May, Merit, Value, Worth)
"The merit of our Constitution was, not that it promotes democracy, but checks it."
- Horatio Seymour
(Related: Constitution, Democracy, Merit)
"Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving."
- William Shakespeare
(Related: Merit, Reputation)
"Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Dying, Merit)
"Evidently the merit depends on the result of the work."
- Henryk Sienkiewicz
(Related: Work, Merit, Result)
"Mr. Lincoln's elevation shows that in America every station in life may be honorable; that there is no barrier against the humblest; but that merit, wherever it exists, has the opportunity to be known."
- Matthew Simpson
(Related: Life, Opportunity, America, May, Merit)
"It is the merit of a general to impart good news, and to conceal the truth."
- Sophocles
(Related: Truth, Merit, News)
"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."
- George Soros
(Related: Economy, Merit, Needs)
"A young man, be his merit what it will, can never raise himself; but must, like the ivy round the oak, twine himself round some man of great power and interest."
- Philip Stanhope
(Related: Power, Interest, Ivy, Man, Merit, Oak, Will)
"To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also."
- Igor Stravinsky
(Related: Effort, Merit)
"People actually get sponsors based on the merits of the Cup, not on the merits of the sailors."
- John Sweeney
(Related: People)
"The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit."
- Jonathan Swift
(Related: Power, Success, Fortune, Merit, Prudence)
"Nothing in medicine is so insignificant as to merit attention."
- Thomas Sydenham
(Related: Attention, Medicine, Merit, Nothing)
"Merit, however inconsiderable, should be sought for and rewarded. Methods are the master of masters."
- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
(Related: Merit)
"None merits the name of Creator but God and the poet."
- Torquato Tasso
(Related: God, Name)
"What is merit? The opinion one man entertains of another."
- Henry John Temple
(Related: Man, Merit, Opinion)
"I just keep it simple. Watch the ball and play it on merit."
- Sachin Tendulkar
(Related: Merit, Play)
"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."
- Marquis De Vauvenargues
(Related: Men, People, Merit, Praise)
"In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Dancing, Law, Merit, School, University)
"One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose."
- Voltaire
(Related: Poetry, Merit, Prose, Will, Words)
"No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts."
- Booker T. Washington
(Related: Life, Injury, Race, Will, Youth)
"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
(Related: Business, Science, Future)
"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."
- Mary Wortley
(Related: Man, Merit, World)
"A necessary consequent of religious belief is the attaching ideas of merit to that belief, and of demerit to its absence."
- Francis Wright
(Related: Ideas, Belief, Absence, Merit, Religious)
"In masks outrageous and austere, The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile."
- Elinor Wylie
(Related: Fear, Smile, Years)
"Pride in boasting of family antiquity, makes duration stand for merit."
- John Zimmerman
(Related: Family, Merit, Pride)