Merit Quotes

Why, being dead, do you rely on yourself? You were able to die of your own accord; you cannot come back to life of your own accord. We were able to sin by ourselves, and we are still able to, nor shall we ever not be able to. Let our hope be in nothing but in God. Let us send up our sighs to him; as for ourselves, let us strive with our wills to earn merit by our prayers.

St. Augustine of Hippo

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.

William Shakespeare

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

Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right.

G. K. Chesterton

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.

Samuel Johnson

Modesty is to merit, as shades to figures in a picture, giving it strength and beauty

Jean de la Bruyere

Confronted by outstanding merit, there is no way of saving one's ego except by love

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Igor Stravinsky

Reputation is in itself only a farthing-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

I admonish you regarding five things: 1) If you are wronged, do not commit wrong doing to others; 2) If you are betrayed, do not betray anyone; 3) If you are called a liar, do not be furious; 4) If you are praised, do not be jubilant; 5) If you are criticised, do not fret and think of what is said in criticism - if you find in yourself what is criticised about you, then you are falling down in the eyes of God; when you are furious about the truth, it is a much greater calamity then your falling down in the eyes of the people. And if you are opposite of what is said (in criticism) about you, then it is a merit you acquired without having to tire yourself in obtaining it.

al-Baqir, Muhammad

To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledge that idiots possess.

William Blake

Envy will merit as its shade pursue, But like a shadow, proves the substance true.

Alexander Pope

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

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence and merit.

Jonathan Swift

These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities and eminent services; of instructing princes to know their true interest by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people: of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive, and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Jonathan Swift