Merit Quotes - Page 19

• The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Vision, Littles, Standards

  Leonardo (da Vinci), Edward McCurdy (1939). “The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci”

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• Success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.

  Victor Hugo

  Men, Deceiving, Hideous

  Victor Hugo (2015). “Les Misérables”, p.66, Booklassic

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• A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.

  Tahir Shah

  Journey, Tested

  Tahir Shah (2013). “In Search of King Solomon's Mines, paperback edition”, p.101, Lulu.com

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• But day after day of depression, the kind that doesn’t seem to merit carting me off to a hospital but allows me to sit here on this stoop in summer camp as if I were normal, day after day wearing down everybody who gets near me. My behavior seems, somehow, not acute enough for them to know what to do with me, though I’m just enough of a mess to be driving everyone around me crazy.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Summer, Crazy, Normal

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.66, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I am astonished at the pleasure one experiences in doing good; and I should be tempted to believe that what we call virtuous people have not so much merit as they lead us to suppose.

  Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

  Believe, People, Pleasure

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• Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.

  Mark Twain

  Sports, Dog, Pain

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• These illustrations suggest four general maxims[...]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.

  Bertrand Russell

  Illustration, People, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.68, Lulu Press, Inc

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• She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Heart, Men, Blind

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• He possessed the rare merit of making a property of his time and not a burden.

  Anthony Trollope

  Time, Burden, Property

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume): Can You Forgive Her? + Phineas Finn + The Eustace Diamonds + Phineas Redux + The Prime Minister + The Duke’s Children”, p.1780, e-artnow

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• Who is the happiest man? He who is alive to the merit of others, and can rejoice in their enjoyment as if it were his own.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Inspirational, Happiness, Men

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• It is far more honest to be undeservedly ignored than to be honoured without merit.

  Denis Fonvizin

  Freedom, Democracy, Honest

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• For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need.

  John Milton

  Freedom, Men, Skills

  John Milton (1851). “The Prose Works of John Milton: With a Biographical Introduction”, p.245

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• Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits.

  Paul Eldridge

  Jealousy, Passion, Love Is

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• How can the unknown merit reverence? In other words how can you revere that of which you are ignorant? At the same time, it would be ridiculous to propose that what we know merits reverence. What we know merits any one of a number of things, but it stands to reason reverence isn't one of them. In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

  Harold Pinter

  Knowledge, Numbers, Ignorant

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

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• It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,
  Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit,
  That woman's love can win, or long inherit;
  But what it is, hard is to say,
  Harder to hit.

  John Milton

  Life, Winning, Long

  John Milton (1836). “The Poetical Works of John Milton... to which is Prefixed the Life of the Author Together with”, p.309

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• Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

  George Orwell

  Color, Atrocities Committed, Tyrants

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• The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Mean, Poetry, Understanding

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• An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.

  Mark Twain

  Truth, Lying, Men

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2132, GENERAL PRESS

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• A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words into action.

  Theodore Levitt

  Powerful, Business, Responsibility

  Theodore Levitt (1974). “Marketing for business growth”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• Were I disposed to consider the comparative merit of each of them [facts or theories in medical practice], I should derive most of the evils of medicine from supposed facts, and ascribe all the remedies which have been uniformly and extensively useful, to such theories as are true. Facts are combined and rendered useful only by means of theories, and the more disposed men are to reason, the more minute and extensive they become in their observations

  Benjamin Rush

  Mean, Science, Men

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• Character - We describe the character of a person in reference to moral judgments about the worthiness of a person. Thus, to have a strong, great or honorable character is to be a person of merit, worthy of admiration and honor.

  Michael Josephson

  Strong, Character, Honor

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• 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

  Believe, Adventure, Accomplishment

  Samuel Johnson (1828). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.199

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• The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

  John Updike

  Writing, Artistic, Length

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• But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.

  Thomas Browne

  Memories, Men, Poppies

  'Hydriotaphia' (Urn Burial, 1658) ch. 5

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• He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fear, Wind, Storm

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1811). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, L. L. D.: In Twelve Volumes”, p.118

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