Merit Quotes - Page 34

• 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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• Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.

  Agnes Repplier

  Believe, Writing, Men

  Agnes Repplier (1898). “Varia”

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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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• The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

  Carl Sagan

  Ideas, Different, Littles

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.12, Ballantine Books

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• Sweet is the breath of praise when given by those whose own high merit claims the praise they give.

  Hannah More

  Sweet, Giving, Praise

  Hannah More (1827). “Sacred Dramas: The Search After Happiness : and Other Poems”, p.54

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• Much brass has been sounded and many cymbals tinkled in the name of advertising; but the advertisements which persuade people to act are written by men who have an abiding respect for the intelligence of their readers, and a deep sincerity regarding the merits of the goods they have to sell.

  Bruce Barton

  Men, Names, People

  "The Man Nobody Knows". Book by Bruce Fairchild Barton. Chapter 5: "His Advertisements", 1925.

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• A few words worthy to be remembered suffice to give an idea of a great mind. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition.

  Joseph Joubert

  Essence, Ideas, Giving

  Joseph Joubert (1867). “Some of the "Thoughts" of Joseph Joubert”, p.150

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• I love blue more than any other color. I am inordinately attracted to any blue substance: to minerals like turquoise and lapis lazuli, to sapphires and aquamarines; to cobalt skies and blue-black seas; Moslem tiles - and to a blue flower whether or not it has any other merit.

  Eleanor Perenyi

  Flower, Blue, Color

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• Society,--the only field where the sexes have ever met on terms of equality, the arena where character is formed and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion, the crucible of ideas, the world's university, at once a school and a theater, the spur and the crown of ambition, the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps real merit, the power that gives government leave to be, and outruns the lazy Church in fixing the moral sense of the eye.

  Wendell Phillips

  Sex, Real, School

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.244

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• To be an object of hatred and aversion to their contemporaries has been the usual fate of all those whose merit has raised them above the common level. The man who submits to the shafts of envy for the sake of noble objects pursues a judicious course for his own lasting fame. Hatred dies with its object, while merit soon breaks forth in full splendor, and his glory is handed down to posterity in never-dying strains.

  Thucydides

  Fate, Men, Envy

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• Women are sometimes drawn in to believe against probability by the unwillingness they have to doubt their own merit.

  Samuel Richardson

  Believe, Doubt, Sometimes

  Samuel Richardson (1751). “Letters and passages restored from the original manuscripts of the History of Clarissa. To which is subjoined, a collection of such of the moral and instructive sentiments ... contained in the History, as are presumed to be of general use and service ... Published for the sake of doing justice to the purchasers of the first two editions of that work”, p.233

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• To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, more selective, more acute eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world. Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life of the times-the pulse of today. The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will, but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Philosophy, Mean

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• When the veil of death has been drawn between us and the objects of our regard, how quick-sighted do we become to their merits, and how bitterly do we remember words, or even looks, of unkindness which may have escaped in our intercourse with them.

  Reginald Heber

  Death, Looks, Veils

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• Lives there the man with soul so dead as to disown the wish to merit the people's applause, and having uttered words worthy to be kept in cedar oil to latest times, to leave behind him rhymes that dread neither herrings nor frankincense.

  Aulus Persius Flaccus

  Men, Oil, People

  "The satires of Persius". Book by Persius, 1799.

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• Those who, from the desire of our perfection, have the keenest eye far our faults generally compensate for it by taking a higher view of our merits than we deserve.

  John Frederick Boyes

  Appreciation, Eye, Views

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• envy, as a rule, is of success rather than of merit. No one would have objected to his talent deserving recognition - only to his getting it.

  Ada Leverson

  Envy, Recognition, Talent

  Ada Leverson (1951). “The limit”

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• Modesty is a valuable merit ... in people who have no other, and the appearance of it is extremely useful to those who have.

  Ada Leverson

  People, Modesty, Appearance

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• I have an idea that conscience impedes quite as many merits as faults, is a sort of alloy, a nickel which may prevent silver from bending but also prevents it from shining.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Ideas, Shining, Bending

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, Susanna Pinney (1998). “I'll stand by you: selected letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland : with narrative by Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Random House (UK)

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• We acquire the love of people who, being in our proximity, are presumed to know us; and we receive reputation or celebrity, from such as are not personally acquainted with us. Merit secures to us the regard of our honest neighbors, and good fortune that of the public. Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success.

  George Augustus Henry Sala

  People, Reputation, Honest

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• The flatterer easily insinuates himself into the closet, while honest merit stands shivering in the hall or antechamber.

  Jane Porter

  Honest, Flattery, Closets

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• Whoever would entitle himself after death through the merits of his Redeemer, to the noblest of rewards, let him serve God throughout life in this most excellent of all duties, doing good to our brethren. Whoever is sensible of his offences, let him take this way especially of evidencing his repentance.

  Thomas Secker

  Charity, Rewards, Way

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• We can all perceive the difference between ourselves and our inferiors, but when it comes to a question of the difference between us and our superiors we fail to appreciate merits of which we have no proper conceptions.

  James F. Cooper

  Differences, Appreciate, Failing

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• Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Believe, Never Quit, Faults

  Wislawa Szymborska, Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh (2000). “Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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