Merit Quotes

Those are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit. (Plutarch)
It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other. View quote
Petrarch
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. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving. View quote
William Shakespeare
In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing. View quote
Thorstein Veblen
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. View quote
Alexander Pope
The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level. View quote
Samuel Richardson
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. View quote
Jean Henri Fabre
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit. View quote
Jonathan Swift
The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. (Alexander Pope)
FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
The man that hails you Tom or Jack, and proves by thumps upon your back how he esteems your merit, is such a friend, that one had need be very much his friend indeed to pardon or to bear it. View quote
William Cowper
Thy modesty 's a candle to thy merit. View quote
Henry Fielding
Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for the above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds. View quote
William Blake
To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledge that idiots possess. View quote
William Blake
Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent. View quote
Emily Dickinson
Of my merit On thet pint you yourself may jedge All is, I never drink no sperit, Nor I haint never signed no pledge. View quote
James Russell Lowell
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. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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. View quote
Benjamin Disraeli
Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation. (Benjamin Disraeli)
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. View quote
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus the Age of Reason has turned out to be the Age of Structure; a time when, in the absence of purpose, the drive for power as a value in itself has become the principal indicator of social approval. And the winning of power has become the measure of social merit. View quote
John Ralston Saul
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. View quote
Adam Clarke
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. View quote
Sue Kelly