Merit Quotes

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.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

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

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.

In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.

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.

I won't touch on risky, because that's subjective. People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don't necessarily merit fear.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

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.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

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.

Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.

Where we can compete on merit, we do very well.

The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.

Pride in boasting of family antiquity, makes duration stand for 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.

There's always merit to having a debate.

How vain, without the merit, is the name.

It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.

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.

Now things have changed for the better. Our reforms end seniority and tenure so we can hire and fire based on merit and pay based on performance. That means we can put the best and the brightest in our classrooms - and we can keep them there.

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.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

The unions say 'last hired - first fired,', we say hire and fire based on merit. We want the best and brightest in the classroom.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

Merit should count more than academic background.

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.

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.

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.

Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn't believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn't prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit.