"There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners."
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Merit quotes
Merit
374 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Merit quotes (page 7 of 19)
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"The British are apt to make merits of their stupidities, and to represent their various incapacities as points of good breeding."
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"Only where there is pecuniary equality can the distinction of merit stand out."
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"They say fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit."
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"Merit rarely goes unrewarded."
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"When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it - after the 16th Amendment is repealed."
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"I'm not a rubber stamp, and people know that. If you can convince me of the merits, you will have my vote every time."
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"Most black leaders, whether left, right or center, from Frederick Douglas and Martin Delaney on in the middle of the 19th century have not even wondered about the merits of the capitalist system."
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"It's hard to judge literary merit."
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"The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us."
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"Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge - that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them."
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"We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves."
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"To yield readily--easily--to the persuasion of a friend is no merit.... To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either."
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"This [service to oppressed] is the writer's task, and, if he fulfills it as he should, he acquires no merit from it."
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"I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage."
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"Merit and good works is the end of man's motion; and conscience of the same is the accomplishment of man's rest; for if a man can be partaker of God's theatre, he shall likewise be partaker of God's rest."
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"There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once."
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"It's a profession where merit is not necessarily rewarded."
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"But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business."
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"The name of Christ excludes all merit of our own."
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