These merit quotes will inspire you. Merit, the quality of being particularly good or worthy, especially so as to deserve praise or reward.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging merit quotes, merit sayings, and merit proverbs.
Best Merit Quotes
- “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” ~ Mark Twain
- “True merit, like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes.” ~ E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax
- “It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.” ~ Petrarch
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“Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.” ~ Coco Chanel
- “The world more often rewards the appearances of merit than merit itself.” ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld
- “In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.” ~ Stephen Jay Gould
- “Where we can compete on merit, we do very well.” ~ James L. Barksdale
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“We start with gifts. Merit comes from what we make of them.” ~ Jean Toomer
- “The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.” ~ Saint Augustine
- “My respect for human beings is based not on the colour of a man’s skin nor authority he may wield, but purely on merit.” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “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.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
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“Merit challenges envy.” ~ John Dryden
- “Merit, however inconsiderable, should be sought for and rewarded. Methods are the master of masters.” ~ Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
- “Neither soldiers nor money can defend a king but only friends won by good deeds, merit, and honesty.” ~ Sallust
- “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” ~ Adam Clarke
- “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” ~ Knut Hamsun
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“Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “The favor of princes does not preclude the existence of merit, and yet does not prove that it exists.
[Fr., La faveur des princes n’exclut pas le merite, et ne le suppose pas aussi.]” ~ Jean de la Bruyere - “Merit is a work for the sake of which Christ gives rewards. But no such work is to be found, for Christ gives by promise. Just as if a prince should say to me, “Come to me in my castle, and I will give you a hundred florins.” I do a work, certainly, in going to the castle, but the gift is not given me as the reward of my work in going, but because the prince promised it to me.” ~ Martin Luther
- “He that has once concluded it lawful to resist power, when it wants merit, will soon find a want of merit, to justify his resistance to power.” ~ Samuel Johnson
- “Unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
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“What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.” ~ William Godwin
- “The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.” ~ Thomas Carlyle
- “Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.” ~ Francis Bacon
- “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.” ~ Christian Nestell Bovee
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“If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.” ~ Charlotte Bronte
- “Her great merit is finding out mine; there is nothing so amiable as discernment.” ~ Lord Byron
- “Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.” ~ Charles Caleb Colton
- “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.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli
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“It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “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.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche , Without merit quotes
- “The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.” ~ Jonathan Swift
- “One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.” ~ Voltaire
- “If you wish in this world to advance your merits you’re bound to enhance; you must stir it and stump it, and blow your own trumpet, or, trust me, you haven’t a chance.” ~ William Gilbert
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“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.” ~ Paul Scofield
- “It is the merit of a general to impart good news, and to conceal the truth.” ~ Sophocles
- “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.” ~ Sue Kelly
- “At Cardozo, study of law is part of a larger culture. You can get a law degree and make a good living, but it is best that you do that having studied the discipline for its own inherent merit, because you love studying.” ~ Norman Lamm
- “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.” ~ Donald Cargill
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“Nothing in medicine is so insignificant as to merit attention.” ~ Thomas Sydenham
- “He who sows the ground with care and diligence acquires a greater stock of religious merit than he could gain by the repetition of ten thousand prayers” ~ Zoroaster
- “We should try to succeed by merit, not by favor. He who does well will always have patrons enough.
[Lat., Virtute ambire oportet, non favitoribus.
Sat habet favitorum semper, qui recte facit.]” ~ Plautus - “Real merit requires as much labor, to be placed in a true light, as humbug to be elevated to an unworthy eminence; only the success of the false is temporary, that of the true, immortal.” ~ Francis Alexander Durivage , Merit quotes success
- “The merit of the cross does not consist in its heaviness, but in the manner in which we carry it. I would even say that it is sometimes more virtuous to carry a cross of straw than a heavy cross because we have to be more attentive for fear of losing it.” ~ Saint Francis de Sales
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“It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.” ~ Jean de la Bruyere
- “The same principle leads us to neglect a man of merit that induces us to admire a fool.
[Fr., Du meme fonds dont on neglige un homme de merite l’on sait encore admirer un sot.]” ~ Jean de la Bruyere - “It is easier to silence scientific dissent by utilizing the politics of personal destruction, than to actually debate them on the merits of their arguments. That should tell you something about the global warming debate…there is none right now….it’s either you believe, or you are to be discredited.” ~ Mike Thompson
- “A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate.” ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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“This not in mortals to command success, but we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “The very gradual reductions in my weight which I am able to show, may be interesting to many, and I have great pleasure in stating them, believing that they serve to demonstrate further the merit of the system pursued.” ~ William Banting
- “The force of his own merit makes his way-a gift that heaven gives for him.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “Charm strikes the sight, but merit wins the soul.” ~ Alexander Pope
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“The best evidence of merit is a cordial recognition of it whenever and wherever it may be found.” ~ Christian Nestell Bovee
- “People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate, that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune.” ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld
- “It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.” ~ Alfred North Whitehead
- “Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property of man.” ~ Thomas Carlyle
- “The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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“The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.” ~ William Hazlitt
- “Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.” ~ Nicolas Chamfort
- “Let none presume To wear an undeserved dignity. O that estates, degrees, and offices Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!” ~ William Shakespeare
- “Of my merit On that pint you yourself may jedge: All is, I never drink no sperit, Nor I haint never signed no pledge.” ~ James Russell Lowell
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“…Fatherland without freedom and merit is a large word with little meaning.” ~ Anders Chydenius
- “There can be no return to prosperity while the government (of Ontario) believes that taking money from the people who have earned it and giving it away to the people who haven’t, in exchange for their votes and regardless of merit, is the essence of fairness.” ~ Conrad Black
- “Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud.” ~ Christian Nestell Bovee
