Quotes & Sayings About Merits

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

Those who depend on the merits of their ancestors may be said to search in the roots of the tree for those fruits which the branches ought to produce. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I'm hoping that, by living inside their skins while he hears their stories, he'll understand over time that women are not all this way or that way. I'm hoping he'll look at women as he does at men
that you must judge each of us on her own merits, and not condemn us or exalt us only because we belong to a particular sex. — Susan Fletcher

The social world being the realm of nullity, there exist between the merits of women in society only insignificant degrees, — Marcel Proust

I am sure that, on the one hand, the Rothschilds appreciate the merits of Marx, and that on the other hand, Marx feels an instinctive inclination and a great respect for the Rothschilds. — Mikhail Bakunin

It wasn't the lower classes that preached the religion of sexual liberation. That came from the upper classes, with their comfortable cushions against the resulting disorder. What did it matter to them that they were polluting the waters? Their houses were upstream. The biological absurdism of same-sex pseudogamy (mock-marriage) is just the latest effort of the same irresponsible destroyers. Let those who are in favor of the world that the sexual revolution has produced defend it on its "merits," and not decree all discussion out of bounds from the beginning. We are not talking about privacy here, but about the air we all must breathe and the water we all must drink. — Anthony M. Esolen

I've never compromised who I am not ever. If I've gotten anywhere in my life it's been on my own merits. — Cher

Her (Jane Austen) moral message is infused with ideological insistence on the merits of good conduct, good manners, sound reason, and marriage as an admirable social institution. She never scorns love, but balances it often . . . with a firm advocacy of . . . the qualities of self-knowledge, self-discipline, and practicality. — Andrew Sanders

There are three kinds of people. One, those who serve others. Two, those who give to the world by producing those who serve others. Three, the last kind, those who can't be satisfied unless they achieve on their own, not by serving others but by their own merits and talents, producing, and not through their children, either. — V.C. Andrews

As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor — Lois McMaster Bujold

I want to tell you a growing conviction with me, and that is that as we obey the leadings of the Spirit of God, we enable God to answer the prayers of other people. I mean that our lives, my life, is the answer to someone's prayer, prayed perhaps centuries ago.
It is more and more impossible to me to have programmes and plans because God alone has the plan, and our plans are only apt to hinder Him, and make it necessary for Him to break them up. I have the unspeakable knowledge that my life is the answer to prayers, and that God is blessing me and making me a blessing entirely of His sovereign grace and nothing to do with my merits, saving as I am bold enough to trust His leading and not the dictates of my own wisdom and common sense. — Oswald Chambers

Your total ignorance of that which you profess to teach merits the death penalty. I doubt whether you would know that St. Cassian of Imola was stabbed to death by his students with their styli. His death, a martyr's honorable one, made him a patron saint of teachers. Pray to him, you deluded fool, you "anyone for tennis?" golf-playing, cocktail-quaffing pseudo-pedant, for you do indeed need a heavenly patron. Although your days are numbered, you will not die as a martyr - for you further no holy cause - but as the total ass which you really are. ZORRO A sword was drawn on the last line of the page. — John Kennedy Toole

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

The person who knows one thing and does it better than anyone else, even if it only be the art of raising lentils, receives the crown he merits. If he raises all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor of mankind and its rewarded as such. — Og Mandino

This sin cleaves to us as a leprosy. This original pollution makes us guilty before the Lord; and even though we would never commit actual sin, it merits hell. The meditation of this would be a means to pull down our pride. -- Nay, even those who have grace have cause to walk humbly be- cause they have more corruption in them than grace: their dark side is broader than their light. — Thomas Watson

If you enjoyed laughing in the face of death, you might like to have a crack at High Saffron. One hundred merits, and all you have to do is take a look.'
'I understand there's a one hundred percent fatality rate?'
'True. But up until the moment of death there was a one hundred percent survival rate. Really, I shouldn't let anything as meaningless as statistics put you off. — Jasper Fforde

Driving from the shop by the beach to her home in the Malibu hills, Juliet Weston peered through the deepening dusk and weighed the merits of bathing in Super Glue. A dab would repair a fingernail. She'd read a line of the stuff could close a wound. What she faced was more dire, however. Would immersion in a tub of maximum-hold adhesive keep he from fracturing into a thousand little pieces? — Christie Ridgway

Like pictures, men should be judged by their merits and not by their defects. — Bainbridge Colby

In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections. — Alfred North Whitehead

Miss Bates ... had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavour to make a small income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good-will. It was her own universal goodwill and contented temper which worked such wonders. She loved every body, was interested in every body's happiness and quick-sighted to every body's merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother and so many good neighbours and friends, and a home that wanted for nothing. The simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a recommendation to every body and a mine of felicity to herself. — Jane Austen

When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy. — Ben Hecht

Not only the adoration of images is idolatry, but also trust in one's own righteousness, works and merits, and putting confidence in riches and power. As the latter is the commonest, so it also is the most noxious. — Martin Luther

In every election homophobia has been part of the landscape and in every campaign I've been able to become connected enough to my constituents that they know who I am and that I can be elected on my merits. — Kathleen Wynne

Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

[M]en, though they know full well how much women are worth and how great the benefits we bring them, nonetheless seek to destroy us out of envy for our merits. It's just like the crow, when it produces white nestlings: it is so stricken by envy, knowing how black it is itself, that it kills its own offspring out of pique. — Moderata Fonte

It would be refreshing to have a politician try to defend guns without any reference to the Second Amendment, but on the merits of guns. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Loving ourselves so much, we are naturally led to enlarge our own merits, to play down our transgressions, to judge others by different standards from those used to judge ourselves. Enlarged merits? They are described by your fellow-writer Trilussa:

The little snail of Vainglory
Who had crawled up an obelisk
Looked at its slimy trail and said:
I see I'll leave my mark on History.

This is the way we are, dear Twain; even a bit of slime, if it is our own, and because it is our own, makes us boast, gives us a swelled head! — Pope John Paul I

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

The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called 'faith. — Robert G. Ingersoll

For true conversion doth not consist in putting away great and outward sins only, but in descending deeply into your own self, searching into the inmost recesses of the heart, the secrets and closets, all the windings and turnings thereof; changing and renewing them throughout, with the grace that is given you: and so, by faith, you are converted from self-love to Divine love; from the world and all worldly concupiscences, to a spiritual and heavenly life; and from a participation of the pomps and pleasures thereof, to participating the merits and virtues of Christ, by believing his word, and walking in his steps. — Johann Arndt

Science is nothing more than a method of inquiry. The method says an assertion is valid, and merits universal acceptance, only if it can be independently verified. The impersonal rigor of the method means it is utterly apolitical. A truth in science is verifiable whether you are black or white, male or female, old or young. It's verifiable whether you like the results of a study, or you don't. — Michael Crichton

none can trust in the merits of Christ, till he has utterly renounced his own. — John Wesley

I am willing to compete on my merits and on my character - not with the color of my skin. We talk about being a color-blind society, but I don't think the political process could actually handle that. — J. C. Watts

A work of art rests its merits in traditional qualities. It may constitute a remarkable feat in craftsmanship; it may be a searching study of psychological states; it may be a nostalgic glance backward; it may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness. — Ben Shahn

In debating the respective merits of dogs and cats, not having to walk a cat when it's 20 below zero deserves consideration. — Doug Larson

I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives. — Molly Ivins

The merits and services of Christianity have been industriously extolled by its hired advocates. Every Sunday its praises are sounded from myriads of pulpits. It enjoys the prestige of an ancient establishment and the comprehensive support of the State. It has the ear of rulers and the control of education. Every generation is suborned in its favor. Those who dissent from it are losers, those who oppose it are ostracised; while in the past, for century after century, it has replied to criticism with imprisonment, and to scepticism with the dungeon and the stake. By such means it has induced a general tendency to allow its pretensions without inquiry and its beneficence without proof. — Joseph Mazzini Wheeler

Yet while it may be true that religious zeal can inspire armies better than most secular incentives, there was another great awakening that occurred before and during the Revolutionary era that also played a role. The other great awakening was a reevaluation of the merits of doubt. Often unspoken, religious skepticism in the colonial era was taboo even among professed radicals. Yet the spiritual awakenings of the middle of the eighteenth century signaled a transformation of "unbelief" from presumed moral failing to a reasonable theological and political position. — Peter Manseau

On my team, we prioritize merits over politics. — Ron Barber

In giving of thy alms, inquire not so much into the person, as his necessity. God looks not so much upon the merits of him that requires, as into the manner of him that relieves; if the man deserve not, thou hast given it to humanity. — Francis Quarles

Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes that she may lower another by defeat. — Charles Caleb Colton

Evangelical obedience is true in its essence, though not perfect in its degree; and where it comes short, Christ puts his merits into the scales, and then there is full weight. — Thomas Watson

I win on my merits; my opponents win by cheating. — Mason Cooley

A good idea is a good idea and my work should compete on its own merits, not based on the size of my fan base. — Christopher Priest

Photography has all the rights, and all the merits,
necessary for us to turn towards it as the art of our time. — Alexander Rodchenko

Corporate corruption has ecological merits. It's helping to preserve that species known as Democrats - thought to be endangered as recently as the year 2000. — P. J. O'Rourke

The oak has long been an enduring and mighty tree. It is truly a part of our national heritage and it merits the formal distinction of America's National Tree. — Bob Goodlatte

[The error in the teaching of mathematics is that] mathematics is expected either to be immediately attractive to students on its own merits or to be accepted by students solely on the basis of the teacher's assurance that it will be helpful in later life. [And yet,] mathematlcs is the key to understanding and mastering our physical, social and biological worlds. — Morris Kline

Self-respect isn't something a teacher or a coach or a government can hand you. Self-respect grows through self-created success: not because we've been told we're good, but when we know we're good. Not everyone gets a trophy, because not every performance merits celebration. If we want our children to have a shot at resilience, they must learn what failure means. If they don't learn that lesson from loving parents and coaches and teachers, life will teach it to them in a far harsher way. — Eric Greitens

I understand that, each time we contemplate with desire and devotion the Host in which is hidden Christ's Eucharistic Body, we increase our merits in heaven and secure special joys to be ours later in the beatific vision of God — Gertrude The Great

In truth we were quickly reaching--had likely enough already reached--the age where it no longer made sense to talk about "promise." It was around this time that I remarked to Max that no matter what we now achieved no one would say, "He's so young." Precocity had passed us by.
"After twenty-eight," I sad sadly, "you're judged on your merits."
"Unless one of us dies," Max corrected me. "Then they'll all say, 'He was so young. — Christopher R. Beha

The Lord commands us to do good unto all men without exception, though the majority are very undeserving when judged according to their own merits ... [The Scripture] teaches us that we must not think of man's real value, but only of his creation in the image of God to which we owe all possible honor and love. — John Calvin

I feel love for all this, perhaps because I have nothing else to love ... even though nothing truly merits the love of any soul, if, out of sentiment, we must give it, I might as well lavish it on the smallness of an inkwell as on the grand indifference of the stars. — Fernando Pessoa

That's one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing's real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection - none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it's not much help to Truffaut. — Woody Allen

You know you're in a college town when there's a restaurant called "Pancakea." The establishment was a pancake/coffee house, and Choo, Molly, Sig, and I were sitting in a booth arguing about the place and its name and their relative merits. I thought the name was a take on panacea, implying that pancakes are a cure for everything. Sig thought the owner wanted the place to become the IKEA of pancakes. Molly thought that given how large the pancakes were, the title might be a riff on Pangea, the first continental landmass. We all agreed that the owner was probably an ex-college student who couldn't get a job with his or her major, but we couldn't agree on whether that major was philosophy, marketing, anthropology, or just heavy drinking. — Elliott James

They were Englishmen and, to them, the decline of other nations was the most natural thing in the world. They belonged to a race blessed with so sensitive an appreciation of its own talents (and so doubtful an opinion of anybody else's) that they would not have been at all surprised to learn that the Venetians themselves had been entirely ignorant of the merits of their own city - until Englishmen had come to tell them it was delightful. — Susanna Clarke

To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect, — A.C. Grayling

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

Courtrooms are battlegrounds where society's bullies and the oppressed clash, where the victims of abusers seek recompense, and where parties cheated by scalawags seek retribution. Because of the high stakes involved, the parties are not always honest, and justice depends upon an array of factors including the prevailing case precedent, the skills of the legal advocates, and the merits of each party's claims and counterclaims. — Kilroy J. Oldster

In the expression of the emotions, originality merits the first consideration ... The words used, however, should be old ones. — Fujiwara No Teika

What value is there in faith without works? And what are they worth if they are not united to the merits of Jesus Christ, our only good? — Saint Teresa Of Avila

In the library of the world men have hitherto been ranged according to the form, and the binding; the time is coming when they will take rank and order according to their contents and intrinsic merits. — Nicolas Chamfort

The wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man (or any person) on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he is worthy to have. — Theodore Roosevelt

The shepherds made haste, partly no doubt from human curiosity, in order to see this great thing that had been announced to them. But surely, too, they were driven by their joy on hearing that now, truly, the Saviour, the Messiah, the Lord had been born, the one so long awaited - and they would be the first to see him. How many Christians make haste today, where the things of God are concerned? Surely if anything merits haste - so the evangelist is discreetly telling us - then it is the things of God. — Pope Benedict XVI

Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom. — David Ogilvy

Do we pour $40 billion into grandiose Louisiana engineering projects or do we instead put up no trespassing- signs in the areas below sea level? All are hard choices with various merits and pains. The important thing, however, is for America to decide whether the current policy of inaction is really the way we want to deal with the worst natural disaster in our history. — Douglas Brinkley

The learned gentleman (like a few of his English brethren) was desperately long-winded, and had a remarkable capacity of saying the same thing over and over again. His great theme was 'Warren the engine driver,' whom he pressed into the service of every sentence he uttered. I listened to him for about a quarter of an hour; and, coming out of court at the expiration of that time, without the faintest ray of enlightenment as to the merits of the case, felt as if I were at home again. — Charles Dickens

People succeed or fail on the merits in America, not on who they
know or whose reelection campaign they supported. This absolutely
American principle must be reestablished and permanently fortified.
There can be no more "too big to fail." If you are reckless, greedy,
and arrogant, the American taxpayer should not bail you out. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Classical Sanskrit prose writers made very long sentences like this: "Lost in the forest and in thought, bent upon death and at the root of a tree, fallen upon calamity and her nurse's bosom, parted from her husband and happiness, burnt with the fierce sunshine and the woes of widowhood, her mouth closed with silence as well as by her hand, held fast by her companions as well as by grief, I saw her with her kindred and her graces all gone, her ears and her soul left bare, her ornaments and her aims abandoned, her bracelets and her hopes broken, her companions and the needle-like grass-spears clinging round her feet, her eyes and her beloved fixed within her bosom, her sighs and her hair long, her limbs and her merits exhausted, her aged attendants and her streams of tears falling down at her feet...." and it goes on. — Abraham Eraly

For even they who compose treatises of medicine or natural philosophy in verse are denominated Poets: yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre; the former, therefore, justly merits the name of the Poet; while the other should rather be called a Physiologist than a Poet. — Aristotle.

It was only by faith in Christ that they could secure pardon of sin and receive strength to obey God's law. They must cease to rely upon their own efforts for salvation, they must trust wholly in the merits of the promised Saviour, if they would be accepted of God. — Ellen G. White

Self-righteousness exclaims, "I will not be saved in God's way; I will make a new road to heaven; I will not bow before God's grace; I will not accept the atonement which God has wrought out in the person of Jesus; I will be my own redeemer; I will enter heaven by my own strength, and glorify my own merits." The Lord is very wroth against self-righteousness. I do not know of anything against which His fury burneth more than against this, because this touches Him in a very tender point, it insults the glory and honor of His Son Jesus Christ. — Charles Spurgeon

When the Bible uses the words salvation, Savior, and save, it's speaking of the total work of God in bringing people from a state of death - hopeless separation from God - to a state of everlasting life through the forgiveness of sin, based on the merits of Christ Jesus who died and rose again. Saving us is the greatest and most concrete demonstration of God's love, the definitive display of His grace throughout time and eternity. — David Jeremiah

To say it for those who know how to explain a thing: women have the intelligence, men the heart and passion. This is not contradicted by the fact that men actually get so much farther with their intelligence: they have the deeper, more powerful drives; these take their intelligence, which is in itself something passive, forward. Women are often privately amazed at the great honor men pay to their hearts. When men look especially for a profound, warm-hearted being, in choosing their spouse, and women for a clever, alert, and brilliant being, one sees very clearly how a man is looking for an idealized man, and a woman for an idealized woman--that is, not for a complement, but for the perfection of their own merits. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When you choose a language, youre also choosing a community. The programmers youll be able to hire to work on a Java project wont be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python. And the quality of your hackers probably matters more than the language you choose. Though, frankly, the fact that good hackers prefer Python to Java should tell you something about the relative merits of those languages. — Philip Greenspun

Russell observes that "the merits of democracy are negative: it does not ensure good government, but it prevents certain evils," such as the evil of a small group of individuals achieving a secure monopoly on political power. The chief peril for the politician, Russell insists, is love of power. And politicians can easily yield to the love of power on the pretense that they are pursuing some absolute good. — Bertrand Russell

Have wisdom in your actions and faith in your merits. — Yogi Bhajan

Apart from the positive woes of perdition, an eternity of wretchedness grows from the want of love to Christ as naturally as the oak grows from the acorn, or the harvest from the scattered grain. It is not that love to Christ merits heaven; it does far better, it makes heaven. It is, as it were, the organ of sensation that takes note of heaven's blessedness. — Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd

The Churches of the Standing Order were filled with unconverted persons, with many who had grown up in them from infancy, being introduced at that time by christening; and but a small proportion of their members made any claim to a spiritual regeneration. The intuitions of a converted soul recoil from Church associations with those whose only claim to membership in Christ's mystical body is a ceremony performed over an unconscious infant, for the renewed man seeks fellowship with those who, like himself, have exercised faith in Christ's saving merits, and he is likely to take the Scriptures for his guide in seeking his Church home. — Thomas Armitage

The profoundest and most excellent dispositions and orders seem very bad, and every learned militarist criticizes them with looks of importance, when they relate to a battle that has been lost, and the very worst dispositions and orders seem very good, and serious people fill whole volumes to demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a battle that has been won. — Leo Tolstoy

Such exaggerations have been so common that the public takes them with a grain of salt and partly excuses them as being due to the advertiser's license of self-assertiveness. Nevertheless, the fact remains that superlative generalities are weak arguments and far less convincing than a statement of facts. Much advertising copy would be improved immensely by doing away with brag and substituting actual facts about the merits of the article. — Daniel Starch

What good are the works of all men, and all the pains of the martyrs, in comparison with the pains of the Son of God dying on the Cross, so that there was not a drop of His precious blood, but it was all shed for your sins. If you could properly evaluate this incomparable price, you would throw all your ceremonies, vows, works, and merits into the ash can. What awful presumption to imagine that there is any work good enough to pacify God, when to pacify God required the invaluable price of the death and blood of His own and only Son? — Martin Luther

I think that issues of gender have been discussed widely at Harvard. But I think I was chosen clearly on the merits, and I wish to operate as president on the merits. I think, on one level, we might say that I can affirm that women have the aptitude to do science or to do anything, including being president of Harvard. — Drew Gilpin Faust

Now whatever you think of the liberal agenda on its merits, until very recently nobody thought the Constitution meant what liberals now say it means. — Joseph Sobran

There must be no division by class hatred, whether this hatred be that of creed against creed, nationality against nationality, section against section, or men of one social or industrial condition against men of another social and industrial condition. We must ever judge each individual on his own conduct and merits, and not on his membership in any class, whether that class be based on theological, social, or industrial considerations. — Theodore Roosevelt

Why the histories of states should have so persistently insinuated themselves in the place that might have been occupied by peoples merits reflection. — James C. Scott

Do not lose that hunger. You will always have to fight for everything. Even when you already have it, you will have to keep fighting to maintain it. You will have to be more ruthless, more brutal, more everything. Any weakness will undo everything you have accomplished. They will see any crack as evidence that they were right that a woman cannot do what you do.

Hunyadi knew what he spoke of. Her merits, her accomplishments, her strength would never speak for themselves. She would have to cut her way through the world, uphill, for the rest of her life. — Kiersten White

Justice, humanity, or political wisdom, are qualities they are too little acquainted with in themselves, to appreciate them in others. Valor will acquire their esteem, and liberality will purchase their suffrage; but the first of these merits is often lodged in the most savage breasts; the latter can only exert itself at the expense of the public; and both may be turned against the possessor of the throne, by the ambition of a daring rival. — Edward Gibbon

I chose to publish the first 'Shopaholic' book under a pseudonym because I wanted it to be judged on its own merits. — Sophie Kinsella

Riches and power are but gifts of blind fate, whereas goodness is the result of one's own merits. — Heloise

Place your hopes in the mercy of God and the merits of our Redeemer; say often, looking at the crucifix: There are centered all my hopes. — Paul Of The Cross

I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians. — Thomas Jefferson

We're in such a volatile climate right now politically. I think they didn't want Assassins to not succeed due to popular opinion and politics, versus on its own merits. I can respect that. — Neil Patrick Harris

Christmas is forced upon a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press; on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred. — George Bernard Shaw

She is a good creature - that fine girl - but a little too earnest," he thought. "It is troublesome to talk to such women. They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question, and usually fall back on their moral sense to settle things after their own taste. — George Eliot

Whom God legally saves, He experimentally saves; whom He justifies, them He also sanctifies. Where the righteousness of Christ is imputed to an individual, a principle of holiness is imparted to him; the former can only be ascertained by the latter. It is impossible to obtain a Scriptural knowledge that the merits of Christ's finished work are reckoned to my account, except by proving that the efficacy of the Holy Spirit's work is evident in my soul. — Arthur W. Pink

I know enough of life to know that you can never judge any case on its outside merits. — Agatha Christie

There used to be a canny politician in the Hyde Park area in Chicago in which I at one time lived for several years. His slogan was "I am for harmony if I have to use an axe." As "Secretary of Charm," if and when my merits and ambitions are recognized by my appointment to that office, I will take a page out of old "Doc" Jamieson's book. My motto will be "I will have charm, even if I have to use a club. — Beatrice Fairfax

The 20th century merits the name "The Century of Murder." 1915 Turks slaughtered 2 million Armenians. 1933 to 1954 the Soviet government encompassed the death of 20 to 65 million citizens. 1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany murdered more than 25 million people. 1948 Hindus and Muslims engaged in racial and religious strife that claimed more lives than could be reported. 1970 3 million Bangladesh were killed. 1971 Uganda managed the death of 300,000 people. 1975 Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and murdered up to 3 million people. In recent times more than half a million of Rwanda's 6 million people have been murdered. At present times genocidal strife is underway in Bosnia, Somalia, Burundi and elsewhere.
The people of the world have demonstrated themselves to be so capable of forgetting the murderous frenzies in which their fellows have participated that it is essential that one, at least, be remembered and the world be regularly reminded of it. _Consequences of the Holocaust — Raul Hilberg

My mother taught me that reading is a kind of work, and that every paragraph merits exertion, and in this way, I learned how to absorb difficult books. Soon after I went to kindergarten, however, I learned that reading difficult books also brings trouble. I was punished for reading ahead of the class, for being unwilling to speak and act "nicely." I didn't know why I simultaneously feared and adored my female teachers, but I did know that I needed their attention — Hope Jahren