The flatterer easily insinuates himself into the closet, while honest merit stands shivering in the hall or antechamber.
If you have to lie, cheat, steal, obstruct and bully to get your point across, it must not be a point capable of surviving on its own merits.
Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.
Merit clears away obstacles.
There are people who in spite of their merit disgust us and others who please us in spite of their faults.
Successful people ask for the criticism of others and consider its merit.
We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.
Our aim is to appeal to reason. … Prayer is not one of our remedies; it depends on what one is praying for. We consider prayer nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is.
Salvation has absolutely nothing to do with human merit and absolutely everything to do with divine mercy.
Where we can compete on merit, we do very well.
Art is completely subjective. It's up to the viewer to judge whether or not it has merit.
Like pictures, men should be judged by their merits and not by their defects.
What I like about the Order of the Garter is that there is no damned merit about it.
Thy modesty 's a candle to thy merit.
There is no merit to discipline under ideal circumstances. I must have it in the face of death or it is worthless.
It is but a small merit to observe silence, but it is a grave fault to speak of matters on which we should be silent.
Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to bestow it in the presence of human merit.
Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.
The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.
I have been writing my heart out all my life, but only getting a living out of it now. . . . . . . it's not a question of the merit of art, but a question of spontaneity and sincerity and joy I say. I would like everybody in the world to tell his full life confession and tell it his own way and then we'd have something to read in our old age.