Quotes About Merits

The true God has never yet smiled upon a person for his charity or virtues, but only for the sake of Christ's merits.

The psalm speaks of both, namely, that one must never under any circumstances trust either in temporal things of any kind or in one's own merits; that is to say, one must trust neither in temporal nor in spiritual goods, but through temporal and spiritual things in God alone.

The merits of rival causes are never absolute. Even in the Second World War, the Western allied struggle against fascism was compromised by its reliance upon the tyranny of Stalin to pay most of the blood price for destroying the tyranny of Hitler. Only simpletons of the political Right and Left dare to suggest that in Vietnam either side possessed a monopoly of virtue.

What is the purpose of piety if there are no temptations to resist? Man is not God, his strength is the ability to restrain his own nature, so I thought, and if he has nothing to restrain, then what are his merits?

Trump supporters resented liberals' rhetoric of rising, not because they rejected meritocracy, but because they believed it described the prevailing social order. They had submitted to its discipline, had accepted the hard judgment it pronounced on their own merits, and believed others should do the same.

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.

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.

Rabbis, priests and mullahs are, it seems, uniting to restrain free speech, lest any member of their collective flock should have his feelings hurt … The Rushdie affair is showing not just that some Muslims do not understand the merits of free speech. It shows that many Western clerics do not either.

Man is such a wondrous being that it is never possible to count up all his merits at once. The more you study him, the more new particulars appear, and their descriptions would be endless.

If the general shape and structure of the story is prescribed in advance, then—this is our second critical principle—all the literary merits of the story, the wit in the dialogue, the liveliness of the characterization, and the like, are a technical tour de force. They illustrate the author's rhetorical skill in working within his conventions.

Now, therefore, I began to associate with none but disappointed authors like myself, who praised, deplored, and despised each other. The satisfaction we found in every celebrated writer's attempts was inversely as their merits. My unfortunate paradoxes had entirely dried up that source of comfort. I could neither read nor write with satisfaction; for excellence in another was my aversion, and writing was my trade.

Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits.