Quotes About Merit

If individual merit considered in isolation were the source of wealth, then excluding more than half of the population from realizing their potential on account of their sex or skin color would be like sabotaging more than half of all factories or making more than half of all homes uninhabitable.

Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.

you'd give him a job he didn't deserve, precisely because he didn't deserve it—that would be true love and kindness and brotherhood. Else what's love for? If a man deserves a job, there's no virtue in giving it to him. Virtue is the giving of the undeserved.

Its symptom is always an attempt to circumvent reality by substituting men for ideas, the man-made for the metaphysical, favors for rights, special pull for merit—i.e., an attempt to reduce man's life to a small back-yard (or rat hole) exempt from the absolutism of reason.

Nada puede hacer que sea moral destruir a los mejores. Uno no puede ser castigado por ser bueno.

He never seeks or desires the unearned.

and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This

Castigation is a doom which achieves itself. In punishing yourself, you come to merit punishment.

Pardon me that I have feared for you. Fear is born in doubt, and you have not merited my doubt.

If you bake a cupcake, the world has one more cupcake. If you become a circus clown, the world has one more squirt of seltzer down someone's pants. But if you win an Olympic gold medal, the world will not have one more Olympic gold medalist. It will just have you instead of someone else.

Pure Christian love is not derived from the merit of the object.

Thus you may understand that love alone is the true seed of every merit in you, and of all acts for which you must atone.

The grace of God is love freely shown toward guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit.

Merit consists in the virtue of love alone, flavored with the light of true discretion without which the soul is worth nothing.

We are not equal in ability or outcome, and never will be. A very small number of people produce very much of everything. The winners don't take all, but they take most, and the bottom is not a good place to be.

a person's value does not rest on outward appearances, but on his true merits, what he really is.

Quien obtiene favores sin tener méritos, debe temblar: fracasará después, cien veces, en cada cambio de viento. Los nobles ingenios solo confían en sí mismos, luchan, salvan los obstáculos, se imponen.

El lacayo pide; el digno merece. Aquél solicita del favor lo que este espera del mérito. Ser digno significa no pedir lo que se merece, ni aceptar lo inmerecido. Mientras los serviles trepan entre las malezas del favoritismo, los austeros ascienden por la escalinata de sus virtudes. O no ascienden por ninguna.

Entre nobles caracteres la amistad crece despacio y prospera mejor cuando arraiga en el reconocimiento de los méritos recíprocos; entre hombres vulgares crece inmotivadamente, pero permanece raquítica, fundándose a menudo en la complicidad del vicio o de la intriga.

I honour the father for the merit of his son, but I don't honour the son because of the father. Let everyone be rewarded or punished because of what he himself does, not what others do.

Patent to your eyes is the sun of virtues - and I say sun, not moon, because there is no great merit in the moon shining at night; in the kingdom of the blind; the one-eyed man is king, and at night even a little star can shine; but what greater merit it is to shine in the middle of the day like the sun does.

It is ridiculous for any man to criticize the works of another if he has not distinguished himself by his own performances

Thy father's merit sets thee up to view, And shows thee in the fairest point of light, To make thy virtues, or thy faults, conspicuous.

Tis not in mortals to command success; but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.