Quotes About Merit

I will say that rowing in the first Olympics was probably one of the most proud moments in my life. What I enjoy about the sport is that it's definitive. Nobody can take away from the fact that you're an Olympian. It's indisputable. You get there on merit and merit alone.

In the field of sports you are more or less accepted for what you do rather than what you are.

But, hey I did everything the right way and earned my spot in this game, nothing was given to me.

No one is guaranteed their place in the squad.

Your name never stands for anything, only performances do.

It's always the same: mediocrities are over-valued and great men are rejected.

If by saying that all men are born equal, you mean that they are equally born, it is true, but true in no other sense; birth, talent, labor, virtue, and providence, are forever making differences

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.

When a man is right he wants to get all that is coming to him for being right.

Not all men are worthy of love.

Our souls may all be equal in the sight of the Lord, but our gumption and ingenuity ain't. So the results of man's labor will never be equal.

From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live.

To me one man is worth ten thousand if he is first-rate.

It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.

I am told so many ill things of a man, and I see so few in him, that I begin to suspect he has a real but troublesome merit, as being likely to eclipse that of others.

Man should make himself a lot of good karma.

The uncouth hordes of common men are not fit to recognize duly the merits of those who eclipse their own wretchedness.

Men do not value a good deed unless it brings a reward.

There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally subject to change.

Fondly we think we honor merit then, when we but praise ourselves in other men.

Men were not equal in the effort they made, nor did equal efforts bring equal result. ... Equality of opportunity, yes. Equality of effort and result, no.

Woman's weakness, not man's merit, oftenest gains the suitor's victory.

It is a shame for a man to desire honor because of his noble progenitors, and not to deserve it by his own virtue.

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.