"Demerit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of society, but injustice, unless checked would quickly prove its ruin: Humility exalts; but pride mortifies us. For these reasons the former qualities are esteemed virtues, and the latter regarded as vices. Now since it is granted there is a delight or uneasiness still attending merit or demerit of every kind, this is all that is ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... circles of the Sniffy, this fact is sufficient to condemn them unread. For of all fools the most incorrigible is surely the conventional critic who judges literary wares not by their intrinsic merit or demerit, but by the periodical in which they first saw the light. The same author may write in the same day two articles, putting his best work and thought into each, but if he sends one to The Saturday ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... without divine grace, he is never able to do good. Now, if the nature of man, left to itself, or destitute of divine aid, necessarily determines him to evil, or renders him incapable of good, what becomes of the free-will of man? According to such principles, man can neither merit nor demerit. By rewarding man for the good he does, God would only reward himself; by punishing man for the evil he does, God would punish him for not giving him grace, without which he ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... mouth, though it is not peculiar to him. Our obligation towards God, he says, must be in proportion to His merits; therefore it is infinite. Now there is no merit in paying a debt which we owe; and hence the fullest discharge of our duty deserves no reward. On the other hand, there is demerit in refusing to pay a debt; and therefore any short-coming deserves an infinite penalty (vi. 155). Without examining whether our duty is proportional to the perfection of its object, and is irrespective of our ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... either supplant or explode) will be rendered an uneasy struggle, and sometimes almost a curse, by the envy of those who deny approval while blind to success, and the affected disdain of those who exaggerate demerit. Yet these obstacles warm the spirit of honest ambition, and enhance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... four minutes doesn't matter, eh? Think just because you're a vice president it's all right to mosey in here whenever you feel like it." He glowered. "Well, this is three times this month you've been late, Towne. That's a demerit for each time, and you ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse
... of my text will help us to answer. 'Thou shalt lift up thy face unto God.' That is a clear enough metaphor to express frank confidence of approach to Him. The head hangs down in the consciousness of demerit and sin. 'Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me,' wailed the Psalmist, 'so that I am not able to look up.' But it is possible for men to go into God's presence with a sense of peace, and to hold up their heads before their Judge and look Him in the eyes and not be afraid. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a heaven and a hell, to one or the other of which all spirits of men shall be assigned, perhaps on the basis of a very narrow margin of merit or demerit. As it affirms the existence of an infinite range of graded intelligences, so it claims the widest and fullest gradation of conditions of future existence. It holds that the honest, though, perchance, mistaken soul who lived ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... sense of God's love has gone very deeply into you, notwithstanding all that you say; and sure I am that you have never got to the point where you can understand it most clearly and most deeply. The sense of sin, the consciousness of personal demerit, the feeling that I have gone against Him and His loving law,—that is as important and as essential an element in all deep personal religion as the clear and thankful apprehension of the love of God. Nay, more; there never has been and there never will be in a man's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "poor" one, is paid for by the "good." In writing for a very worthy servant therefore, it is of the utmost importance in fairness to her (or him) to put in every merit that you can think of, remembering that omission implies demerit in each trait of character not mentioned. All good references should include honesty, sobriety, capability, and a reason, other than their unsatisfactoriness, for their leaving. The recommendation for a nurse can not be ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... diabolical, inasmuch as they are not only meant to impede the measures of that government generally, but more especially, as a great means toward the accomplishment of it, to destroy the confidence which it is necessary for the people to place, until they have unequivocal proof of demerit, in their public servants. In this light I consider myself whilst I am an occupant of office; and if they were to go further and call me their slave during this period, I ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... DRAPER—the names, I mean; it is quite useless and might do harm to read their books,—shake them up together and make into a paste, add some poetical excerpts of a moral tendency, and spread thick over a violent lad smarting under a sense of demerit justly scorned, Turn him out into the world, then scrape clean and return him to his true friends. Cards, race-meetings, and billiards may be introduced ad lib., also passion, prejudice, a faithful dog, and an infant prattler. Death-scenes form an effective relief. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... driven the salmon from the rivers of New England where once they swarmed. Mechanical devices for taking them by the hundreds of thousands threaten a like result in the now teeming rivers of Washington and British Columbia. Mr. Lake's invention has the demerit of giving conscienceless profiteers the opportunity to obliterate the oyster ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... less is it an attempt to make an appeal for one or another type of economic reform. It is simply a partial view of certain work conditions as they come closest to family life. There is to this writer no more merit or demerit in any form of economic dogmatism than in any special theologic creed. We may all differ, and with reasons sufficient to our thought and without blame, on questions of how we can best attain a true democratization of the industrial order. We cannot now be of two minus as to the righteousness of such ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... finishing, than in Italian ideality and passion. I think besides that Mr. Forrest's rejection of any play of Sheridan Knowles must refer rather to its unfitness for the development of his own personal talent, than to its abstract demerit, whatever Transatlantic tastes he may bring with him. The published title of the last play is 'The Daughter,' not 'The Wreckers,' although I believe it was acted as the last. I am very anxious to ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Kolarian tribes in honour of the sun spirit. Karana Sarira, the causal body; Avidya; ignorance; that which is the cause of the evolution of a human ego. Karma, the law of ethical causation; the effect of an act for the attainment of an object of personal desire, merit and demerit. Karman, action; attributes of Linga Sarira. Kartika, the Indian god of war, son or Siva and Parvati; he is also the personification of the power of the Logos. Kasi, another name for the sacred city of Benares. Keherpas, aerial form; third principle. Khanda period, a period of Vedic ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... looking calmly, yet humbly, for that close of my mortal career which cannot be far distant, I reverently thank God for the blessings vouchsafed me in the past; and with an awe that is not fear, and a consciousness of demerit which does not exclude hope, await the opening before my steps of the gates ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... either nothing or very little concerning them; and that so little, so false and misbeseeming the ingenuitie of an historian, that he seemeth to have aimed at no other end than, by bitter invectives against Henry VIII., and Cardinal Wolsey, to demerit the favour of Queen Mary," &c., Godwyn's translation of the Annales of England; edit. 1630, author's Preface. "It is also remarkable that Polydore Virgil's and Bishop Joscelin's edition of Gildas's epistle differ so materially that ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... persuasion and imposition as enables her to baffle all the schemes of her aged admirer and unite herself to a young gallant more suited to her age. The "Country Wife" of Wycherly is an imitation of this piece, with the demerit on the part of the English author of having rendered licentious a plot which, in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... place, was not at all in favor of any very romantic predilection in behalf of the rest of the human race. In short, the Herr Hofmeister was a bailiff, much as Balthazar was a headsman, on account of some particular merit or demerit, (it might now be difficult to say which,) of one of his ancestors, by the laws of the canton, and by the opinions of men. The only material difference between them was in the fact, that the one greatly enjoyed his station, while the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... then, neither Tiberius nor Pilate who condemned Jesus. It was the old Jewish party; it was the Mosaic Law. According to our modern ideas, there is no transmission of moral demerit from father to son; no one is accountable to human or divine justice except for that which he himself has done. Consequently, every Jew who suffers to-day for the murder of Jesus has a right to complain, for he might have acted as did Simon the Cyrenean; at any rate, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... institutions are doubtless both educational and charitable, or at least ought to be, using these words in their ordinary application. It is not a question of merit or demerit on the part of the unfortunates or their families. It is not a question whether they are entitled to an education as much as normal children. So far as there is any real issue, it is one of classification for purposes of administration. The question seems to be whether the institutions ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... [25] The decline of the French monarchy invited the attack of these insatiate fanatics. The descendants of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the last kings of the Merovingian race. [26] They ascended the throne without power, and sunk into the grave without a name. A country palace, in the neighborhood of Compiegne [27] was allotted for their residence or prison: but each ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... nature to encroach, when once it has passed its limits) coming to confine the juries, case after case, to the corporeal fact, and to that alone, and excluding the intention of mind, the only source of merit and demerit, of reward or punishment, juries become a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... docile, one rational endeavour which nature is sure to crown with success. This is the method of deliverance from existence, the effort after salvation. There is, let us say, a law of Karma, by which merit and demerit accruing in one incarnation pass on to the next and enable the soul to rise continuously through a series of stages. Thus the world, though called illusory, is not wholly intractable. It provides systematically for an exit out of its illusions. On this rational ordinance of phenomena, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... reckless man gain who covets his neighbor's wife—demerit, an uncomfortable bed, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... written in another letter. In regard to the said Diego Lopez Lobo not being a Castilian citizen but a Portuguese (which has been the rock of offense to auditors and citizens, and the motive which has induced the city to complain to your Majesty), I am not aware that it is a crime or a demerit to be a Portuguese. Diego Lopez is a son of the second Lopez Lobo, a nobleman, of the rank that can be easily ascertained in that Council. He went to East Yndia in the service of your Majesty, where he lived for ten years. Thence he came to these islands, where I found him serving worthily with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... Risley's capital western paraphrase of the system in Blackwood's Magazine, a decade ago. "Let us," he writes, "imagine the great tribe of Smith ... in which all the subtle nuances of social merit and demerit have been set and hardened into positive regulations affecting the intermarriage of families. The caste thus formed would trace its origin back to a mythical eponymous ancestor, the first Smith, who converted the rough stone hatchet into the bronze ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... Mr Cranium, "that I avoid the former as a machine containing a peculiar cataballitive quality, which I have found to be not consentaneous to my mode of pleasurable existence; but I attach no moral merit or demerit to either of them, as these terms are usually employed, seeing that they are equally creatures of necessity, and must act as they do from the nature of their organisation. I no more blame or praise a man for what is called vice or virtue, than I tax ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... course, paid a visit to Mistress Lucy immediately on reaching port. She took me very severely to task for leaving the port without a word of farewell, and seemed to find it a demerit in me that I had returned without a wound, praising Dick Cludde very warmly for the part he had taken in the fight. I answered with some heat that if I was not wounded 'twas from no shirking of duty, ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... twofold; for either the fault is such, that, though a man be condignly punished for it by the civil magistrate, yet he doth not, therefore, fall from his ecclesiastical office or dignity; of which sort experience showeth many; or else such as being punished according to their quality and demerit, a man, by necessary consequence, falleth from the ecclesiastical function and dignity which before he had: this was Abiathar's case, and the case of so many as, being justly punished by proscription, incarceration, or banishment, are secundario ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... doctrine is not reconcilable with the belief that the Eternal Other is also the Eternal Father. The Divine Autocrat of Calvinism, who pre-ordained some of His creatures to eternal damnation—not for any demerit of theirs, but "just choosing so"—is not unthinkable; what is unthinkable is that we could love such a One—a God who had predestined all human sin and woe, who had fore-ordered things in such a manner that unnumbered ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... of the law of retribution constantly interchanging their residences in a succession of rising and sinking existences, ranging through all the earths, heavens, and hells of the universe, bound by the terrible links of merit and demerit in the phantasmagoric dungeon of births and deaths. The Vishnu Purana declares, "The universe, this whole egg of Brahma, is everywhere swarming with living creatures, all of whom are captives in the chains ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... that the real grandeurs of the Pacific coast are not Yo Semite and the Big Trees, but Hank Monk and his adventure with Horace Greeley. [And what makes that worn anecdote the more aggravating, is, that the adventure it celebrates never occurred. If it were a good anecdote, that seeming demerit would be its chiefest virtue, for creative power belongs to greatness; but what ought to be done to a man who would wantonly contrive so flat a one as this? If I were to suggest what ought to be done to him, I should be called ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... immediately perceive its necessary connection with compassion, friendship, and benevolence; but the subject becomes more intricate when we are to analyse our sense of propriety and justice; of merit and demerit; of gratitude and resentment; self-complacency or ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... according to his own knowledge and judgment. Ye should also answer it as ye think proper. Knowing the rules of morality, and having attended an assembly, he that doth not answer a query that is put, incurreth half the demerit that attacheth to a lie. He, on the other hand, who, knowing the rules of morality and having joined an assembly answereth falsely, assuredly incurreth the sin of a lie. The learned quote as an ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... (poetic name for the region of Chiang-chiu), you met with the mishap of doggish thieves taking advantage of your want of watchfulness! Truly, the blame of this rests on me. How, then, can I have the hardihood to receive from you a present of value! A reward of demerit, how can I endure it! During the three stages of life, (youth, middle age, and old age,) I shall not be able to repay. It is only by inheritance (not by my own merit) that I obtained the imperial favor of office. Thus, my deficiency in the knowledge of official ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... minute system of merit and demerit established; everything good and everything bad has a specific value in numbers and decimals, which is accurately recorded against the owners thereof in the reports made for each year. The cadet appears to be expected to improve in conduct as well as knowledge; for, according ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the society of every rank and condition of man. He is himself the hero of his books: he is wild Tom Jones, he is wild Captain Booth, less wild, I am glad to think, than his predecessor, at least heartily conscious of demerit, and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... no more concerned in than if they had never been done: and to receive pleasure or pain, i.e. reward or punishment, on the account of any such action, is all one as to be made happy or miserable in its first being, without any demerit at all. For, supposing a MAN punished now for what he had done in another life, whereof he could be made to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there between that punishment and being CREATED miserable? And therefore, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... or demerit of the individual had comparatively little to do with the regards which the other members of the family cherished towards him. Now it goes far towards a total determination of those regards. Multitudes of the nearest relatives ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... in this country that owns anything is the King; in the service of his people he afflicts himself with that burden. All property, of whatsoever kind, is his, to do with as he will. He divides it among his subjects in the ratio of their demerit, as determined by the waguks—local officers—whose duty it is to know personally every one in their jurisdiction. To the most desperate and irreclaimable criminals is allotted the greatest wealth, which is taken from them, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... reason or in medicine. Death alone shall end it, and death will be sweeter to me than life on earth without lover, honour or happiness. Neither war nor death has robbed me of my lover; no sin or fault of mine has robbed me of my honour; neither error nor demerit of mine has made me lose my joy. 'Tis cruel fate that has rendered the most favoured of men thankless, and has caused me to receive the contrary ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... strong and imposing, and seemed to be secure against the assaults of its enemies, yet it was far from being as compact and powerful as it appeared to the outward observer. In the first place, it had the demerit of being founded solely on a negative, and upon opposition to a single line of policy. The reason why these men were assembled together in council as a government was that they were opposed to confederation, and, this question having been disposed of, they were free to differ upon all ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... have for another. Hitherto I have discovered nothing wrong in your heart, or your head: on the contrary I think I see sense in the one, and sentiments in the other. This persuasion is the only motive of my present affection; which will either increase or diminish, according to your merit or demerit. If you have the knowledge, the honor, and probity, which you may have, the marks and warmth of my affection shall amply reward them; but if you have them not, my aversion and indignation will rise in the same proportion; and, in that case, remember, that I am under no further obligation, than ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of merit or demerit, of self-approval or self-condemnation, in consequence of our actions. If our wills were acted upon by a force beyond our control, we might congratulate or pity ourselves, but we could not praise or blame ourselves, for what ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... of work." You cannot deny your youth and you should not defend it as if it were a fault. Nor can you claim experience you have not had. But it is unnecessary for you to indicate any feeling that inexperience is a demerit. An ordinary applicant might be discomfited by such resistance to his purpose. If you are a skillful salesman, you will be prepared to deal with this very obstacle and will turn it to good account. ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... question of merit and demerit, of praise and blame, and more especially (but this will shock Mr. Wells) of salvation and damnation—and nothing can be easier than to pay to the works of the Veiled Being the meed of an illimitable wonder. When we think of the roaring vortices of flame ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... and I think they force those who see it in black colours to urge the No Popery cry. So far, I am disposed to justify the Anti-Maynooth war. Sir R. Inglis may be a bigot in his view of Romanism ... but I think he is not 'out of order' in intruding the religious demerit of Romanism into a parliamentary discussion. If this measure had been thrown out, I fear Ireland would have been awfully embittered. Yet I hope the fierce opposition will stop any future scheme of keeping the sinecure church untouched and endowing the priests with imperial money.... ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... confinement of fetters is the same whether the chain be of gold or iron." "The knowledge which realizes that everything is Brahm alone liberates the soul. It annuls the effect both of our virtues and vices. We traverse thereby both merit and demerit, the heart's knot is broken, all doubts are split, and all our works perish. Only by perfect abstraction, not merely from the senses, but also from the thinking intellect and by remaining in the knowing intellect, does the devotee become identified ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... men knew themselves and their own sinfulness, they would not challenge God with unrighteousness, but put their mouth in the dust, and keep silence. And it is from this ground, that this people do not charge God. Sin is of such infinite desert and demerit, because against infinite majesty, that God cannot go beyond it in punishment; and therefore Jeremiah, when he is wading out of the deep waters of sore temptation and sad discouragement, pitcheth and casteth anchor ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... upper classes, as well as his testy temper and malicious disposition, all tended to rouse against him, while he lived, a personal as well as public hostility, altogether irrespective of the mere merit or demerit of his poetry. "We cannot bear a Papist to be our principal bard," said one class. "No Tory for our translator of Homer," cried the zealous Whigs, "Poets should be poor, and Pope is independent," growled Grub Street. The ancients could not endure that a "poet should build an ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... undue depreciation of one's self which must ever be a sign of self-conscious demerit," said the young girl lightly, "I may say that I am not generally good at Johnsonese; but it may relieve your mind to know that had you kept silence one instant longer, I should have taken the risk ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... in these ungrateful speculations: their disputes chiefly turned upon the effect, which motive, suggested by grace, or the divine favour, has upon will. Does it necessitate? then, there is no free-will,—no merit,—no demerit. Does it not necessitate? then, in the choice of good, man acts by his own power, and thus achieves a good of which God ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... we are forsed to stand at their Dores to gard them.' Another sympathetic chronicler, after pouring out the vials of his wrath on the clause which guaranteed the protection of French private property, lamented that 'by these means the poor souldiers lost all their hopes and just demerit [sic] of ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... bathing-towel or a light great-coat. Each of them is in an oratorical attitude, which has all the disadvantage of being affected without even any of the advantages of being theatrical. Let no one suppose that such abortions arise merely from technical demerit. In every line of those leaden dolls is expressed the fact that they were not set up with any heat of natural enthusiasm for beauty or dignity. They were set up mechanically, because it would seem indecorous or ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... hand in cudgeling one on. A person must keep at it whether she cared to or not—in actual practice this point never troubled Elliott, who always stopped when she wished to—there were no spectators, and, heaviest demerit of all, ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... night is too glorious to waste in talking politics, so you young people get out of my hearing and thresh out your candidate's merit and demerit and leave me to think," I said, for politics were in the air and they were touching upon them. They obeyed me, and soon were lost to view in the dark of the osage and quince hedges grown as breakwinds on the west of Grosvenor's orangery. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... of the merit for which a pension is to be given. We have a right, undoubtedly, to canvass this, as we have to canvass every act of government. But there is a material difference between an office to be reformed and a pension taken away for demerit. In the former case, no charge is implied against the holder; in the latter, his character is slurred, as well as his lawful emolument affected. The former process is against the thing; the second, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Imitaters and Compilers there are almost infinite degrees of merit and demerit: echoes of echoes reverberating echoes in endless succession; compilations of all degrees of worth and worthlessness. But, as will be shown hereafter, even in this lower sphere the worth of the work is strictly proportional to the Vision, Sincerity, and Beauty; so that an imitator whose eye is keen ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... are these: 1st. The principle of merit and demerit within us is absolute: every good action ought to be rewarded, every bad one punished: 2d. God is just as He is all-powerful: 3d. There are in this world particular cases, contradicting the necessary and universal law of merit and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... A marked demerit of the new order of things—the regime of female commercial service—is that its main advantage accrues, not to the race, not to the sex, not to the class, not to the individual woman, but to the person of least need and worth—the male employer. (Female employers in any considerable ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... college he made a record that shines to this day. He was given the coveted cadet adjutancy of his corps. He graduated second in a class of forty-six. And he did not receive a single demerit during his entire college career—for rusty gun, or cap on the floor, or late at drill, or twisted belt,—or any of the hundred and one things that are the bane and stumbling block of the West Pointer's existence. ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... surplice, and of continually recurring to the 134th Psalm, which, it was now remembered, Lance had shortly before taken part in, over the grave of an old lay-vicar, who, boy and man, had served the Cathedral for nearly sixty years. Often, too, the poor little fellow seemed struggling with some sense of demerit—whether positive disgrace, or suspicion, or the general Christian feeling of unworthiness, Wilmet and John Harewood could never make out; and they did not choose to speak of these wanderings either to Will or to Mr. Beccles. In the intervals of consciousness, the thought ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Spain was undisturbed by a Carthaginian war, so it was evident that some of the states remained quiet more from fear, arising from a consciousness of demerit, than from sincere attachment. The most remarkable of them, both for their greatness and guilt, were Illiturgi and Castulo. Castulo had been in alliance with the Romans when in prosperity, but had revolted to the Carthaginians after the destruction of ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... fear, and surely I have great reason, that I shall be too unworthy to hold the affections of so dear a gentleman!—God teach me humility, and to know my own demerit! And this will be, next to his grace, my surest guard, in the state of life to which, though most unworthy, I am going to be exalted. And don't cease your prayers for me, my dear parents; for, perhaps, this new condition may be subject to still worse hazards than ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... blessing that her passion for motherly care was to all the house. It was pathetic, and he used sometimes to forecast her self-devotion with a tender indignation, which included a due sense of his own present demerit. He was not reconciled to the sacrifice because it seemed the happiness, or at least the will, of the nature which made it. All the same it seemed a waste, in its relation to the man she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... shirts in proportion, and so far as it was effected, the suit complete, with shoes, stockings and shirt, does not amount in the whole to forty shillings sterling. These facts being known, I am content to take on myself the merit or demerit of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... successful conclusion a German translation of the Prophets from the Hebrew, a work which Hetzer had begun. This important piece of scholarly work was published under the title, Alle Propheten nach hebraeischer Sprache verteutscht, in Worms, April 3, 1527, and had a wide circulation and use, its main demerit being that it ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... very little about all this, and went so far as to declare that those things were accidents which fell out sometimes one way and sometimes another, and were altogether independent of any merit or demerit on the part of the candidate himself. And it was marvellous and almost painful to Phineas that his friend Fitzgibbon should accept the fact of his membership with so little of congratulation,—with absolutely no blowing of trumpets whatever. Had he been elected a member of the municipal corporation ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... himself, sufficient light from reason, and sufficient admonition from conscience, to guide himself, as an individual, in the path of truth and happiness. A single fact will correct such a supposition. Conscience, the great arbiter of the merit and demerit of human conduct, has little intuitive sense of right, and is not guided entirely by reason, but is governed in a great measure by what men believe. Indeed, faith is the legitimate regulator of the conscience. ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... just good performance, but excellence! I will not tolerate anything less, and if I'm forced to resort to extreme disciplinary action to get what I demand, then you can expect to receive every demerit in the book!" He stepped closer to the three cadets. "Remember! Spacemen—or nothing! Now, stand ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... suffering all the agony the most exquisitely wrought, nerve -centered body of the universe could suffer of physical pain and anguish; God did not make Him to be sin and treat Him as the blackest and most repulsive thing in existence; He did not lay upon Him the weight and demerit of a world's guilt that He might suffer in His innocence, His purity and innate sinlessness on behalf of the vilest outcast this side of Gehenna, the lake of fire, just that He might keep us from lying, cheating, swearing, ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... feel so heavy a Weight of your Displeasure, without being conscious of the least Demerit towards so good and generous a Patron, as I have ever found you: For my own Part, I ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... park is an obelisk erected to the honour and at the expense of "optimus" and 1, munificentissimus" the late Prince of Wales, "in loci amoenitatem et memoriam advent'us ejus." There are several paltry Chinese buildings and bridges, which have the merit or demerit of being the progenitors of a very numerous race all over the kingdom: at least they were of the very first. In the church is a beautiful tomb of an Earl and Countess of Downe, and the tower is in a good plain Gothic style, ind was once, they tell you, still more ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... ye ... judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us.' 'They which were bidden were not worthy,' and their unworthiness consisted not in any other moral demerit, but solely in this, that they had refused the proffered blessings. That is the only thing which makes any of us unworthy. And that will make the best of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and made others do the same, or seem to do so, at least. He had no vanity—which is but an inordinate desire for those qualities that bring self-respect, and often the result of conscious demerit—but he knew himself, and knew that he was entitled to his own good opinion. He was every inch a man, strong, intelligent and brave to temerity, with a reckless disregard of consequences, which might have been dangerous had it not been tempered by a dash ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... reason ourselves into any consciousness of merit or demerit, if we are moved only by some vague law of nature whose behest, as described by Mr. Buckle, we cannot resist, whose operations within us we cannot discern, and whose drift or tendency we cannot foresee. It makes little difference whether we build ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... incident at Gallup, did not scorn Wampus so openly as before; but he still reserved a suspicion that the fellow was at heart a coward and a blusterer. The chauffeur's sole demerit in the eyes of the others was his tremendous egotism. The proud remark: "I am Wampus!" was constantly on his lips and he had wonderful tales to tell to all who would listen of his past experiences, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... found anything wrong about the room, he simply glanced at the orderly board, and down went the demerit against the lad whose name was posted there. It made no difference who had left a chair out of place, hung a coat where it should not be, or failed to invert the washbowl, the room orderly had ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... of the nation was ripe for a real reformation, I think it may possibly have ill effects, by disposing the penal matter in a more systematic order, and thereby fixing a permanent bar against any relief that is truly substantial. The whole merit or demerit of the measure depends upon the plans and dispositions of those by whom the act was made, concurring with the general temper of the Protestants of Ireland, and their aptitude to admit in time of some part of that equality without which you never can be FELLOW-CITIZENS. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... am writing these lines in the death cell, and the death-watch is set on me. Night and day is this death-watch on me, and its paradoxical function is to see that I do not die. I must be kept alive for the hanging, or else will the public be cheated, the law blackened, and a mark of demerit placed against the time-serving warden who runs this prison and one of whose duties is to see that his condemned ones are duly and properly hanged. Often I marvel at the strange way some men make ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... incongruity of two equally authoritative rules, let us proceed to consider what dangerous latitude of interpretation is allowed to the followers of either of them. Those who believe that the merit or demerit of each separate action depends on that action's separate consequences, need seldom be at a loss for a pretext for committing the most heinous of crimes. A husband who, hating his wife, had his hate returned, and ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... gas had been lighted, and the meals spread, at the accustomed hours. At the accustomed hour, too, the bell had sounded thrice to call the family to worship. And at the thought, a pang of regret for his demerit seized him; he remembered the things that were good and that he had neglected, and the things that were evil and that he had loved; and it was with a prayer upon his lips that he mounted the steps and thrust the ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... For, after all, my dear, Mr. Lovelace is not wise in all his ways. And should we not endeavour, as much as is possible, (where we are not attached by natural ties,) to like and dislike as reason bids us, and according to the merit or demerit of the object? If love, as it is called, is allowed to be an excuse for our most unreasonable follies, and to lay level all the fences that a careful education has surrounded us by, what is meant by the doctrine of subduing our passions?—But, O my dearest friend, am I not guilty of a punishable ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... calling." He then proceeds to trace this happy condition to its sources. He begins with a negation. The antecedent cause of our salvation and calling was not our works; we were not treated according to our works; not after the measure, the proportion, the merit or demerit of our works: these might have brought punishment, but could never have procured for us blessings so great and undeserved. The real cause was the purpose of God and his grace given in Christ before ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... ever—those who express wonderment at the survival of all the delightful features of the European raree-show—have not realised the power of the Spirit of Antiquity, and the power of the sentiment about him—that sentiment which gives birth to the great human dream about hereditary merit and demerit upon which society—royalist or republican—is built. What is the use of telling us that even in Grecian annals there is no kind of heroism recorded which you cannot match in the histories of the United States and Canada? What is the use of telling us that the ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... godliness. I took him not for love but fright; He did but ask a dreadful right. In this was love, that he loved me The first, who was mere poverty. All that I know of love he taught; And love is all I know of aught. My merit is so small by his, That my demerit is my bliss. My life is hid with him in Christ, Never therefrom to be enticed; And in his strength have I such rest As when the baby on my breast Finds what it knows not how to seek, And, very happy, very weak, Lies, only knowing all is well, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... rabbits, swore That he had this demerit— Give him an inch of warren, he Would take a yard ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... well the precious qualities of sleep to allow that of their shipmates to be causelessly disturbed by the nervous apprehensions of one who carried with him an everlasting stimulant to fear in the consciousness of demerit. The night passed away undisturbed, therefore, nor was the order of the regular watch broken until the look-outs in the wreck, agreeably to their orders, awoke ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... a wry face at the thought, whether she intended to record his actions in a book, giving him marks of merit or demerit according as the whim struck her? In that case she had probably already placed a black mark ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... ever, the suspense as skilfully maintained; the characters seem to us as real as those in "Evelina," or "Cecilia," or in the "Diary" itself; the alternate pathos and satire of the book keep our attention ever on the alert. That it failed to win the suffrages of the public was certainly due to no demerit in the work. Many causes may have conspired against it. The public taste had long been debauched by novels of that nightmare school in which Mrs Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis were the leaders. Moreover, in the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... the divinity creates, in accordance with the merit or demerit of living beings, things of a special nature, subsisting for a certain time only, and perceived only by the individual soul for which they are meant. In agreement herewith Scripture says, with reference to the state of dreaming, 'There are no chariots ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... days after death, the spirit is supposed to visit the different temples, going, as it were, from official court to official court receiving judgment, and cards of merit or demerit to take with it, for the deeds done in the body. On the third day it returns to say farewell to the home, and then leaves for its long journey, and all this paper furniture is ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... as well as soul; we are incomplete without the body. The soul is insufficient to itself, the body has as real a part to play in Redemption as the soul which is its inmate and should be its mistress. We look for the redemption of our body and the Resurrection of the Flesh, we merit or demerit before God in our soul for the ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... law of perseverance in well-doing. Such habits in the Christian home form, an irresistible bulwark against the intrusions of temptation and iniquity. But when they are bad, they chain us to evil, and impel us onward and downward to ruin. Hence from his habits we can easily estimate the merit or demerit of a person, know all his weak points and idiosyncrasies, and what will be the ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... popular, but they have all failed to produce the intended effect, to an extent desired by the disaffected few. The object contemplated is, to produce an excitement that will prevent me going to England, and induce the Conference to retrace its steps. The merit or demerit of the measure has been mainly ascribed to me; and on its result, should I cross the Atlantic, my standing, in a great measure, depends. If our proposals should meet with a conciliatory reception, and ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... of pleasure and pain. Then we may be certain that these forms of consciousness were in existence at the beginning of the Mesozoic epoch. From that time forth, pleasure has been distributed without reference to merit, and pain inflicted without reference to demerit, throughout all but a mere fraction of the higher animals. Moreover, the amount and the severity of the pain, no less than the variety and acuteness of the pleasure, have increased with every advance in the scale of evolution. As suffering came into the world, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... now, and quoth she,—"I thank you much, Mynheer, though I am 'feared you reckon mine understanding higher than it demerit: yet I fear there shall scantly be opportunity this morrow. I have divers dishes to cook that shall be cold for this even, and a deal of ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... Frankfort, Baden, Munich, and Augsburg are all constructed on the same general plan. I speak of these because I am more familiar with them than with any other German papers. They contain no "editorials" whatever; no "personals"—and this is rather a merit than a demerit, perhaps; no funny-paragraph column; no police-court reports; no reports of proceedings of higher courts; no information about prize-fights or other dog-fights, horse-races, walking-machines, yachting-contents, rifle-matches, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the discovery. [3] The well known passage in the tragic Seneca is not to be compared with it. The 'copia verborum' of the mother Florentine tongue, and the easiness of his style, afterwards brought to perfection by Berni, are the chief merits of Pulci; his chief demerit is his heartless spirit of jest and buffoonery, by which sovereigns and their courtiers were flattered by the degradation of nature, and the 'impossibilification' of a ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... who was crucified on his right hand, whose name was Dimas, answering, rebuked him, and said, Dost not thou fear God, who art condemned to this punishment? We indeed receive rightly and justly the demerit of our actions; but this Jesus, what ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... Peterson, of Bavaria, who maintained that cases required treatment according to the degree of demerit shown on the prisoner's trial, and therefore, that instead of laying down one principle, the right course was to leave the judges to decide what should be done in ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... with them, I should injure the name of Roman. I should think also, conscript fathers, that in deliberating on such a measure, it ought also to be considered, (if you are disposed to be over severe, which you cannot do from any demerit of ours,) to what sort of enemy you would abandon us. Is it to Pyrrhus, for instance, who treated us, when his prisoners, like guests; or to a barbarian and Carthaginian, of whom it is difficult to determine whether his rapacity or cruelty be the greater? If you were to see ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... but by taking charge of it himself, Lord Temple deprived it of the mischievous prestige it might have acquired under such dangerous auspices. The Bill, however, was not Mr. Flood's. Whatever merit, or demerit attaches to it, belongs exclusively to Lord Temple. Lord Northington, overlooking the fact that this Bill was simply a confirmation of the settlement of 1782, and that it really granted nothing new, endeavoured to make it a fulcrum for working further changes and more extensive concessions—not, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... Govindananda in his Ratnaprabha on S'a@nkara's bha@sya, II. ii. 19, explains "bhava" as that from which anything becomes, as merit and demerit (dharmadi). See also Vibhanga, p. 137 and Warren's Buddhism in Translations, p. 201. Mr Aung says in Abhidhammatthasa@ngaha, p. 189, that bhavo includes kammabhavo (the active side of an existence) and ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... one and unalterable in the sight of God. The one absolute right—the charity of God and the sacrifice of Christ—this, from eternity to eternity must be the sole measure of eternal right. But human right or human wrong, that is the merit or demerit, of any action done by any particular man, must be measured, not by that absolute standard, but as a matter relative to his particular circumstances, the state of the age in which he lives, and his own knowledge of right and wrong. For we come into this world with a moral sense; ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... no new facts; but new meaning and vitality were given to the facts that had long been familiar to him. The first result of this was a new conviction of his own hollowness and evil; and then, side by side with that sense of demerit and sin, came this other trembling apprehension of personal consequences. And so, not thinking so much about the sin as about the punishment that he thought must necessarily come when the holy and the impure ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... colored soldier, however, was compelled to stand by and see a hundred lieutenancies filled in the Regular Army, many in his own regiments, only to find himself overlooked and to be forced to feel that his services however valuable, could not outweigh the demerit of ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... verified are alike inconsistent with the precepts of innate rectitude and the practice of external policy: let it not then be conjectured that because we are unassuming, we are imbecile; that forbearance is any indication of despondency, or humility of demerit. He that is the most assured of success will make the fewest appeals to favour, and where nothing is claimed that is undue, nothing that is due will be withheld. A swelling opening is too often succeeded by an insignificant conclusion. Parturient ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... "that will always be the case where faith is sincere, as I assure you mine is. Indeed, I never was a rash disbeliever; my chief doubt was founded on this— that, as men appeared to me to act entirely from their passions, their actions could have neither merit nor demerit." "A very worthy conclusion truly!" cries the doctor; "but if men act, as I believe they do, from their passions, it would be fair to conclude that religion to be true which applies immediately to the strongest of these passions, hope and fear; chusing ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... not in grace and sweetness, yet in taste or tact of expression, in continuity and equality of style. Vigour is not the principal note of his manner, but compared with the soft effusive ebullience of his master's we may fairly call it vigorous and condensed. But all this merit or demerit is matter of mere language only. The poet—a very pretty poet in his way, and doubtless capable of gracious work enough in the idyllic or elegiac line of business—shows about as much capacity to grasp ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... some time after settling at Ellisland, to Mrs. Dunlop, showing how fresh was still the wound within. "When I skulk into a corner lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim, 'What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some previous state of existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the keys of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?... Often as I (p. 090) have glided with humble stealth ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Hall was required to keep his room in absolute order, and a monitor came around twice a day to see that this regulation was carried out. If a pupil was lax in any particular regarding his room, he was given a demerit in consequence thereof. ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... Merit and demerit belong to the state of a wayfarer, wherefore good is meritorious in them, while evil is demeritorious. In the blessed, on the other hand, good is not meritorious, but is part of their blissful reward, and, in like manner, in the damned, evil ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... China, the system of the "Holy Path" is yet widely practised in Japan. Elaborate tables are drawn up, containing a list of all good and bad actions it is possible to perform, with the numbers added which each counts on the side of merit or demerit. The numbers range from one to a hundred, or even more; and the tables afford an insight into the relative importance in which all kinds of actions present themselves to the Oriental mind. He who would tread life's journey along the Holy Path must, at ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... themselves, nor appear to act, till the reasoning powers of the person begin to expand. Then, and then only does the pupil of Nature, who has not had the benefit of previous moral instruction, begin to decide on the merit or demerit of actions. Infants, and children who are left without instruction, appear to have no distinct perception that certain actions are right, and others wrong. In infancy, we frequently perceive the most rebellious outbreakings of ungoverned passion, with ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... nonsense, dullness, lewdness, and all manner of profaneness and immorality are daily practised on the stage, I have prevailed on my modesty to offer to your lordship's protection a piece which, if it has no merit to recommend it, has at least no demerit to disgrace it; nor do I question at this, when every one else is dull, you will be pleased to find ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... of demerit and impossibility comes the chimney-pot hat, which is not lacking in character, but is ugly and ridiculous. Its one redeeming feature is the difficulty it presents to the draughtsman. It is mathematical, geometrical, with every curve known to science, as hard to represent ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... this idea of liberty, nor any other, to show that man is a responsible being. This is not at all strange; the wonder is, that after having demonstrated that "the prejudice of men concerning good and evil, merit and demerit, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and deformity," are nothing but dreams, he should have felt bound to defend the position, that we may be justly punished for our offences by the Supreme Ruler of the world. His defence of this doctrine we shall lay ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Uncle Jack. "I didn't happen to meet Mr. Lee, either,—he was away on leave; but as Bill and your mother had some such views, I looked into things a bit. It appears to be a matter of record that my enterprising nephew had more demerit before the advent of Mr. Lee than since. As for 'extras' and confinements, his stock was always big enough to bear the market ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... Huntington is ranked a Universalist, equally with those who have been named; but he believed in no punishment hereafter, being Calvinistic in his views of the demerit of sin, and of ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... fatherly care even beyond this; he has actually suggested the terms of a bargain by which he thinks the difficulty can be settled, which, in addition to the gross assumption of having a voice in a matter that in no manner belongs to him, has the palpable demerit of recommending a pecuniary compromise that is flagrantly wrong as ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... for once in her life, was very circumspect during recitations that week. She felt that Gee Gee was watching for a chance to demerit her, and the girl did not intend to give the teacher occasion ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... happier age Which by demerit halteth short of end; Yet must this Law of Love reign King of all Before the ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... longer troubled at being cast off by God; it is so conscious of its demerit, that it consents to the deprivation of the sensible presence of God. But it cannot endure the thought that the taint of its corruption reaches even to God. It does not wish to sin. Let me decay, is its cry, ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... "Take a demerit for that, and stay after school," I told him. "I could kind of read in that man's face, that there is going to be some fun ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... engineering drill. In this latter capacity he also had committed the offense of not reporting some of the class for indulging in unauthorized sport. The offense was not so grave as mine, and, besides, his military record was very much better. So he was let off with a large demerit mark and a sort of honorable retirement to the office of quartermaster of the battalion. I still think, as I did then, that McPherson's punishment was the more appropriate. Livingston was one of those charming, amiable fellows with whom nobody could well find ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... upon himself. In kinsmen, therefore, there are both merits and faults. A person destitute of kinsmen never shows favours to any one nor humbles himself to any one. In kinsmen, therefore both merit and demerit may be marked. One should, for this reason, always honour and worship his kinsmen in words and acts, and do them agreeable offices without injuring them at any time. Mistrusting them at heart, one should behave towards them as if he trusted ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown |
