"Merit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accustomed to the Chinese doctor and his methods, our patients, begging that the best may be done for them, assure the helpers that merit will be accumulated by those who work towards this end. All are surprised to find that a uniform fee is charged and that there is no opportunity for bargaining, as the regular physician writes prescriptions ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures of extraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is so little understood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that they were all from the hand of the owner. My evident admiration pleased my new friend, and led to talk upon ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... for any office, or meddled with the affairs of state, being then but a youth, was, to accuse the accuser of his father, Servilius the augur, having caught him in an offense against the state. This thing was much taken notice of among the Romans, who commended it as an act of high merit. Even without the provocation, the accusation was esteemed no unbecoming action, for they delighted to see young men as eagerly attacking injustice, as good dogs do wild beasts. But when great animosities ensued, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Sclavs. Neither did they leave England free from an attack of the same kind. Ethelred was delighted with their spirit, and rejoiced at the violence his nephews offered him; accepting an abominable wrong as though it were the richest of benefits. For he saw far more merit in their bravery than in piety. Thus he thought it nobler to be attacked by foes than courted by cowards, and felt that he saw in their valiant promise a sample of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... And so, by no merit of my own, I became a man of substance and not dependent on Aunt Jeanne's bounty, which I think ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... must have acknowledged himself Casey's inferior in all but amiability; and Casey no doubt knew this. But in friendship as in love there is usually one who likes and one who suffers himself to be liked, and the positions are not allotted by merit. Gilbart—a self-deceiver all his life—had accepted the compliment ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... against sin hit Him; all the blows that man struck back against God hit Him. Do you see that, Julie? That was wonderfully put, but the end was more wonderful. Both, ultimately, cannot kill the Heart of Jesus. There's no sin there to merit or to feel the anger, and we can hurt, but ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... poor man's son inherit? Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things, A rank adjudged by toil-won merit, Content that from employment springs, A heart that in his labor sings; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... unequal in poetical merit, and many readers may not unreasonably wish to have those pointed out which, in the judgement of one acquainted with all, are among the best worth reading; though of course the choice of individual readers will not always be ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... ensued. Forest and open rang with shouts and the clash of steel, and hundreds of pistols flashed. The Northern horsemen were driven back. Davis, who led them here, a Southerner by birth, but a regular officer, a man of great merit, seeking to rally them, fell, wounded mortally. A strong body of Illinois troops came up and turned the tide of battle again. The Southern horsemen were driven back. Some of them were taken prisoners and a part of Stuart's baggage became a ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... prominent statesmen displayed such indifference, it is not surprising that for nearly 500 years no single trace of any architectural building of any merit at all in Rome can now be discovered, and that history is silent as to the existence of any monuments worthy of being mentioned. Works of public utility of a very extensive nature were indeed carried out during this period; such, for example, as the Appian Way from Rome to Capua, ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... lands; they do not talk of exterminating anybody, but they cover the sea with their ships, they construct immense canals, roads and steamers without jabbering at every stroke of the spade about the rights of man. With them, labor, merit, talent and honest opulence are honored and rewarded aristocracies. Such Republicans would furnish France more Washingtons, Jeffersons and Madisons, and fewer Robespierres, ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... of such a plan we leave undecided; neither in his memoirs nor in other sources is there any trace to be found of his having done so; in no critical works has it been touched upon, the measure being one which the mind had lost sight of. The merit of resuscitating the idea of this means is not great, for it suggests itself at once to any one who breaks loose from the trammels of fashion. Still it is necessary that it should suggest itself for us to bring it into consideration and compare it with the means which Buonaparte ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... interspersed throughout the work, and for these only the simplest materials are required. The studies are carried to those connecting principles which permit the organization of knowledge. The book is illustrated with a number of excellent photographs and over 200 drawings of more than usual merit. ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... been yours, I swear to you that I've not belonged to anyone else. I don't claim any merit for this; I should ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... inextricably interwoven with the traditions and convictions which served to veil Mrs. Fontage's destitution not only from others but from herself. Viewed in that light the Rembrandt had perhaps been worth its purchase-money; and I regretted that works of art do not commonly sell on the merit of the moral ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... principle of religious toleration with a clearness which modern philsophers have considered to rival the theory of Locke; and Timour, also established an efficient police in his dominions, and was a patron of literature. Their sun went down full and cloudless, with the merit of having shed some rays of blessing upon the earth, scorching and withering as had been its day. It is remarkable also that all three had something of a misgiving, or softening of mind, miserably unsatisfactory as it was, shortly before their ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... represent. The same thing may be remarked in many other prints by those engravers who were employed by Rubens and Vandyke; they always gave more light than they were warranted by the picture—a circumstance which may merit the ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... admired. With ourselves, in spite of our addiction to athletics, the body takes a secondary place; after a certain age, at least, there are few men who make its systematic cultivation an important factor of their life; and in our estimate of merit physical qualities are accorded either none or the very smallest weight. It was otherwise with the Greeks; to them a good body was the necessary correlative of a good soul. Balance was what they aimed at, balance and harmony; and they could scarcely ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... pictures. Presently he comes back to the table for a magnifying glass, and scrutinizes a drawing very closely. He sighs; shakes his head, as if constrained to admit the extraordinary fascination and merit of the work; then marks the Secretary's list. Proceeding with his survey, he disappears behind the screen. Jennifer comes back with her book. A look round satisfies her that she is alone. She seats herself at the table and admires the memoir—her ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... Mark found everything she touched, or prepared, good, as everything she said sounded pleasant and reasonable. The last is a highly important ingredient in matrimonial life, but the first has its merit. And Bridget Woolston was both pleasant and reasonable. Though a little romantic, and inclined to hazard all for feeling, and what she conceived to be duty, at the bottom of all ran a vein of excellent sense, which had been reasonably attended to. Her temper ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... irony, "do you think it strange that the people of this country should choose an honest man once in a while? ain't we always ready to reward merit? Haven't we done it in the military way with General Grant? Haven't we a right to go into a new field? First the sword, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... new Elizabethan chimney, on a space scarcely larger than the crown of a hat, calmly surveying the world beneath him. High infantile voices appealed to him in vain; baby arms were outstretched to him in hopeless invitation; he remained exalted and obdurate, like Milton's hero, probably by his own merit "raised to that bad eminence." Indeed, there was already something Satanic in his budding horns and pointed mask as the smoke curled softly around him. Then he appropriately vanished, and San Francisco knew him no more. At the same time, however, one Owen M'Ginnis, a neighboring sandhill ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... principle of reward for merit, the teacher introduced a subordinate principle which proved effective when all else failed. The school was made corporately and jointly responsible for the individual. The offence of one was the offence of all, the merit of one the merit of all. Thus every pupil ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature,'—remains, at the end of a century, unanswerable as an Apology,—unrivalled as a text-book,—unexhausted as a mine of suggestive thought. It may be convenient for an 'Essayist and Reviewer' to declare that "the merit of the Analogy lies in its want of originality." (p. 286.) There was not much originality perhaps in the remark that an apple falls to the ground. Whatever the faults of the Analogy, that work, under GOD, saved the Church. However "depressing to the soul" (p. 293.) of Mr. Pattison, it ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... I shall read 'meritoriously'—do you think? My friend, what ought I to tell you on that head (or the reverse rather)—of your discourse? I should like to match you at a fancy-flight; if I could, give you nearly as pleasant an assurance that 'there's no merit in the case,' but the hot weather and lack of wit get the better of my good will—besides, I remember once to have admired a certain enticing simplicity in the avowal of the Treasurer of a Charitable Institution at a Dinner got up in ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... offer this book, not for its literary merit, but as the tribute of a daughter to a loved father, whose earnest devotion to ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... change when we have had her so long. How are you getting on in the matter of servants? The other day I received a long letter from Mr. Taylor. I told you I did not expect to hear thence, nor did I. The letter is long, but it is worth your while to read it. In its way it has merit, that cannot be denied; abundance of information, talent of a certain kind, alloyed (I think) here and there with errors of taste. He might have spared many of the details of the bath scene, which, for ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Monnier, enrolled in the National Guard, had received promotion in that patriotic corps. From that date he began to neglect his shop, to criticise military matters, and to think that if merit had fair play he should be a Cincinnatus or a Washington, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me steadfastly whilst he smoked, as if critically taking stock of me, and presently said, "The devil hath an odd way of ordering matters. What particular merit have I that I should have been the one hit upon by you to thaw? Had you brought any one of the others to, he would have advised you against reviving us, and so I should have passed out of my frosty sleep into death as quietly, ay, and as painlessly, as that ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... represents a more radical revolution than all the others combined. The softening of the bitter opposition of the early days through the general spirit of progress has been somewhat counteracted by a modern skepticism as to the supreme merit of a democratic government and a general disgust with the prevalent political corruption. This will continue to react strongly against any further extension of the suffrage until men can be made to see that a real democracy has not as yet existed, but that the dangerous experiment ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... The story has the merit of being, to some extent historically, and wholly artistically, true. For the matter-of-facts Mrs. Atherton provides a bibliography of her authorities. Those authorities I have not read, nor should others. Sufficient unto me is the authority of the novel itself splendidly ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... may find elegantly made out at the latter end of his Book, (for he shall see that I have read it quite through, and can hop over pages as fast as he for the life of him) where he can find no other Name or Character for two Gentlemen of Honour and Merit, viz. Mr. Congreve and Captain Vanbrooke, who have written several excellent Plays, and who are only scandalous to our Critick, by being good Poets, yet these he can give no other Names or Characters, but what are Abusive and Ridiculous. ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... entitled "Chekhov and Korolenko." The fellow goes into raptures over me and proves that I am more of an artist than Korolenko. He is probably talking rot, but, anyway, I am beginning to be conscious of one merit of mine: I am the only writer who, without ever publishing anything in the thick monthlies, has merely on the strength of writing newspaper rubbish won the attention of the lop-eared critics—there has been no instance of this before.... ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... obstetric operations is admirable. The drawings, representing original work, have the commendable merit ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... occasional bouts of house-breaking and burglary. They appropriated such property as they could lay hands on in the sequestered houses of the West End, and played tug-of-war with mahogany that lacked the merit of being portable. An epidemic of looting prevailed—and fine sport it ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... de Menezes, died at Cananor about the end of January 1526, in the thirtieth year of his age. He was a man of large stature, with a pleasing countenance, just in all his actions, continent, free from covetousness, a true patron of merit, and of the most unblemished honour. During his government he refused uniformly to accept any of the numerous presents offered him by the eastern princes; and conducted himself with such perfect integrity in every ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... also sin even more grievously than those who turn to the left. They add a sham piety; for, while those who err on the left cannot excuse their error, these do not hesitate to ascribe to themselves remarkable merit. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... to deny to Garrick the merit of being an admirer of Shakspeare? A true lover of his excellences he certainly was not; for would any true lover of them have admitted into his matchless scenes such ribald trash as Tate and Cibber, and the ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... interrupted. "I must not hear another word. 'Macbeth doth murder sleep,' and I shall be nervous for a month after this. So, good-night, Mr. Garth, and be sure you merit your first name by taking good care of us while we imitate the example of your worthy captain and 'swing ourselves to sleep,' or rather let the waves perform that office for us. I shall make it my care to-morrow morning early, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... officer under arrest during the siege of Broach, in which Gordon had led the attack. The Colonel's brother, Gordon of Gordonstown, wrote to Murray, saying, "Whether you succeed or not, your two letters are admirably written; and you have obtained great merit and reputation for the gallant stand you have made for your friend." The Colonel himself wrote (August 20,1774): "I cannot sufficiently thank you, my dear sir, for the extraordinary zeal, activity, and warmth of friendship, with which you so strenuously supported and defended ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... Grand Vizier, Mehemed Emin Aali Pasha, decorated with my Imperial Order of the Medjidiye of the first class, and with the Order of Personal Merit; may God grant to you greatness, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... of this song is the precision with which each character enters and joins the slowly increasing circle. But that is its only merit. It is wretched doggrel, and would make the play far too tedious. I was, however, interested ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... person whom he remembered having received during those two months of slow recovery was Doctor Chassaigne, an old friend of his father, a medical man of real merit, who, with the one ambition of curing disease, modestly confined himself to the role of the practitioner. It was in vain that the doctor had sought to save Madame Froment, but he flattered himself ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Jockies (of the above description) has, I suppose, been long extinct in Scotland; but the old remembered beggar, even in my own time, like the Baccoch, or travelling cripple of Ireland, was expected to merit his quarters by something beyond an exposition of his distresses. He was often a talkative, facetious fellow, prompt at repartee, and not withheld from exercising his powers that way by any respect of persons, his patched cloak giving him the privilege of the ancient jester. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... another for him, and presently lay down in his corner. He wondered to himself what the business could be that his companion was evidently anxious that he should hear nothing of. He might wish that he should alone have the merit of reporting it, or it might be something that it was deemed the Duke of Burgundy himself, the butchers' friend and ally, would not approve of. At any rate he was determined, if possible, to find it all out; he therefore ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... luxury, were bliss refin'd, To view the alter'd region of the mind; Where whim and mystery, like wizards, rule, And conjure wisdom from the seeming fool; Where learned heads, like old cremonas, boast Their merit soundest that are cracked the most; While Genius' self, infected with the joke, His person decks with ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... do now. I am pleased that you are so fully convinced of my candour, for to know that you suspected me of a deficiency in this virtue would grieve and mortify me beyond expression. I do not derive any merit from the possession of it, for in me it is constitutional. Yet I think where it is possessed it will rarely exist alone, and where it is wanted there is reason to doubt the existence of almost every other virtue. As ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... that are justified, and is inherent therein."(974) "That justice which is called ours, because we are justified from its being inherent in us, that same is (the justice of God) because it is infused into us by God, through the merit of Christ."(975) "If any one saith that men are justified ... to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost and is inherent in them,... let him be anathema."(976) Hence Justification is defined by the ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... is no guilt in him, for that, from the day of his coming into the world, he hath seen neither ease nor joyance, and indeed his favour is faded and his charms changed [with long prison]. What is his offence that he should merit this punishment? Indeed, it is others than he who were to blame, and God hath given thee the victory over them, and there is no fault in this poor wight.' Quoth Belehwan, 'Indeed, it is as ye say; but I am fearful of his craft and am not assured from his mischief; belike the most part of the ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... That on her own merit she might rise to the first rank of musicians, Alma did not doubt. Her difficulty lay in the thought that it might require a long time, a wearisome struggle, to gain the universal recognition which alone would satisfy her. Therefore must Cyrus Redgrave be brought to the exertion of all his influence, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... are entitled to confer degrees as a measure of honor the college wishes to bestow on men and women of merit. This privilege has been so much abused by some colleges that a little confusion arises as to the true value and significance of the degrees conferred. In 1890, there were 8,290 degrees conferred in course ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... in an arena outside of which each lords it in his own way. Education, equally distributed through the masses, brings the son of a porter into a government office to decide the fate of some man of merit or some landed proprietor whose door-bell his father may have answered. The last comer is therefore on equal terms with the oldest veteran in the service. A wealthy supernumerary splashes his superior as he drives his tilbury ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Robespierre, &c.; tragedies which never reached the stage, Brutus et Cassius, Philippe deux, Tibere; translations from Sophocles and Lessing, from Gray and Horace, from Tacitus and Aristotle; with elegies, dithyrambics and Ossianic rhapsodies. As a satirist he possessed great merit, though he sins from an excess of severity, and is sometimes malignant and unjust. He is the chief tragic poet of the revolutionary period, and as Camille Desmoulins expressed it, he decorated Melpomene with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... of course, that home exercises have the merit of being cheap. No special apparatus is required. The ordinary household furniture and such heirlooms as are readily available will usually suffice. An onyx clock will do instead of chest weights. Any two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica will take the place of dumb-bells or Indian ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... north of Phoenicia, and not in the south, in the neighbourhood, not of Tyre and Sidon, but of Marathus and Aradus. Two of them, known as the Meghazil,[673] form a group which is very remarkable, and which, if we may trust the restoration of M. Thobois,[674] must have had considerable architectural merit. Situated very near each other, on the culminating point of a great plateau of rock, they dominate the country far and wide, and attract the eye from a long distance. One seems to have been in much simpler and ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... an approximation and unnatural alliance of sects, that I am inclined to think the evil thus produced would more than outweigh the good done by dispersing the Bibles. I think the last fifty or sixty pages of my brother's pamphlet[66] merit the serious consideration of all persons of the Established Church who have connected themselves with the sectaries ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the profession; for, how can a man give judicious directions unless he possesses personal knowledge of the details requisite to effect his ultimate purpose in the best and cheapest manner? It has happened to me more than once, when taking opportunities of being useful to a young man of merit, that I have experienced opposition in taking him from his books and drawings, and placing a mallet, chisel, or trowel in his hand, till, rendered confident by the solid knowledge which experience only can bestow, he was qualified to insist on the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... exalted station. A bishop was then not often selected because he could preach well, but because he knew how to govern. Who, even in our times, would think of filling the See of London, although it is Protestant, with a man whose chief merit is in his eloquence? They want a business man for such a post. Eloquence is no objection, but executive ability is ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... the Retreat, an American physician of celebrity in the department of Psychological Medicine says, "Merit of this kind is seldom duly appreciated by the world, for it does not strike the imagination like that of brilliant discoveries in the physical sciences, and the very reason that reforms like that in question are so obviously sanctioned ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... the merit of truthfully describing the principal events of Miss Anthony's life and presenting her opinions on the various matters considered. She has objected to the eulogies, but the writer holds that, as these are ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... external embellishments of superior importance to mental or moral endowments. He rarely fails to remark upon men not so well dressed as himself, and to refer to the defect as one sufficient to make the individual contemptible, no matter what may be the circumstances or merit of the person referred to. I have more than once noticed that Charles Wilton passes over every thing in his disgust for ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... come to speech: it is much easier to speak of them than of ideas; and they are sometimes much more pressing with some! Nay, for another thing, may not this religious reticence, in these devout good souls, be perhaps a merit, and sign of health in them? Jocelin, Eadmer, and such religious men, have as yet nothing of 'Methodism;' no Doubt or even root of Doubt. Religion is not a diseased self-introspection, an agonising inquiry: their duties are clear to them, the way of supreme good plain, indisputable, and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... mistaken his man. On the very first occasion when he had attempted to put on the screw, Farnie had flatly refused to have anything to do with what he proposed. He said that he was not Monk's fag—a remark which had the merit of being absolutely true. ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... Quebec. General Carleton has gained honour by his behaviour this winter. He showed himself a brave steady officer careful not to expose rashly the lives of his men, in short a chief whom we esteem and cheerfully obey. Lieut. Colonel Maclean has likewise great merit in having contributed much to the preservation of this place by his forwarding the reparations of the fortifications and his indefatigable care and trouble in the directing the duty of the Garrison, together ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... veins both of humor and of stoicism, gave her man of genius exactly what he wanted. She survived him for many years, living her own life at Eastbourne, climbing Beachy Head in all weathers, interested in everything, and writing poems of little or no technical merit, but raised occasionally by sheer intensity of feeling—about her husband—into something very near the real thing. I quote these lines from a privately printed ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the merit of introducing some of the principal actors in this drama, and of exhibiting their individual interests; we shall thus be enabled to show the dangers which surrounded the General comte de Montcornet at the moment when this ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... department and receive a salary. In four years the commission saved the city a million dollars. Des Moines, Iowa, added to the Galveston plan the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, put in force a merit system for subordinate officials, and adopted the non-partisan open primary. These experiments proved so popular that in 1908-9 not less than one hundred and thirty-eight cities, including most of the large ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... tale might have had the merit of truth; it certainly lacked that of brevity. He talked on, rolling a fresh cigarette at every second sentence, and Gerald made notes of such points as he considered important, but at the conclusion of the Spaniard's statement the journalist could not see that it had differed ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... twenty thousand men killed in a battle, with no other feeling than that 'it was a glorious victory.' Twenty thousand, or ten thousand, what reck we of their sufferings? The hosts who perished are evidence of the completeness of the triumph; and the completeness of the triumph is the measure of merit, and the glory of the conqueror. Our schoolmasters, and the immoral books they so often put into our hands, have inspired us with an affection for heroes; and the hero is more heroic in proportion to the numbers of the slain—add a cypher, not one iota is added to our disapprobation. ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... number[33] of the Port Folio we inserted a very humorous parody of the following ballad of Buerger. We understand from the criticks in the German Language that the original is eminently beautiful. Its merit was once so highly appreciated in England that a host of translators started at once in the race for public favor. The ensuing version which is, we believe, by Sir Walter Scott, Esqr., well deserves ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... [Rose,] daughter of the celebrated Arabic poet Nasif el Yazijy, who aided Dr. Eli Smith in the translation of the Bible into Arabic. She is now a member of the Evangelical Church in Beirut. She herself has written several poems of rare merit; one an elegy upon the death of Dr. Smith; another expressing grateful thanks to Dr. Van Dyck for attending her sick brother. Only this can be introduced here, a poem lamenting the death of Sarah Huntington Bistany, daughter of Raheel, ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... more than 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, ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... better with us than it did with our predecessors. Hence it follows that in the provinces of the natural sciences, in mathematics, astronomy, mechanics and geography the sages of our college have produced works of unsurpassed merit. Indeed the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cried, "hearken ere you strike. You can kill me if you will who are justly angered, and to die at your hands is an honour that I do not merit. Yet, dread lord, remember that if you slay me then you will never find ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... tale—the first she had ever read in her life—but she had only known life for two months past. Hence the effect produced on her by this work must not be judged by ordinary rules. Without prejudice of any kind as to the greater or less merit of this composition from the pen of a Parisian who had thus imported into the province the manner, the brilliancy, if you will, of the new literary school, it could not fail to be a masterpiece to a young girl abandoning all her intelligence and her innocent heart to her first ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... old, and I say there is no love between us," he observed, "but it is by no doing of mine that you are here. Nevertheless, your response to this merciful tender shows but too plainly how well you merit your position." ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... restorative effect. I have never heard of a physician's recommending a course of one-night stands as a rest cure to nervously exhausted patients, but I am inclined to think the idea has its merits, for all that. Certainly the regime was, for a while, beneficial to Rose. The merit of it was that it offered some sort of occupation for practically all ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... we would not bear it all," he remarked, "but grow impatient and exacting like children who rise in the night to examine the Christmas stocking, rather than wait until morning. Most often we should join those we loved rather than bide our time if we were certain. Moreover, what merit would there be in faith or fortitude? No, Miriam, it is best as it is, believe me. Every thing is for the best that God has done; we must not dare to question the ways any more than the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... as a brother and a friend, in consideration of the hearty friendship which we bear you, and of which we are willing to give you proof. We desire the same part in your friendship, considering that we believe it to be our merit, being of the same dignity with yourself. We conjure you thus in the quality of a brother. Adieu." The present consisted, in the first place, of one single ruby made into a cup, about half a foot high, an inch thick, and filled with round pearls of half a dram each. 2. Of the skin of a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... father shook his fist at him. Secure in his position, Melons redoubled his exertions and at last landed Tommy on the roof. Then it was that the humiliating fact was disclosed that Tommy had been acting in collusion with Melons. He grinned delightedly back at his parents, as if "by merit raised to that bad eminence." Long before the ladder arrived that was to succor him, he became the sworn ally of Melons, and, I regret to say, incited by the same audacious boy, "chaffed" his own flesh and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Bonaparte, that it is difficult to appraise the importance of either, from the point of view of the progress of civilization and of the organization of modern political institutions, at its true worth. The faults of both are prominent and outstanding, but it nevertheless was the merit of the Revolution that it enabled France, and along with France a good portion of western Europe, to rid itself of the worst survivals of the Middle Ages, while to Napoleon much of western Europe is indebted for the foundation of its civil institutions, unified legal ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... registering manometer does not give so accurate indications, perhaps, but it possesses, as an offset, the merit of being very portable and easily put in place; and, besides, it inscribes the hour at which ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... have been more disposed to concealment than his sterner companion, did the circumstances very well admit of its adoption. But he had tact enough to discover that equivocation would be useless, at that moment, and he made a merit of necessity by imitating a frankness, which, in the case of Hutter, was the offspring of habits of indifference acting on a disposition that was always ruthless, and reckless of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... had spent many long, desolate Sunday afternoons thinking how lonely it would be in Heaven with nobody there but God and the angels and the Starr family. Even the family, it seemed, was not to be admitted as an entity, but separately, according to individual merit. Grandmother and Aunt Matilda had many a wordy battle as to who would be there and who wouldn't, but both were sadly agreed that Frank ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... it," writes the historian De Thou respecting the battle of Sainte Gemme, "as La Noue, the most generous of men, who has written on the civil wars with as much fidelity as judgment, always disposed to render conspicuous the merit of others, and very reserved respecting his own, has not said a word of this victory." De Thou, iv. (liv. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... he would propitiate those whom he had injured, and at the same time accumulate such an amount of merit for his benevolence, that the gods would make it easy for him when his time of reckoning came, and the accounts of his life were made ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... succession gain'd your crown, (Cowards are monarchs by that title made,) Part of your merit Chance would call her own, And half your virtues ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the first picture to dazzle and astonish by gorgeous variety, Paul in his seems to wish to get his effect by simplicity, and has produced the most noble harmony that can be conceived. Many more works are there that merit notice,—a singularly clever, brilliant, and odious Jordaens, for example; some curious costume-pieces; one or two works by the Belgian Raphael, who was a very Belgian Raphael, indeed; and a long gallery ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... giving of material or metaphysical aid, as of health, eternal youth, fine senses, arts of healing, magical power, and prophecy. The boy believes there is a teacher who can sell him wisdom. Churches believe in imputed merit. But, in strictness, we are not much cognizant of direct serving. Man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. The aid we have from others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... desire to acknowledge the aid which has been readily extended to my undertaking by the Delegate from Minnesota— Hon. HENRY M. RICE— whose faithful and unwearied services— I will take the liberty to add— in behalf of the territory, merit the highest praise. I am also indebted for valuable information to EARL S. GOODRICH, Esq., editor of the Daily Pioneer (St. ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... haue made mention. In returning at the end of the plaine are the abouesaid 4. pillers, to wit, two on ech side of the way, through the midst whereof they say it is needfull that euery one passe, saying, that who so passeth without looseth all that merit which in his pilgrimage he had gotten. Also from the mountaine of pardons vntill they be passed the said pillers none dare looke backward, for feare least the sinnes which he hath left in the mountains returne to him againe. Being past these pillers ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... scrambling in a molasses barrel works hard," observed Ogilvy—"if you see any merit in ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... on her whom he had called a saint. And what could have led him to suppose that the woman condemned by good Father Lemaistre and my Lord of Beauvais was not a bad woman? The truth is that in the presence of these friars he arrogated to himself merit for having executed a witch and taken pains therein, wherefore he came to ask for his pot of wine. One of the monks, who happened to be a friar preacher, Brother Pierre Bosquier, forgot himself so ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... protested against the overweening assumptions of bees. He didn't at all see why the busy bee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn't do it— nobody asked him. It was not necessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes. If every confectioner went buzzing about the world banging against everything that came in his way and egotistically calling upon everybody to take notice that he was going to his work ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... with the end-rime—in the third scene, when the Weird Sisters speak. Again, there is the staff-rime when Banquo addresses them. Again, the strongest alliteration, combined with the end-rime, runs all through the Witches' spell-song in Act iv, scene 1. This feature in Shakspeare appears to me to merit closer investigation; all the more so because a less regular alliteration, but still a marked one, is found in not a few passages of a number of his plays. Only one further instance of the systematic employment of alliteration may here be noted in passing. It is in Ariel's songs in the ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... issued) under his arm. Seeing me some way off, he held aloft the volumes and began to shout in great glee. When I came up to him he cried out, "Here is the very best I can do, and I am carrying it to Prescott as a reward of merit for having given me my first dinner in America. I stand by this book, and am willing to leave it, when ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... very glad to find how much I like it—that is speaking far below the mark—I may say how I wonder and delight in it. I am rejoiced to find that this is so; and I am quite sure that it is not owing to my old prejudice, but to the intrinsic merit and beauty of the Book itself. With all its faults of detail, often mere carelessness, what a broad Shakespearian Daylight over it all, and all with no Effort, and—a lot else that one may be contented to feel without having to write an ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... protection—and market commissioners who superintended the currency (in kind), commerce, the genuineness of wares, the justness of weights and measures, the prices of commodities, and the observance of prohibitions. Since to all official posts men of merit were appointed without regard to lineage, the cap-ranks inaugurated by Prince Shotoku were abolished, inasmuch as they designated personal status by inherited right only, and they were replaced by new cap-grades, nineteen in all, which were distinguished partly by their borders, partly by ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... aiding, assisting, abetting, and comforting the generals and other officers, civil and military, of the said King, to enforce his authority in and over this State, and the good people of the same: And whereas the aforesaid treason, and other atrocious crimes, justly merit forfeiture ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... a special kind of means with which he works, requiring knowledge and dexterity; but it may be assumed that in addition to his ability to express himself he has something to say. We may test a man's merit as a painter by his ability to paint. As an artist his greatness is to be judged with reference to the greatness of his ideas; and in his capacity as artist his technical skill derives its value from the measure in which it is adequate to their expression. In the ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... slightest claim,—I run the risk of passing for a hare-brained fellow, in case I prove to be mistaken: he plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in return for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having divined ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... from Giacomi at Chiavenna, special qualities of wine, the produce of certain vineyards, are to be obtained. Up to the present time this wine trade has been conducted with simplicity and honesty by both the dealers and the growers. One chief merit of Valtelline wine is that it is pure. How long so desirable a state of things will survive the slow but steady development of an export business may ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... is still further to be noted, as an expression of the Christian temper, as displayed in this kind of charity, that it never appears in the inscriptions as furnishing a claim for praise, or as being regarded as a peculiar merit. There is no departure from the usual simplicity of the gravestones in those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... written remarks in prose, poetry, or doggerel rhyme, so we found plenty of food for thought and some amusement before we got even half way through the volume. Some of these effusions might be described as of more than ordinary merit, and the remainder as good, bad, and indifferent. Those written in foreign languages—and there were many of them—we could neither read nor understand, but they gave us the impression that the fame of John o' Groat's had spread throughout the civilised world. There ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... only claim To merit, not to seek for fame, The good and just to please, A state above the fear of want, Domestic love, Heaven's choicest grant, Health, ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... without any merit save to advance the interest of a patentee, or contractor, or railroad company, will become a law, while measures of interest to the whole people are suffered to slumber, and die at the close of the session from sheer neglect. It is known to Congressmen that these lobbyists are paid to influence ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that style which no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest perfection the idiomatic powers ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various |
