merit

I do not like the late resurrection of the Jesuits. . . . If ever any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth, and in hell, according to these historians, though, like Pascal, true Catholics, it is this company of Loyolas.

What [he] is apparently objecting to is that not everyone takes his beliefs seriously. Indeed, some don't seem to respect his beliefs at all, and actually poke fun at them. Well, I have news for [him]: that's the nature of a free society. Opinions don't necessarily merit respect; they must earn respect in the marketplace of ideas.

It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.

He makes his cook his merit, and the world visits his dinners and not him.

Reputation is in itself only a farthing candle, of a wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.

Of my merit On thet pint you yourself may jedge; All is, I never drink no sperit, Nor I haint never signed no pledge.

Christopher Columbus, in a letter addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, the King and Queen of Spain: ". . . But these great and marvelous results are not to be attributed to any merit of mine, but to the holy Christian faith, and to the piety and religion of our Sovereigns; for that which the unaided intellect of man could not compass, the spirit of God has granted to human exertions, for God is wont to hear the prayers of His servants who love His precepts even to the performance of apparent impossibilities . . . "Therefore, let the King and Queen, our princes and their most happy kingdoms, and all the other provinces of Christendom, render thanks to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who has granted us so great a victory . . ."

And the issue is never the merits of the evidence but always the jealous rivalry of the contestants to see which would be the official light unto the world. Right down to the present day we have been the spectators of a foolish contest between equally vain and bigoted rivals.

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

Thy modesty 's a candle to thy merit.