Famous quotes containing the word merit:
“Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)
“Sentimentalists ... adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel.... Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Others greater than I have already eulogized you, but none of them ever had the pleasure I had to feel the caresses of your warm, soft hands, to merit your warm embrace that was reserved only for us, to see your half-smile that always told us so much, that same smile which is no longer, frozen in the grave with you.”
—Noa Ben-Artzi Philosof (b. 1978)