Famous quotes containing the word merit:
“Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favour. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its lustre darkened by envy and malignity.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it ... swathed from their birth, seldom exert the locomotive faculty of body or mind; and, thus viewing every thing through one medium, and that a false one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness consist.”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)