Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.
Charles Baudelaire

The existence of law is one thing; its merit or demerit is another.
J. L. Austin

The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The market system requires that people be committed and willing to work hard. Inherent with that is what I call a merit system, which I think gives people the greatest opportunity.
Lee R. Raymond

The merit of a democratic regime rests on one's continual willingness to exchange views, and to compete on the basis of individual merit and capacities.
Jose Eduardo Dos Santos

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
Thomas Carlyle

The merit of our Constitution was, not that it promotes democracy, but checks it.
Horatio Seymour

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
Jonathan Swift

The sacrifices made by veterans and their willingness to fight in defense of our nation merit our deep respect and praise - and to the best in benefits and medical care.
Sue Kelly

The sufficiency of merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.
Francis Quarles

The very gradual reductions in my weight which I am able to show, may be interesting to many, and I have great pleasure in stating them, believing that they serve to demonstrate further the merit of the system pursued.
William Banting

The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.
Samuel Richardson

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
Edgar Allan Poe

There's always merit to having a debate.
Ward Churchill

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.
George Bernard Shaw

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.
Isaac Disraeli

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
George Santayana

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
Igor Stravinsky

True merit, like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes.
Edward F. Halifax