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More "Merit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... writer; and opinions vary as to his merit. Some say he has talent; others say it is all eccentricity and affectation. One thing is certain—his books bring about the changes he demands. And then he is in earnest; he has taken a good many ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... fancied myself the prettiest doll of my size in the place; but such conceit would not support me now. I felt that there were dozens, nay scores, who more than equalled me; and all discontented notions of my neglected merit now sunk before the dread that I had ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... if the action were so clear and proper that no man could attribute it to an improper motive? And as to the man,—is Mr. Hastings a man against whom a charge of bribery is improbable? Why, he owns it. He is a professor of it. He reduces it into scheme and system. He glories in it. He turns it to merit, and declares it is the best way of supplying the exigencies of the Company. Why, therefore, should it be held improbable?—But I cannot mention this proceeding ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... had to decide this question, not as the all-powerful conqueror of Pharsalus, but even before his departure for Epirus. But, while he permitted perhaps rather than originated this violation of legal order and of property, it is certainly his merit that that monstrous demand for the annulling of all claims arising from loans was rejected; and it may perhaps be looked on as a saving of his honour, that the debtors were far more indignant at the—according to their view extremely unsatisfactory—concession given to them than the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... school at District No. 11. Mr. James C. Cross is our teacher, and some of the scholars say he is cross by name and cross by nature, but I like him. He gave me a book by the name of Noble Deeds of American Women, for reward of merit, in my reading class. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... plead no merit of our own. We have no legal claim on the store-house of God's boundless mercy and love. But we remember that we have a Friend; that this Friend has suffered the same trials and temptations; that He knows by bitter experience just how we feel; that He deeply sympathizes with ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... reputation to the character of the writer. The publick sometimes has its favourites, whom it rewards for one species of excellence with the honours due to another. From him whom we reverence for his beneficence we do not willingly withhold the praise of genius; a man of exalted merit becomes, at once, an accomplished writer, as a beauty finds no great difficulty ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... complete victory, and sent part of his troops after those that were fled, the Sultan commanded his Vizier to be brought before him, and, in the sight of his army, asked him what merit he could challenge in the success ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... return:—There is yet another consideration, which I shall offer to the reader on this subject, and with which I shall conclude it. It is this; that no one ought to be accused of vanity until he has been found to assume to himself some extraordinary merit. This being admitted, I shall now freely disclose the views which I have always been desirous of taking of my own conduct on this occasion, in ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... Southern African Customs Union, which may equal as much as 70% of government revenue this year, and worker remittances from South Africa substantially supplement domestically earned income. Swaziland is not poor enough to merit an IMF program; however, the country is struggling to reduce the size of the civil service and control costs at public enterprises. The government is trying to improve the atmosphere for foreign investment. With an estimated 40% unemployment rate, Swaziland's need to ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... derived from conquest and armed force. It is true that, by this system, the viking, monarch, or sovereign lord, was the one who distributed the territory, won from conquered nations, among his faithful followers, and thus land and its consequence, nobility, were apparently the award of merit; but the merit in question being equivalent to success in battle, it again resolved itself into armed force. In fact, the power of feudalism proper rested in the army; the chief nobles were duces or combats (dukes ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Sylvia?' In the instances just given Schubert's choice could not have been more happily made; but this does not render it less difficult for us to understand why in so many cases he should have elected to immortalise by his music poems devoid of merit both in ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... quarters of the Scottish—his surly benevolence proceeding on the principle that, next to a man's friend, his foe was of most importance to him, passing over all the intermediate relations as too indifferent to merit even a thought. This explanation is necessary, in order that the reader may fully understand what we ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Commedia checked it. The Provencal and Italian poetry was, with the exception of some pieces of political satire, almost exclusively amatory, in the most fantastic and affected fashion. In expression, it had not even the merit of being natural; in purpose, it was trifling; in the spirit which it encouraged, it was something worse. Doubtless it brought a degree of refinement with it, but it was refinement purchased at a high price, by intellectual distortion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... town has often been wrong, and may have been so last night, in supposing that I vied successfully with your merit; but this much is certain—and here, madam, I am the best judge—that off the stage you have just conquered me. I shall wear with pride any dress you have honored, and shall feel inspired to great exertions by your presence ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... the morality of Christianity. You I know will not believe that in my case, and I know its falsehood as a general rule. I only ask, Do you think I can change the self-formed convictions of twenty-five years, and could you think such a change would have anything in it to merit reward from justice? I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions. To the mass of mankind religion of some kind is a necessity. But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Sadler, "by imitating a little bit of German organisation can hope thus to achieve a true reproduction of the spirit of German institutions. The fabric of its organisation practically forms one whole. That is its merit and its danger. It must be taken all in all or else left unimitated. And it is not a mere matter of external organisation.... National institutions must grow out of the needs and character (and not least out of the weakness) of the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... respectability, or she would remain beneath it. Respectability might be an excellent thing; surely there must be some merit in a thing about which there was so much talk, after which there was so much hankering, and to which there was such desperate clinging. But as a sole possession, as a sole ambition, it seemed thin and poor and even pitiful. She had emancipated herself from its tyranny; she would not resume the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... resigned his honourable office, and obtained leave of absence to return to his native country, bringing with him an unsolicited testimonial from Bolivar, of his heroism in the campaign of 1824. General Miller is now in England, and in circles where his merit is known, he is received with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... to the Public, was intended for publication immediately after the appearance of the "Peacock at Home," but from various causes, was laid aside till now. In the opinion of the Publisher, however, it is so nearly allied in point of merit to that celebrated Trifle, that he is induced, although at this late period, to print it with a ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... the middle of the ocean resemble certain events in life. Fatality, Chance, Providence, what matters the name? Those who quarrel over the word, admit the fact. Such are not those who, speaking of Napoleon or Caesar, say: "He was a man of Providence." They apparently believe that heroes merit the attention which Heaven shows them and that the color of purple attracts ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Karagwe slipped down upon a narrow ledge, And reaching out, caught hold the little frock, Whose folds were tangled in a bending shrub, And safely drew the child back to the cliff. The slave had favors shown him after this, Although he spoke not of the perilous deed, Nor spoke of any merit he had done. ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... heart a selfish man, and now, therefore, he felt a sullen, fierce resentment mingled with his grief. What trick was this? he asked himself. What had he done to merit such misfortune? Had he not made rich gifts to the Church? Had he not gone on foot to the shrine of Our Lady of Montserrate with a splendid votive offering—a pair of eardrops, a necklace, and a ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... praise the Lord, With body, soul and spirit, Who doth such wondrous things, Beyond our sense and merit." ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of his work the author feels considerable confidence: in its merit, as a literary production, very little. Every line of it having been written while suffering under the depressing influence of ill health, he has only aimed at a simple narrative style, without any reference to the graces of a ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... would be, whether it were more expedient to scatter free labor all over the South, or simply form large colonies at such points as might serve to effectually break up and surround the confederacy. Without venturing to decide on the final merit of either plan, we would suggest that the latter would be, for a beginning, probably most feasible. Should Virginia, certain points on the Atlantic coast, embracing the larger cities and vicinity of forts, and Texas, be largely or strongly occupied by free ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... answered promptly, with delight in his manner of speech, and a sincerity that revealed the underlying merit ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... employ this idea of liberty, nor any other, to show that man is a responsible being. This is not at all strange; the wonder is, that after having demonstrated that "the prejudice of men concerning good and evil, merit and demerit, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and deformity," are nothing but dreams, he should have felt bound to defend the position, that we may be justly punished for our offences by the Supreme Ruler of the world. His defence of this doctrine we shall lay before the reader ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... the literary taste of the metropolis began to feel the first symptoms of life. As yet, however, they were very faint. Two or three periodicals were attempted, and though of very considerable merit, and conducted by able men, none of them, I believe, reached a year's growth. The "Dublin Literary Gazette," the "National Magazine," the "Dublin Monthly Magazine," and the "Dublin University Review," all perished in their infancy—not, however, because they were unworthy ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... of this 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 ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... only wore a rather seedy and faded scout khaki uniform; while those of all his comrades were almost brand new; but he had several merit badges fastened on the left side of his ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... and poetic merit Browne's work is most astonishingly unequal, though the general level of Britannia's Pastorals is distinctly higher than that of the Shepherd's Pipe. The author passes at times abruptly from careful and loving realism to the most stilted conventionality, and ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... to defend the rights of the State. He declared that the death penalty, which on principle he disapproved, might in some instances be lawfully inflicted. Did not the crimes of some of these rebellious schismatics merit the most extreme penalty of the law? "They kill the souls of men, and the State merely tortures their bodies; they cause eternal death, and then complain when the State makes them suffer ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... that Benjamin read were Locke's "Essay on the Understanding"; "The Art of Thinking," by Messrs. de Port-Royal; Sellers & Stumey's book on "Navigation," with many others of equal merit. ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... he took what he had saved by his cheap meals and room and went to Boston with it, and for a few hours thoroughly ceased being ascetic. Yet Oscar felt meritorious when he considered Bertie and Billy; for, like the socialists, merit with him meant not being able to live as well as your neighbor. You will think that I have given to Oscar what is familiarly termed a black eye. But I was once inclined to applaud his struggle for knowledge, until I studied him close and perceived that ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... best poems are, on the whole, those that are written in blank verse; and these, though not prosaic, remind one that prose was her true medium of expression. But some of the rhymed poems have considerable merit. These may serve as ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... army. Schopenhauer, he tells us, "esteems sympathy with all that lives and suffers more highly than love for the Fatherland.... During a war a noble man desires such an issue as may be most beneficial to the whole world.... With all our readiness to recognise the merit of patriotic self-denial, we, the admirers of Schopenhauer, have to warn our compatriots, especially during a war, of the danger of patriotism degenerating into injustice, or even hatred and malicious ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... than Mackenzie and Flavelle might form a new two-man junta to operate National railways was too absurd even to merit denial. Such a partnership would merely revive the old Schoolman debate of the Middle Ages—What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? The two mentalities are incompatible. For twenty years the chief common ground between them was the Canadian ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... have not ventured to quote, and I do. I like your Apology extremely also, allowing its Point of View. I doubt you will repent of ever having showed me the Book. I should like well to have the Lithograph Copy of Omar which you tell of in your Note. My Translation has its merit: but it misses a main one in Omar, which I will leave you to find out. The Latin Versions, if they were corrected into decent Latin, would be very much better. . . . I have forgotten to write out for you a little Quatrain which ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... what the sudden change in Lady Janet's behavior toward her really meant, her one idea was to take the cruelest possible advantage of it. So far from feeling any consideration for you, she was only additionally imbittered toward you. She protested against your being permitted to claim the merit of placing her in her right position here by your own voluntary avowal of the truth. She insisted on publicly denouncing you, and on forcing Lady Janet to dismiss you, unheard, before the whole household! 'Now I can have my revenge! At ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... issues from a quarter so respectable as that which has given this reprint to the American public. Whatever may be the social or scientific standing of any influential publishing house, we must say, that in our judgment they merit a deliberate rebuke from the true science of the country, for reprinting so crude and wretched a performance, to say nothing of the low malignity which it vents against the Christian sentiment and enterprise of an age like the present,—and even against men, who stand ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... wealth. The Vanderbilts have all been hard workers and able business men. George Gould seems to be quite as great a financier as his remarkable father. The Astors are distinguished for their literary ability; William Waldorf Astor and his cousin, John Jacob, are authors of great merit. The Lees, of Virginia, have ever been distinguished for energy, intellect, and a capacity for hard work. And so we might cite a hundred examples to prove that even in America, want is not the ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... same faith, as a young lady in the last century read a new novel and a tavern-haunter in this reads the news. It is natural, with such foundations, to ask whether popularity is fame, for it often happens that very slender names come to be popular from many causes with which merit or genius has no sort of connection or kindred. It may be some oddity in the manner, or incident in the life, of the author that is whispered over before his book comes out. This often macadamizes the way to popularity, for gossip is a mighty spell in ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... book are high, and the story itself has great merit and power, and can be heartily recommended as a book very ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... the presence of an artiste of merit, who had given herself without calculation and who loved him for himself alone, how, without wounding her heart and her dignity, could he break violently a chain so light yesterday, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... will be a better governor than I could have been. He is an older, wiser, more experienced statesman. I am conscious that I have been over-rated by the people who love me. I was elected for my popularity, not for my merit. And now—I am not even the man that I was—my life seems torn out of my bosom. Oh, Cora, Cora! life of my life! But you shall be happy, dear one! free and happy after a little while. Ah! I know your gentle heart. ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... most of all where there had been most of genius. A vast portion of literature became instantly worthless, and was transformed into so much waste-paper. It was almost impossible to look into any book of any merit, and read ten pages together, without coming to some provoking erasures and mutilations, some "hiatus valde deflendi," which made whole passages perfectly unintelligible. Many of the sweetest passages of Shakspeare were converted into unmeaning nonsense, from the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... of the belles of Philadelphia. Dr. Hill having accomplished his business, we set out from Kaskia at 2 o'clock, after bidding a friendly farewell to many new friends made in this place. I must confess I found a few possessing so much more merit than I anticipated that I parted with them reluctantly. Traveled twelve miles, and arrived at Mme. LeCount's. We supped with a tableful of French. Not one of them could speak English. Pumpkins, spoiled venison ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... greatly touched by your confidence and I shall do everything I can think of to merit ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... and he felt no inferior temptations. Your born gentleman is certainly, for this world's purposes, a more valuable being than your "Crump, with his grunting resistance to his native devils," even though in God's sight the latter may, as the Catholic theologians say, be rolling up great stores of 'merit.' ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... are of two classes, and merit particular attention. The windward or Mandingo, a tall, long-horned, beautiful animal, the type of the Herefordshire; and the leeward or Golah, a short-legged, short-horned, heavy-bodied, broad-backed ox, the exact conformation of ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... science is, as we have said, a system of the names of Kinds. These names, like other class-names, are defined by the enumeration of the characters distinctive of the class. The only merit which a set of names can have beyond this, is to convey, by the mode of their construction, as much information as possible: so that a person who knows the thing, may receive all the assistance which the name can give in remembering what he knows; while he who knows it not, may receive as much ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... "is that, of all others, which imposes the most extensive obligations upon those who have had the confidence to make choice of it; and indeed there is no other path of life in which the unassumed superiority of individual merit is more conspicuously distinguished according to the respective abilities of the parties. The laurels that grow within these precincts are to be gathered with no vulgar hands; they resist the unhallowed grasp, like the golden branch ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... conceivable, leads of necessity to the descent theory. We have either to reject, once for all, such an attempt, as an unscientific playing with impossibilities, or to accept the idea of descent. It is certainly the lasting merit of Darwin, even if his whole structure of proofs should in the course of time show itself weak, that he not only had the courage (as others had before him), but also inspired scientists with the courage to trace the idea of a descent of species in a ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... veered around, and faith became now, as consecration had been before, the pole-star toward which this earnest and clever woman aimed. With such a mind as hers the topic under consideration becomes for the time supreme. Solemnly insisting on a renunciation of all possibility of merit as a condition precedent to faith, she proceeded to exalt belief itself into the most meritorious of acts. This sort of paradox is common to all ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... ourselves exerting acts of repulsion, approximation, etc." But to Maine de Biran, often called the French Kant, to Schopenhauer, and, finally, to our own British psychologists, Brown, Hamilton, Bain, Spencer, is especially due the merit of seeing the paramount importance of the active side of experience. To this then primarily, and not to any merely {54} intellectual function, we may safely refer the category ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... see it,' I said. I had already eyed the nags all round, and assured myself that, ugly and blemished as they were, they were up to their work. But I had discerned no special merit among them. I looked them over again now, and came to the same conclusion—that, except the led horses, which I had chosen with some care, there was nothing among them to vie with the Cid, either in speed or looks. I told ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... was the practical sympathy the world had shown to Belgium in her days of distress. It put such stimulation into the nation that it felt it had to make good to merit the world's high regards. ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... silly men; that he may vilify him by them. And they, bold fools as they are, will not spare to spit in his face. They will rail at his person, and deny the very being of it; they will rail at his blood, and deny the merit and worth of it. They will deny the very end why he accomplished the law, and by jiggs, and tricks, and quirks, which he helpeth them to, they set up fond names and images in his place, and give the glory of a Saviour to them. Thus Satan worketh under the name of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... painful to have to single out honesty as a special merit in a missionary work; but the temptation to filch away the good name of a Pagan community is very formidable, and few even among lay travellers have done as faithful justice to the Chinese character as Mr. Doolittle. He fully recognizes the extended charities of the Chinese and their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... and hostile fortune; whence it is clearly manifest that she acknowledges as her children those who depend upon her without the aid of any talent, since it pleases her to exalt by her favour certain men who would never be known through their own merit; which is seen in Pinturicchio of Perugia, who, although he made many works and was assisted by various helpers, nevertheless had a much greater name than his works deserved. However, he was a man who had much practice in large works, and ever kept many assistants to aid him ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... raise, he undertook to conquer Bohemia and Moravia, to surprise Vienna, and drive his master, the Emperor, before him into Italy. Welcome as was this unexpected proposition, its extravagant promises were naturally calculated to excite suspicion. Gustavus Adolphus was too good a judge of merit to reject with coldness the offers of one who might be so important a friend. But when Wallenstein, encouraged by the favourable reception of his first message, renewed it after the battle of Breitenfeld, and pressed for a decisive answer, ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the covers. These few technical hints will serve to acquaint the book-lover with some at least of the many important features which must be regarded in the preparation of a fine book,—a book fitted to demand and merit a place upon the library shelves of discriminating bibliophiles, and as well increase in demand and price whenever thereafter its copies ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... on with your sacred carpet," said he. "I am talking to Barbara. I have already ascertained your—your lack of views on the subject. I was saying, Barbara, that mere originality is not a merit." ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... GOLDEN DAYS.—"To merit is to insure success" is certainly verified in the publication of GOLDEN DAYS, by James Elverson, Philadelphia. This admirable weekly for the youth of this great land is now well established and has a large and ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... volumes 4to., at London, the year before. There is good reason for saying. that no account of this voyage can be held complete, that is not materially aided by these two productions, which, with sundry imperfections, and perhaps vices, have very great merit, and are highly interesting. They are accordingly, as well as the work of Mr Wales, freely used for the purpose of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... presence wherever he went. Thinking it a mark of distinction, the Dog grew proud of his bell and went tinkling it all over the marketplace. One day an old hound said to him: "Why do you make such an exhibition of yourself? That bell that you carry is not, believe me, any order of merit, but on the contrary a mark of disgrace, a public notice to all men to avoid you ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... afternoon. The men who were watching to see me give up grew more and more interested as the miles rolled out and the First Sergeant was very fearful for his record for which he has been recommended for the certificate of merit. The Captain was very much pleased and all the men came and spoke to me. It must have been a good ride for Tyler who is a fifth year man was so tired that he paid a man to do his sentry duty. We slept at Captain Hunter's camp that last night and we both came on this morning, ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... first in merit and command! And you the peers and princes of the land! May every joy be yours! nor this the least, When due libation shall have crown'd the feast, Safe to my home to send your happy guest. Complete are now the bounties you have given, Be all those bounties but confirm'd ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... be established in his life-profession by his thirtieth year, it can hardly be said that the average New York young man in business is successful. Of course, this is measured entirely from the standpoint of income. It is true that a young man may not, in every case, receive the salary his services merit, but, as a general rule, his income is a pretty accurate indication ...
— The Young Man in Business • Edward W. Bok
... symbolical truth, couched in language of the school of Bulwer Lytton or Marie Corelli. So, after the youth had gone, he seized the roll of manuscript, for the purpose of glancing through it. If he had imagined the story of any merit, he would not have been in such haste; but as his best friend had introduced the writer, he thought he would like to get a disagreeable task over ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... of "Literature, Ancient and Modern," coupled with the name of its most vigilant champion, Mr. SHORTER said that he was indeed happy to be on soil hallowed by association with so many writers of merit. To name them would be invidious, but he might say that he had enjoyed the pleasure of intimate correspondence with a large number of them, all of whom had testified to the value which they set upon his friendship. Although he looked upon himself as the least of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... merit was overlooked, and wishes to atone, and more than atone, for her forgetfulness," ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... Articles of War: "If any person in the Navy shall pusillanimously cry for quarter, he shall suffer death." Thus, with death before his face from the foe, and death behind his back from his countrymen, the best valour of a man-of-war's-man can never assume the merit of a noble spontaneousness. In this, as in every other case, the Articles of War hold out no reward for good conduct, but only compel the sailor to fight, like a hired murderer, for his pay, by digging his grave before his eyes if ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... can you look for from such a troop as this? Messer Gonzaga cannot have expected me to enlist acolytes for a business that he told me bordered upon outlawry. Touching their drunkenness and the trifle of rioting, what soldiers have not these faults? When they have them not, neither have they merit. The man that is tame in times of peace is a skulking woman in times of war. For the rest, whence came the wine they drank? It was of Messer ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... malady subsided. I felt myself likewise at ease in places where I saw children only. At the sight of any one walking up to the place where I was, I felt my whole frame agitated, and retired. I often said to myself, 'My sole study has been to merit well of mankind; why do I ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of melody and feeling, and what have we in their stead? The glitter and plagiarism of Rossini, the ponderous science of Weber, and the absolute trash of all our English composers. The last mentioned gentlemen certainly came into court "in forma pauperis,"—satisfied with the merit of arrangers, harmonizers, &c., and are found to confess, when detection is probable, that the very soul of their pieces—the melody[5]—is taken from such an Italian, such a Sicilian, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... of 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 ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... their places solely as the reward of partisan service, and from the corrupting influence of those who promise and the vicious methods of those who expect such rewards; and those who worthily seek public employment have the right to insist that merit and competency shall be recognized instead of party subserviency or the surrender of honest ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... other hand, took all the merit of the case to himself; for as soon as his patient had opened his eyes, he exclaimed, "Did I not tell you so?" and in proportion as the draught operated, he went on exulting thus: "There, there, see the efficacy of my prescription! Had it not been for me, you would have seen the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... No, don Rafael Brull was a gentleman with a District all his own: he came with a clean, undisputed and indisputable certificate of election, whether his own party or the Opposition were in the saddle. For lack of other discoverable merit in him, his fellow-partisans would say: "Brull is one of the few who come here on honest returns." His name did not figure brilliantly in the Congressional record, but there was not an employee, not a journalist, not a member of the "ex-honorables" who, on noticing the word "Brull" on all the committees, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... out in life fully determined to depend chiefly on yourself, for pecuniary support; and to be in this respect, independent. In a country where the general rule is that a person shall rise,—if he rise at all,—by his own merit, such a resolution is indispensable. It is usually idle to be looking out for support from some other quarter. Suppose you should obtain a place of office or trust through the friendship, favor, or affection of others; what then? Why, you hold your post at uncertainties. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... prevailed among primitive peoples. Children followed the mother, took their name from her, and inherited property through her. I have known a Hawaiian nobleman who, commenting on this fact, said that the system had merit in that no child could be called a bastard, and that the woman, who suffered most, was rewarded by pride of posterity. He himself, he said, was the son of a chieftess, but his father, a king, was the son of a ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... had merit, or why should Lord Brougham, in the great "Edinburgh Review," go after it with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... selected for illustration confirm the view that such pieces often lack artistic merit, the collection nevertheless reveals the deeds—in war, politics, technology, diplomacy, sports—that our forebears deemed worthy of special recognition. And it helps to bring alive some figures now submerged in ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... Whether Buonaparte himself ever thought 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 ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... have yielded allegiance thereto, you will find, when few generations have passed, that men have clean forgotten what and who it was that made that cause triumphant, and ignorantly will set up for honour the name of a traitor or an impostor, or attribute to a great man as a merit deeds and thoughts which he spent a long ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... object in question was an ancient casket (one of his father's bargains); inside the casket reposed an old-fashioned carbuncle brooch, set in silver (another of his father's bargains)—bridal presents both, possessing the inestimable merit of leaving his money undisturbed in his pocket. He shook his head portentously when the captain inquired after his health and spirits. He had passed a wakeful night; ungovernable apprehensions of Lecount's sudden re-appearance ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... fell upon the Earl of Surrey, son of the conqueror of Flodden. Surrey's survey of the field soon convinced him to his own satisfaction that no half measures was likely to be of any avail. The plan proposed by him had certainly the merit of being sufficiently sweeping. Ireland was to be entirely reconquered. District was to be taken after district, and fortresses to be built to hold them according as they were conquered. The occupation was thus to be pushed steadily on ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... advancement; and I have been assured, that had the marechal taken half the pains on the day previous to the battle of Rasbach, we should not have left it so disgracefully. The king well knew the unfortunate chevalier for a man as destitute of modesty as merit; when therefore he saw his book upon the mantel-piece of my drawing-room, he said, 'So! you are the inspiring muse of the chevalier de la Morliere; I only warn you, when the day comes for him to be hanged, not to ask me to pardon him." "Be assured," replied I, "that I will never deprive ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... thank you,' said the father, throwing much dignity into the expression of obligation which he meant to convey. 'The time may perhaps come when you will learn what it is to have obliged one of my condition. As to the lady, she has the highest merit, and nothing can be said of her justly which would not redound to her praise. Nevertheless—in short, sir, we wander at present as in a morning mist—the sun will, I trust, soon rise and dispel it, when all that now seems mysterious will be fully revealed—or ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... his young assistants, Signor Ognibene, arrange a great mass of letters and despatches which promised to be of use to me, lent me the index, and supplied me with copies. Therefore, if this work has any merit, no small part of it is due to Signor ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... the plague was in the city, and he was fain that I should put myself beyond danger from the same. Even now my tears rise when I think of his goodwill towards me. But, my father, I will do all the justice I can to thy merit and to thy paternal care; and, as long as these pages may be read, so long shall thy name and thy virtues be celebrated. He was a man not to be corrupted by any offering whatsoever, and indeed a saint. But I myself was left after his death involved ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... the Bearer of this Letter and Mr Dalton his Companion, are travelling as far as Maryland. They are Gentlemen of Fortune and Merit; and will be greatly disappointed if they should miss the Pleasure of seeing the common Friend of America, The Pennsylvania Farmer. Allow me, Sir, to recommend them to you, and to assure you that I am with ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... fabulous, imperfect, or contradictory evidence, at all times so necessary to a traveller, and indispensably so at the period when he travelled, and in most of the countries where his enquiries and his researches were carried on. His great and characteristic merit consists in freeing his mind from the opinions which must have previously occupied it;—in trusting entirely either to what e himself saw, or to what he learned from the best authority;—always, however, bringing the information acquired in this latter mode to the test ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... him, the other young men who were received as much as ever, even though people, the girls themselves, practically knew of what they did, knew that they were often drunk, and that they frequented the society of abandoned women. What had he done to merit this casting off? What could he have done? He even went so far as to wonder if there was anything wrong about his ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... "I thank you for the encouragement of your kindly greeting and for the many pleasant things you have said of me and my work. In the future I shall strive conscientiously to merit your praise, and hope to earn your lasting friendship. As to the glad tidings from my parents in spirit life, I am rejoiced. In my heart the torch of hope is lighted; its pure flame is fast burning away the barriers of the belief I have so ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... your merit towards the United States, but unable adequately to reward it, determined to present you with a sword, as a small mark of their grateful acknowledgment: they directed it to be ornamented with suitable devices. Some of the principal actions of the war, in which ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... it was with her and with him, and, let his countenance say what it might to the contrary, he could bring himself to forgive her in his heart. She had not forgotten him! She had not ceased to love him! There was merit in that which went far with him in ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... the event of the season, an event that filled the boys' brains, seniors and juniors, for weeks before it took place, and brought forth a rebuke from the Doctor one morning at breakfast, for the masters were reporting that the papers sent in by the boys were very much wanting in merit. There was a report, too, going about that Monsieur Brohanne had been seen walking up and down the class-room tearing his hair—a most serious matter in his case, for it ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... thrown herself heart and soul into the task of planning and setting in motion a routine for two year-and-a-half-old babies, she found herself straightening up and saying "What next?" And realizing, that as far as this job was concerned, there was no "next." The supreme merit of her care, from now on, would be—barring emergencies—the placid continuation of that routine. There were no heroics about motherhood—save in emergency, once more. It was a question of remembering a hundred trivial details, and executing them in the same way ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... with his own, and use them as if they were his own, to be dealt with at his pleasure and so availed of as to make the whole most valuable for the purposes intended. He claims, therefore, little of the merit of authorship, and has not cared to distinguish his own from that which he has taken from other sources, being quite willing that every portion of the book, in turn, may be regarded as borrowed from some ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... it was. She remembered the house party they had planned on the crest of their exuberance; she remembered a room full of men to whose less exhilarated moments she and Anthony were of no importance, and Anthony's boast of the transcendent merit and seclusion of the gray house, that it was so isolated that it didn't matter how much noise went on there. Then Dick, who had visited them, cried enthusiastically that it was the best little house imaginable, and that they were idiotic not ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... ought never to feel good. We are but unprofitable servants at best. There is no merit in doing your duty; only you would have been a poor wretched creature not to do as you did. And now, instead of making yourself miserable over the consequences of it, you ought to bear them like a man, with courage and hope, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... graving, and having its whole surface covered with an involved and rich ornamental design. Its eyes were, or seemed to be rubies, and saddle and bridle and housing were studded with small gems. There was little merit in the art of it beyond the engraving, but Cosmo saw the eyes of the lady fixed upon it, with a strange look ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... to admit any change of this kind. If you could have believed them,—and the poor people told as many lies as they could to make you,—you would believe that nothing had ever happened of a commonplace nature in this castle. The taking-off of Hugo and Parisina they think the great merit of the castle; and one of them, seeing us, made haste to light his taper and conduct us down to the dungeons where those unhappy lovers were imprisoned. It is the misfortune of memorable dungeons to acquire, when put upon show, just ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the spoiled child of fortune; and as Bonaparte, like our former Cardinal Mazarin, has more confidence in fortune than in merit, he is, perhaps, more indebted to the former than to the latter for his present situation; his familiarity has made him disliked at our Imperial Court, where he never addresses Napoleon and Madame Bonaparte as an Emperor ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... pensively on her cushions, ruffling the feathers of her pretty bonnet, and looked at the people who passed her. That flash of a great and hitherto resigned soul reached her sensibilities. What was Adam's merit in her eyes? It was natural enough to have courage and generosity. But Thaddeus—surely Thaddeus possessed, or seemed to possess, some great superiority over Adam. They were dangerous thoughts which took ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... mind: it is doubtful, however, whether any work of art ought to be so contemplated. Its excellence can only be estimated by the degree of emotion it produces; how then can an unimpassioned examination ever form a true estimate of its merit? When such an inspection of any work of art can be carried through, there is generally some fault either in the thing criticized or in the critic; for the distinctive characteristic of art is, that it is addressed to our human nature, and ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... went on Dick, "because, after the fashion of kings, you are unjust. You praise me for my shooting, whereas you should praise God, seeing that it is no merit of mine, but a gift He gave me at my birth in place of much which He withheld. Moreover, my master there," and he pointed to Hugh, "who has just done you better service than hitting a clout in the red and ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... deepen your convictions, if you are deluded by that notion of merit; deepen your convictions, if you see your own evil so clearly that you see little else. Come into the light, come into the liberty, rise to that great thought, 'Not by works of righteousness which we have done, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... among the urgent wants of the teacher. But there is one thing which he wants more than all these, and that is EYES. A good pair of eyes are to the teacher, in the government of his school, worth more than the rod, more than any system of merit or demerit marks, more than keeping in after school, more than scolding, reporting to parents, suspension, or expulsion, more than coaxing, premiums, and bribes in any shape or to any amount. The very first element in school government, as in every other government, is that the teacher should ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... whom, after some few hours, I found; neither were they so drunk but what they could take roped men to prison. In the morning, these two men were brought before the Justices of the Peace: and now my wonderful luck appeared; for the merit of having defeated, and caught them, would never have raised me one step in the State, or in public consideration, if they had only been common robbers, or even notorious murderers. But when these fellows were recognised, by some one in the court, as Protestant witnesses ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... England that now is, and over the America and the Australia, from pole to pole; and then listening to the Constitutional litanies of Dryasaust, and his lamentations on the old Norman and Plantagenet Kings, and his recognition of departed merit and causes of effects,—the mind ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... (circ. A.D. 260), but more probably due to some writer of the first century of our era. In chapter xxxiii. of that treatise, the author asks whether we ought to prefer "greatness" in literature, with some attendant faults, to flawless merit on a lower level, and of course replies in the affirmative. In tragedy, he asks, who would be Ion of Chios rather than Sophocles; or in lyric poetry, Bacchylides rather than Pindar? Yet Bacchylides ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... of the beauty of either sex; and if I mistake not, they are inspired with a mutual admiration.' The marchioness, endeavouring to conceal her uneasiness, said, 'Yes, my lord, I allow the count all the merit you adjudge him, but from the little I have seen of his disposition, he is too volatile for a serious attachment.' At that instant the count entered the pavilion: 'Ah,' said Muriani, laughingly, 'you was the subject of our conversation, and seem to be come in good ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... PUNCH to cultivate the acquaintance of "My Friend the Captain." They will find him at home every evening at the Haymarket. We suspect his paternity may be traced to a certain corner, from whose merit several equally successful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... by that inconstancy which is so natural to it, nor allow my life to be a perpetual succession of evil practices and infidelities. Grant that my heart may be all Thine, at all times and forever. And that by mortification I may merit ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... principles of the Secessionists; but they were in a hurry to give all the support they could to those principles, because they had come to the conclusion that victory was to be with the Secessionists. They desired to appropriate the merit of being the first of European statesmen to welcome the destroyers of the American Union into the family of nations. Had the event justified their expectations, they would have gained much by their action, and would have enjoyed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... general moral theme as the English novels; but the scenes are entirely different, and opinion is divided as to the comparative merit of the work. It is a study, a very profound study of moral development in one character and of moral degeneracy in another. Its characters and its scenes are both Italian, and the action takes place ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... scattered flowers from his rich garden of poetic sweets. Thus he has embellished his legend with an imitation or rather paraphrase of the celebrated description of night in the fourth book of the AEneid. The lines well merit transcription. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... obvious that the poetic value cannot lie in the subject, but lies entirely in its opposite, the poem. How can the subject determine the value when on one and the same subject poems may be written of all degrees of merit and demerit; or when a perfect poem may be composed on a subject so slight as a pet sparrow, and, if Macaulay may be trusted, a nearly worthless poem on a subject so stupendous as the omnipresence of the Deity? ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... even that merit. We are the largest party in the state, I assure you, if we all fell out of our adopted ranks ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... point however can hardly be too emphatically stated. It is not the present Translator's ambition to supplant the Versions already in general use, to which their intrinsic merit or long familiarity or both have caused all Christian minds so lovingly to cling. His desire has rather been to furnish a succinct and compressed running commentary (not doctrinal) to be used sidc by side with its elder compeers. And yet there has been something of a remoter hope. It can ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... of A.S.C. wagons, and what-not. A wonderful display was that of the officers' chargers, in which the long line of competitors rode, trotted and galloped past the General who was judging. Some of the men's horses were also very good, and really ran the officers' chargers close for merit. The first three prize-winners would be worth a clear L450 apiece. To describe the efficiency of the wagon-driving, the smartness of their turn-out, the quickness and neatness of all their manoeuvres, is beyond me. There was no lance or sword play. The whole business had ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... aspects of it which the mere politician is apt to pass lightly over or to ignore altogether. Like most of Mr Kettle's work, the book bears the impress of his individuality, and, to many of his readers, this will constitute much of its charm and merit. At the same time, in order to prevent misunderstanding, it is necessary for me to state that I do not commit myself to acceptance or endorsement of everything which the book contains. I content myself with stating, ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... name of this Aurora I'll not mention, Although I might, for she was nought to me More than that patent work of God's invention, A charming woman, whom we like to see; But writing names would merit reprehension, Yet if you like to find out this fair She, At the next London or Parisian ball You still may mark ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... to merit capture. He is beneath the wrath of the emperor. He is yet in your power. I come, Lucullus, to implore ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... remember what the soldiers of Tilly and Wallenstein were doing at this very time in Germany, we shall realize that the work of Mason and Underhill would not have been felt by any one in that age to merit censure or stand in need of excuses. As a matter of practical policy the annihilation of the Pequots can be condemned only by those who read history so incorrectly as to suppose that savages, whose business is to torture and slay, can always be dealt with according to ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... the rival merits of a scarlet japonica and a double fuchsia, giving the palm of merit to the former, though the latter had some wondrous lobes; and I was also asked my opinion whether her favourite maidenhair fern would survive a sudden and unaccountable blight which had fallen upon it a ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... were accompanied by their wives, as was young M. De Bodisco, who represented Russia as Charge d'Affaires. The South Americans were famously bedizened with embroideries, and nearly all of the Ministers, Secretaries, and attaches wore the broad ribbons of some order of merit across their right shoulders, or crosses upon their breasts. Some of them sported at least a dozen of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... of that portion of the country were unable to believe that any one could seriously deny those principles. Yet in the other portion, where he lived, they were esteemed an ineffaceable brand of shame, which no merit of a ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... ideas, either in temples or in public meetings. I have never likewise practiced that quackery of beneficence, by which a certain divine, imposing a tax upon the generosity of the public, procures for himself the honors of a more numerous audience, and the merit of distributing at his pleasure a bounty which costs him nothing, and for which he receives grateful thanks dexterously ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... egg, or embryo state; this the anxious parent attaches firmly to some leaf or bough, capable of affording sufficient sustenance to the future grub, who, in due course, eats his way through the vegetable kingdom upon which he is quartered, for no merit or exertion of his own; and where his career is only to be noted by the ravages of his insatiable jaws. After a brief period of lethargy or pupa state, this good-for-nothing creature flutters forth, powdered, painted, perfumed, scorning the dirt from which he sprung, and leading ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... to them. Amid the quarrels of Pope, Theobald, and Warburton, it is pleasant to find an editor admitting some merit in his predecessors. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... extraordinary record of events or conditions foreseen: seductive in the review of them by a writer who has to be still foreseeing: nevertheless, that none of them were bardic of Bull, and that our sound man would have acted wisely in heeding some of the prescriptions, constituted their essential merit, consolatory to think of, though painful. The country has gone the wrong road, but it may yet cross over to the right one, when it perceives ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern History (Boston, 1884); Weber, Weitgeschichte (2 vols.); Assmann, Handbuch d. allgemeinen Geschichte (5 vols., 1853-1862); by the same, Abriss d. allgem. Gesch. (in 3 parts); Oncken, Allgem. Geschichte in Einzeidarstellungen (a series of full monographs of high merit). Copious works on Universal History, in German, by Weber, Schlosser, Becker, Leo. Laurent, Etudes sur l'Histoire de l'Humanite (this is an extended series of historical dissertations),—The Orient and Greece (2 vols.); Rome (1 vol.); Christianity ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... positions like these," I sighed; "sinners would do ever so much better. I should like to see Dr. La Touche take off his halo, lay it carefully on the bureau, and wield a battle-axe. The world will never acknowledge his merit; it will even forget him presently, and his life will have been given up to the evolution of the passive virtues. Do you suppose he will recognise the tender passion if it ever does bud in his breast, or will he think it a ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... any absence of literary merit will not impair the author's cherished design to "impart a moral," should he fail to ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... by my friends, I hope, a pardonable one. My book can scarcely demand the serious attention of the critic; nor could criticism well expect a better style from one whose profession is seldom supposed to allow much leisure to acquire nicety in the arts of composition. I claim no other merit for my Notes than having followed the advice (of Gray, I believe) that ten words put down at the moment upon the spot, are worth a whole cart load of recollections. I have not sought to add to their attraction (if they should possess ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... for example, suppose that we have come to the conclusion, that the apostles taught the doctrine of the atonement; and that our moral sense is puzzled with the justice of the system, of the transfer of merit implied in those analogies under which the mysterious verity is unveiled to us, and with its apparent incompatibility with a corrective theory of punishment: the thought of error, or of merely relative truth, in the apostles' teaching in such a matter, is forbidden ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... metropolis, is the Divine Logos, next come the two powers already considered, and then three secondary powers, the retributive, the law-giving, and the prohibitive. "Very beautiful and well-fenced cities they are, worthy refuges of souls that merit salvation." Each of these cities is an aspect of the religious mind; when it settles in the first it obeys the law from fear of punishment and thinks of God as the Judge; in the second it observes the precepts in hope of reward and conceives God as the legislator ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... same neighborhood, a flower-show is very interesting to hold now and then. To do this it is needful first to find some one willing to act as judge, and—if agreeable—to give several small prizes in addition to certificates of merit. The different things for which prizes are offered will depend, of course, upon what the competitors can grow. There might be prizes for different flowers, for collections of flowers, and for lettuces or radishes, if there are enough competitors ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... "you know not to whom or of what you speak. They to whom Heaven declares its purpose must merit its communication by mortifying the senses; they have that within which requires not the superfluity of earthly nutriment, which is necessary to those who are without the sphere of the Vision. To them the watch spent in prayer is a refreshing slumber, and the sense of doing the will of Heaven ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... sculptured upon a parapet wall built originally to protect the edge of the terrace, but now fallen away. The middle and lowest rows are tolerably perfect, and possess considerable interest, as well as some artistic merit. The entire scene represented on the right side seems to be the bringing of tribute or presents to the monarch by the various nations under his sway. On the left-hand side this subject was continued ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... in laying hold of the robbers" (for so those innocent people were called); "that if he had not occupied the nets, some other must;" concluding, however, "that he should be contented with the smallest share imaginable, and should think that rather their bounty than his merit." But they were all unanimous in excluding him from any part whatever, the clerk particularly swearing, "If they gave him a shilling they might do what they pleased with the rest; for he would not concern himself with the affair." ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... similis), from which other usages may be easily deduced, why not adopt that word as the immediate source, rather than seek for a new one? That like, now written ly, is from lic, a corpse, i.e. an essence, has, I believe, the merit of originality; so too, his notion that corpse is an essence, and the more, as emanating from a rectory, which probably is not far ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... George, but so long as you are here I will do my best to tell you what you are. You are a fruitful theme, and I could be fluent for a week or two. Going? Well, luck go with you, of the sort you merit. I'd call you a cur, but there isn't a cur in all the world who wouldn't walk himself blind and lame to bite me in revenge for the insult I put upon him. Go—you infinitesimal! you epitome ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... infuse even into Roman story that element of doubt which has changed the whole fabric of historical science. If Niebuhr was a mere sceptic, he would be only the humble follower of Bayle, Lesurgnes de Pouilly, and other writers of the last century; but his merit lies in reconstruction—in the jealous care with which he distinguishes between the true monuments of history and the mass of traditional rubbish in which they lay entombed. In his Roman history, however, although by that alone he is known in England, we find only a portion of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... mighty sincere, Sets neither his titles nor merit to view; It says that his relics collected lie here, And no mortal yet knows too if this ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... 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 ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Middle Ages? Conscience was first invented by Dancing-master Shakespeare, consequently my whole address was wrong. Was there, then, nothing of value in these pages? I ran through them anew, and solved my doubt at once. I discovered grand pieces—downright lengthy pieces of remarkable merit—and once again the intoxicating desire to set to work again darted through my breast—the ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... its privateering Chevalier de Malte for a hero and its Turkish heroine who coolly remarks "L'infidelite a des charmes," might have been better if the author had known how to make it so. Both these books have, as has been said, the merit of shortness. Puget de la Serre's La Clytie de la Cour (2 vols., Paris, 1635) cannot plead even this; for it fills two fat volumes of some 1500 pages. I have sometimes been accused, both in France and in England, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... regarding the present apathy to formal hygiene instruction have brought out the following points that merit the serious consideration of those who are ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... are all of equal merit. Nay, more. The Stanze, the Transfiguration, the panels, and the three easel pictures in the Vatican are in the highest degree perfect and sublime. But they demand a stress of attention, even from the most accomplished beholder, and serious study, to be fully ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... more probably due to some writer of the first century of our era. In chapter xxxiii. of that treatise, the author asks whether we ought to prefer "greatness" in literature, with some attendant faults, to flawless merit on a lower level, and of course replies in the affirmative. In tragedy, he asks, who would be Ion of Chios rather than Sophocles; or in lyric poetry, Bacchylides rather than Pindar? Yet Bacchylides and Ion are "faultless, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... an intellectual society of high merit in Glasgow, but we were there only a few hours, and did not see any one. Certainly the place, as it may be judged of merely from the general aspect of the population and such objects as may be seen in the streets, more resembles an Inferno than any ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... cross, despising the shame. Yes: but there are too many on earth who endure shame with brazen faces, just because they do not feel it. If He had not felt the shame, what merit in despising it? It was His glory that He felt the shame; and yet conquered the shame, and crushed it down by the might of His love for ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... diffidence at such a time and place, Sir," she began, at last. "It is difficult for me to understand what small merit, or large error, of mine should bring ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... wished she was equally sure it was with a brother's love. Yes, she wished, for to think otherwise would lower him in her estimation. He was her first cousin, and if first cousins had better not marry he would never think of it; besides, the merit of his sacrificing all for Gerald's good would be lost, and his return would have been an act of self-gratification instead of self-devotion. No, she would not, could not believe any such thing; she was certain Edmund never would be so weak as to wish to do ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... this day. Here, in our own land, as well as others, the forces are maturing, the agents are at work. Many of the events of the past year we were permitted to forecast by looking into the future through the prophets, and onward yet we look. And the events coming are neither less in number, merit, or force, than those passed. Keep the events of prophecy in their proper order lest they confuse you. The Jews and Ten Lost Tribes are to be found and possess Palestine before this battle. Anti-Christ is to appear. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... not be done without your indorsement, for my father will not indulge in any favoritism aside from real merit," protested the lieutenant, ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... rancorous tooth Do soil and bite fair worth and truth, And merit to distress betray, To soothe the heart Anne hath a way; She hath a way to chase despair, To heal all grief, to cure all care, Turn foulest night to fairest day: Thou know'st, fond heart, Anne hath a way, She hath a way, Anne Hathaway, ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... all the demonstrations of joy. Characteristically Peter refused to take any of the credit of the victory which had been gained by the skill and valor of his generals. These officers consequently took the precedency of their sovereign in the triumphal procession, Peter declaring that merit was the only road to military preferment, and that, as yet, he had attained no rank in the army. In imitation of the ancient Romans, the captives taken in the war were led in the train of the victors. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... as inferring more conscientious self-denial or Scipio-like self-control than they feel disposed to give me credit for, let them take into consideration the following circumstances, which, while detracting from my merit, justify my veracity. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... I am never going to quote to you anything that does not seem to me to rise to a level of merit well above ordinary proper prose. There are many writers whose general correctness and excellence is not to be questioned or denied whom I shall not select in these letters ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... to interfere one commandment with another. He did all things well, and so stood in the favour of God. But yet one act was not actually all, though virtually any one of his actions might carry in it a merit sufficient to satisfy and quiet the law. Hence, as I said, it is told us, not only that he is the Son of God's love, but that he increased in favour with God; that is, by a going on in doing, by a continuing to do that always that pleased ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... introduced me to Jake Saulsman of Chicago. Jake asked me to go to New York with him, and-I don't know why-took a fancy to me some way. He introduced me to a lot of the fellows in New York, and they all helped me along. I did nothing to merit it. Everybody helps me. Anybody can ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... an exceedingly genial soul, this young man, and wholly free of affectation. It seemed to Carrie he was as yet only overcoming the last traces of the bashfulness of youth. He did not seem apt at conversation, but he had the merit of being well dressed and wholly courageous. Carrie felt as if it were not going to be hard to ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... she was led to the punch-bowl. When the last one had been taught the way to that cool nook, there was a pleasant hum of voices in the room. There was still an undercurrent of difference as to the punch's merit—other than mere coolness; though Miss Eubanks now agreed with Aunt Delia that it possessed virtues not to be discerned in the first careless draught. The conversation continued to be general, to the immense delight of the hostess, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... imparted to me sufficient to enable me to perfectionate the discovery, and if the reserve be continued, it is just to demand compensation, I am met with indignation even greater. I appeal to zie captain. Is this treatment such as my proposals merit?" ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... during that tremendous scene, had experienced no suffering, assumed the merit of being the loudest against it. Their cowardice in not opposing it, became courage when it was over. They exclaimed against Terrorism as if they had been the heroes that overthrew it, and rendered themselves ridiculous ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... The merit of his books lies beyond the horizon of this tale. No doubt some of them were good, and some of them were bad, and some were merely popular. But he was all the time trying to make them better, for he was quite an honest man, and ...
— The Unruly Sprite - The Unknown Quantity, A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... world deems—and we are in the world and of it—honor and greatness lie not in those things which are truly honorable and great; not in learning or genius, else were Longinus upon this throne, and I his waiting woman; not in action—else were the great Zabdas king; not in merit, else were many a dame of Palmyra where I am, and I a patient household drudge. Birth, and station, and power, are before these. Men bow before names, and sceptres, and robes of office, lower than before the gods themselves. Nay, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... for their afternoon's amusement, and there was plenty of time after lunch to show them some of the glories of Aston House. Christopher led them through the shrouded rooms, but the treasures he displayed to view were not so much those of artistic merit as those which had pleased his own boyish fancy years before. Passing down a corridor he stopped by a remote closed door. Jessie was examining some Wedgewood plaques a little way off. Christopher looked at Mrs. Sartin with ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... certain individuals into an eminent or elevated position, their names become intertwined with the great epoch. In the eyes of the masses and of the vulgar observers, such names acquire a high importance on account of the commonly made confusion between circumstances and personal merit, and, moonlight-like, such names reverberate not their own, but a borrowed splendor. Thus much for the official pilots of ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... of it all, said, in a low, gentle voice, and with a pleasant smile: "I don't wonder you're delighted, gentlemen. It is to me the most divine of all his creations. There is only one Bach." That his hand had held the bow and that the merit of its expression lay with him, never seemed to have entered ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to the tone-giving scholars, to the ladies and gentlemen who fostered them, as it had formerly paid its homage to the ministers of the court. This gave to the ladies, who collected around them the celebrated men of the time (for reputation was much more the question than merit,) and who protected and entertained them, a degree of weight in the political and literary world, which made them as important in the eighteenth century as Richelieu and Colbert had been ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... meets in England with rewards of another kind, which redound more to the honor of the nation. The English have so great a veneration for exalted talents, that a man of merit in their country is always sure of making his fortune. Mr. Addison in France would have been elected a member of one of the academies, and, by the credit of some women, might have obtained a yearly pension of twelve hundred livres, or else might have been imprisoned ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... all the merit of exploring what may be called the old written world of fable. He, and Warton, and Dunlop, and Price, too, did the day's work of Giants, in tracing out and classifying those tales and fables which had passed into ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... as by a perpetual annuity. Better than an inheritance of service rendered to England herself has sometimes proved the most insane hatred to England. Hyder Ali, even his son Tippoo, though so far inferior, and Napoleon, have all benefited by this disposition among ourselves to exaggerate the merit of diabolic enmity. Not one of these men was ever capable, in a solitary instance, of praising an enemy (what do you say to that, reader?); and yet in their behalf, we consent to forget, not their crimes only, but (which is worse) ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... and that this dark-faced stranger was the favourite for those matrimonial stakes he had entered himself to run for. He looked at Mr. Saltram with a critical eye many times in the course of the evening, wondering what possible merit any sensible woman could perceive in such a man. But then, as Theobald Pallinson reflected, the misfortune is that so few women are sensible; and it was gradually becoming evident to him that Michael Branston's widow was amongst the ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... they attack Mr. Dryden's reputation; and to think there is something more necessary to make a man write well, than the favour of the great, or the success of a faction. We have every year seen how fickle Fortune has been to her declared favourites; and men of merit, as well as he who has none, have suffered by her inconstancy, as much as they got by her smiles. This should alarm such as are eminently indebted to her, and may be of use to them in their future reflections on others' productions, not to assume ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... of interest, without any assumption of merit to be found in them, I would claim for a series of annual poems, beginning in middle life and continued to what many of my correspondents are pleased to remind me—as if I required to have the fact brought to my knowledge—is no longer youth. Here is the latest of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... taxation also, a willingness to help bear the common burden has more of generosity in it where the wealth of the people is in great part the daily result of their daily toil, and not a hoard inherited without merit, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... of fortune is rapid. Such is the case when, either on merit or demerit, great patronage is bestowed. Henry's violin had often charmed, to a welcome forgetfulness of his insignificance, an effeminate lord; or warmed with ideas of honour the head of a duke, whose heart could never be taught to feel its manly glow. Princes ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... a thousand years ago there were two authors named Kipling. One was an eastern and a writer of merit: the other, being a western, was of course only an amusing barbarian. He is said to have invented the electric hedge. I consider that in using it on me you have taken a ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... regards Drona himself, abandoning his weapons, he was then in a supremely tranquil state. Having said those words he had devoted himself to Yoga. Endued with great effulgence and possessed of high ascetic merit, he had fixed his heart on that Supreme and Ancient Being, viz., Vishnu. Bending his face slightly down, and heaving his breast forward, and closing his eyes, and resting on the quality of goodness, and disposing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Austen, quietly. "I don't mind saying that I would rather have your approbation than—this more substantial recognition of merit." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he saw that the colonel must have been watching his career. He might have guessed as much from the reward of merit just given him—friendly congratulations and Sanda's message, a thousand times more valued for the delay; and he had begun to realize that he had never been abandoned, never forgotten. But the colonel's knowledge of his friendship with Garcia brought the thrilling truth home, almost ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... rose to the height of the argument, and to that of his inches, took off his old hat and held it out the length of his arm. "Let the lady fear nothing, senor caballero of my soul. I engage the honour of a gentleman that she shall have every consideration at my hands which her virtues merit. No more"—he looked at the sullen beauty between him and the Englishman—"No more, for that would be idolatrous; and no less, for that would be injustice. Vaya, senor caballero, vaya V|d| con Dios." Manvers nodded ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... There is no Doubt, but all Mathematical Truths are Eternal, yet they are taught; and some of them are very abstruse, and the Knowledge of them never was acquir'd without great Labour and Depth of Thought. Euclid had his Merit; and it does not appear that the Doctrine of the Fluxions was known before Sir Isaac Newton discover'd that concise Way of Computation; and it is not impossible that there should be another Method, as yet unknown, still more compendious, that ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... magazine to unwritten material, or to accept and print articles or stories simply because they were the work of well-known persons. And as his acquaintance with authors multiplied, he found that the greater the man the more willing he was that his work should stand or fall on its merit, and that the editor should retain his prerogative of declination—if he deemed it wise to ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... eulogium, I grant, in matters which relate to the the affections and the heart; but this is done by robbing us entirely of mental independence. You are a kind of generous outlaw, a moral Robin Hood, you compel us to give up everything we possess, in order that you may have the somewhat equivocal merit of restoring back a small ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... all this length of time, Could bear the burden of his years, If he for strangers pain'd his heart Not less than those who merit tears? ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... indignation the lot of many famous captains and valiant soldiers, who, after serving the King all their lives and being riddled with wounds, were not only pushed aside into corners without any reward, but condemned to see unworthy men without merit loaded with benefits, merely through enjoying the favor of some minister or courtier.[2] The Duke of Lerma, as one who professed a contempt for all letters and learning, was even less likely to be influenced by Cervantes' literary ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... third, "Like a wet day"; a fourth, "Like a comic opera." After collecting all the answers the player announces what the thought was, and then goes along the row again calling upon the players to explain why it is like the thing named by them. The merit of the game lies in these explanations. Thus, perhaps the thing thought of was a concertina. The first player, asked to show why a concertina is like a dog, may reply, "Because when it is squeezed it howls." ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... "Mademoiselle—I have seen you—and you will not be surprised to learn, I think you very beautiful. But, for want of the position you merit at court, your presence there is a waste of time. The devotion of a man of honor, should ambition of any kind inspire you, might possibly serve as a means of display for your talent and beauty. I place my devotion at your feet; but, as an ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Victim' by one—Spentoli!" Saltash's voice was suave. "A cruel picture, mon ami, but of an amazing merit. I have seen the likeness also. Where did you ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... markets. No other fruit responds to fine art in culture so well as the grape. Given choicely good varieties and a finely finished product, and the grower may have almost what he desires for the produce of his skill. With the grape, too, palm of merit goes with skill in culture; among all who grow plants, only the florist can rival the viticulturist in guiding the development of a plant to a special end. In cultivating, fertilizing, training, grafting, pruning, spraying, ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... feel some little interest in this matter, Sir. Did not I commit myself in 1837 to the whole doctrine, fully, entirely? And I must be permitted to say that I cannot quite consent that more recent discoverers should claim the merit ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... autumn. We had an old, fat general by the name of Trotter, who had, I suspect, been promoted to his high rank to get him out of the way of more able and active officers, being an instance that a man may occasionally rise in the world through absolute lack of merit. I could not help watching the movements of this redoubtable old Hero, who, I'll warrant, has been the champion and safeguard of half the garrison towns in England, and fancying to myself how Bonaparte would have delighted in having such toast-and-butter ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... Cordova was not the man to command an army. Diplomacy was his forte; and he might also, as a general, claim some merit for combinations in the cabinet. It was during his command that the plan was formed for enclosing the Carlists within certain fortified limits, in hopes that they would exhaust the resources of the country, and with a view to preserve other provinces from the contagion ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... enemy to the State, I see it clearly. But I myself have acted with negligence for some days past; I have not sufficiently hastened the arrival of the young d'Effiat, who will doubtless succeed. He is handsome and intellectual, they say. What a blunder! I myself merit disgrace. To leave that fox of a Jesuit with the King, without having given him my secret instructions, without a hostage, a pledge, or his fidelity to my orders! What neglect! Joseph, take a pen, and write what I shall dictate for the other ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... the Vaughan boiler put an end to the riot and the strike together. However, Sir John Butler mentioned to Mr. Brook, and the other owners whose mines were threatened, that it was I who at some risk to myself sent the message which brought down the troops. I can assure you that I disclaimed any merit in the affair; however, they chose to consider themselves under an obligation, and when I applied for the vacant mastership, sending in, of course, my college testimonials, they were good enough to exert all their influence with the governors in my favour, and I was elected unanimously. ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... matrimonial alliance with Gunter Lake. Gunter Lake, Sir Richmond gathered, wasn't half a bad fellow. Generally it would seem Miss Grammont liked him, and she had a way of speaking about him that suggested that in some way Mr. Lake had been rather hardly used and had acquired merit by his behaviour under bad treatment. There was some story, however, connected with her war services in Europe upon which Miss Grammont was evidently indisposed to dwell. About that story Sir Richmond was left at the end of his Avebury day and after his ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... also touching, to notice how often the errors of man are thus the shadows of truth. Were it not for the preceding shadows, indeed, the substance would never arrive; and therefore the Ptolemaics of the world are second, in value and in merit, only to epochal discoverers ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... only one of the most picturesque and striking instances of stage effect to be found in the ancient or modern drama, but by the skilful manner in which it is prepared, it has, wonderful as it appears, all the merit of consistency and truth. The grief, the love, the remorse and impatience of Leontes, are finely contrasted with the astonishment and admiration of Perdita, who, gazing on the figure of her mother like one entranced, looks as if ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... should be in circulation prejudicial to your character as respects the action of the 10th instant. It affords me pleasure that I have it in my power to assure you that the conduct of yourself, officers, and crew was such as to merit my warmest approbation. And I consider the circumstance of your volunteering and bringing the smaller vessels up to close action as contributing largely to our victory." Such was the situation at the time. A few years later, however, a bitter quarrel sprang up between Perry ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... the First Lord said, "Captain O'Brien, I am always very ready to oblige Lord Privilege, and the more so as his recommendation is of an officer of your merit. In a day or two, if you call at the Admiralty, you will hear further." O'Brien wrote to us immediately, and we waited with impatience for his next letter: but, instead of the letter, he made his appearance on ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... this is strange, because he believes (and I know this is true) that he writes a letter which would instantly mark him as a man of high merit among the multitude. ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... deceiving you, Madame, and betraying you for my sister as he betrayed her for you. He is a man moved only by ambition, but since he has the good fortune to please you, that is enough; I shall not attempt to stand in the way of a felicity which without doubt I merit more than he. It would be undignified for me to persist in trying to gain the heart which is already possessed by another. It is bad enough to have attracted only your indifference and I would not like to have this replaced ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... tools in the hands of all creative Power. Greater in the eyes of God is humble weakness than haughty strength; dearer to Him is the repentant sinner than the man who boasts of his virtues. All that is power is His gift, and His gift must needs return to Him again. Strength will turn to dust, merit will become but as an empty sound, God's mercy alone will endure for ever. Heaven is always open ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... Gwen made a misdeal. Probably she did so because she was trying at the same time to prove that having four by honours was absurd in itself—an affront to natural laws. It was the merest accident, she maintained, when all the court-cards were dealt to one side—no merit at all of the players. Her objection to whist was that it was a mixture of skill and chance. She was inclined to favour games that were either quite the one or quite the other. Roulette was a good game. So was chess. But whist was neither fish nor flesh nor ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... I have spoken in no feeling of unkindness to anybody; there can have been no bitterness in my speech. [120] And yet something, I suppose, there must have been in my way of expressing myself, to offend. It may have been a fault, it may have been a merit for aught I know; for truly I do ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... All those battles of all famous French generals, from Charles Hartel to Napoleon, and the battles in Algiers, by Horace Yernet, are wholly to be snuffed at. In painting, as in theology, age is the criterion of merit. Yet Vernet's paintings, though decried by M. le Directeur, I admired, and told him so. Said I, in French as lawless as the sentiment, "Monsieur, I do not know the rules of painting, nor whether the picture is according to them or not; I only ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Fagerolles was! Now that he had missed his prize he was no longer afraid to exhibit—he threw the School overboard; but you should have seen how skilfully he managed it, what compromises he effected, painting in a style which aped the audacity of truth without possessing one original merit. And it would be sure to meet with success, the bourgeois were only too fond of being titillated while the artist pretended to hustle them. Ah! it was time indeed for a true artist to appear in that mournful desert of a Salon, amid all the knaves ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... vested with an authority which extended to the infliction of summary punishment on impure, mischievous, or offensive pieces. They had the power to punish with whipping, and were authorised to bestow great rewards for merit. Thus, Sophocles was awarded a dignified and lucrative government for one of his pieces, and an unfortunate comic poet of the name of Evangelus was publicly whipped. This circulated a spirit of correctness, and a chaste and delicate taste through the people, as was evidenced ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... Fletcher, whose investigations in the Gentleman's Diary and the Mathematical Companion entitle him to the highest praise; Wolfenden, acknowledged by all as one of the most profound mathematicians of the last century; Hilton, afterwards the talented editor of that "work of rare merit" the Liverpool Student; and last, though not least, the distinguished Butterworth, whose elegant and extensive correspondence occupies so conspicuous a place in the Student, the Mathematical Repository, the Companion, the Enquirer, the Leeds Correspondent, and the York ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... economy. Alice had experienced the troubles of poverty, and had never met with excellence in men except in poems, which she had long ago been taught to separate from the possibilities of actual life. She had, therefore, no conception of any degree of merit in a husband being sufficient to compensate for slender means of subsistence. She was not base-minded; nothing could have induced her to marry a man, however rich, whom she thought wicked. She wanted ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... ready; the last farewell of husband and wife, now to part forever, had yet to be said. M. de Meneval, who was the sole witness of those sad moments, gives of them a most affecting description, which bears upon its face the merit of ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... uninitiated, to the appreciative possessed fascination, and were their own sufficient reward for the care lavished upon them. In their mute yet exact response was some compensation for external neglect; they were, so to say, the testimony of a good conscience; the assurance of professional merit, and of work well done, if scantily recognized. Poor and beloved sails and spars—la joie de la manoeuvre, to use the sympathetic phrase of a French officer of that day—gone ye are with that past of which I have been speaking, and of which ye were a goodly symbol; but like other symptoms of ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... terseness, the harmony, of this magnificent hymn seems impossible. Cary's translation has, however, the merit ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... concluded at Brest-Litovsk, and that it would have resulted in an actual and active alliance of the Romanov dynasty with the dynasties of the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had this great merit: it so delayed the separate peace between Russia and Germany that the Allies were able to prepare for it. It had the merit, also, that it forced the attainment of the separate peace to come in such ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... So base a way; or owe the means of life To such a leprous Traytor, I have towr'd For Victory like a Faulcon in the Clouds, Nor dig'd for't like a Mole; our Swords and Cause Make way for us, and that it may appear We took a noble Course, and hate base Treason, Some Souldiers that would merit Caesar's favour, Hang him on yonder Turret, and then follow The lane this ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... shortest possible time. The newspapers of the Union, such as the New York Herald, are genuine powers, and their reporters are men to be reckoned with. Gideon Spilett ranked among the first of those reporters: a man of great merit, energetic, prompt and ready for anything, full of ideas, having traveled over the whole world, soldier and artist, enthusiastic in council, resolute in action, caring neither for trouble, fatigue, nor danger, when in pursuit ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... been neither more friendly than Sir Walter, nor more discriminating, in speaking of Jonathan Wild and Smollett's Count Fathom in the same breath, as if they were similar either in purpose or in merit. Fathom is a romantic picaresque novel, with a possibly edifying, but most unnatural reformation of the villainous hero at the last; Jonathan Wild is a pretty consistent picaresque satire, in which the hero ends where Fathom by all rights should have ended,—on the gallows. Fathom ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... to hear the praises even of strangers. Therefore censors are held to stricter account than eulogists. But a natural love of justice is continually at war with feelings of personal kindness. It is impossible to see insolent and vulgar pretension in noisy triumph, while real and unobtrusive merit is neglected. When we see a creature strutting in laurels that have been won by another, human nature—much as it has been abused—prompts us to grasp them from undeserving brows and place them where they will have a natural grace. For trite examples, who ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... which they had access, by private as well as public entrances. Having expressed a willingness to go to that city, make public accusations, and point out evidences of their truth in the convent itself, she was taken thither by a resolute man, who afterwards suffered for an act of great merit; but she was unable to obtain a fair hearing, apparently through the secret opposition of the priests. She returned to New York, where her story was thought worthy of publication; and it was proposed ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... you feel conceited enough now to think yourself a degree above such fellows as George and I are, in having graduated as a Batchelor of Arts—I mean—Bachelor of Babies. You will, no doubt hereafter, append B. B. to your name as a title of merit; or, Bad Behavior, I should rather have said. However, the initials will stand for both. He's the very picture of yourself, and will soon need a hat as ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... not so quick as you are, Sir, and I must confess that your merit has not yet made enough ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... the privilege of saying a word now and then, and of speaking at random on any subject. Sometimes I do not succeed as I should like, but at others I succeed very well. Leave it to me, then; I am your friend, I love men of merit, and I will choose my time to speak to the ...
— The Magnificent Lovers (Les Amants magnifiques) • Moliere
... manner not disgraceful to the memory of the author; and the publisher relies with confidence, that so valuable a repository of amusement and information will continue to hold the rank to which it has been restored, firmly supported by its own merit, and safe from the influence and blight of any future caprices of fashion. To open its valuable mysteries to those who have not had the advantage of a classical education, translations of the countless quotations from ancient writers ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... sleeping individuals. The snore of Mr. Migott I found to be superior to the rest in point of amiability, softness, and regularity—it was a kind of oily, long-sustained purr, amusing and not unmusical for the first five minutes. Next in point of merit to Mr. Migott, came Bob Dobbs. His note was several octaves lower than my friend's, and his tone was a grunt—but I will do him justice; I will not scruple to admit that the sounds he produced were regular as clockwork. Very inferior was the performance of Sam Dobbs, who, as owner of the boat, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Art of Poetry, after speaking of our author in the most respectful terms, says, 'that notwithstanding his merit, this admirable author did not think himself upon the same footing with Homer.' But how different is the judgment of Mr. Dennis, who, in this particular, opposes his friend ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... this surprising conduct of his is a secret to this day. His behaviour also during his declaration, which he supported but five days, is equally surprising and mysterious. This shows that it is possible for some extraordinary characters to be raised above the malice and envy of vulgar souls; for the merit of any person inferior to the Marshal must have been totally eclipsed ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... great pleasure, Judge Lee, in your return to my islands, and I extend to you on behalf of myself and Chiefs a hearty welcome. Your valuable services in the United States have been such as to merit our warmest thanks and approval, and I trust the success of your mission may strengthen the friendly relations existing between the United States and my Kingdom. It is my desire that you should resume the ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... says he, 'have seldom had reason to be grateful to Spain for the rulers she has appointed over them, because these have been usually selected rather on the score of influence than capacity or merit. There is, however, on record at least one captain-general whose name is held in esteem by the Cuban people, on account of the good he effected during his short reign in Havana. Captain-General Tacon established some degree of safety for the inhabitants by ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... of the watch, who stood close by my elbow, ready pipe in hand. The rain came down in buckets, and in the midst of all the wind suddenly shifted, taking the sails flat aback. The shrillness of the boatswain's pipes is then their great merit. They pierce through the roar of the tempest, by sheer difference of pitch, an effect one sometimes hears in an opera; and the officer of the deck, our second lieutenant, who bore the name of Andrew Jackson, and was said to have received his appointment from him—which ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... long journey for us, and one that might not be performed before nightfall; but it had the merit of being comparatively safe until we were in the vicinity ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... mean in respect of keeping it,' said Bella, 'because any one should tear me to bits before getting at a syllable of it—though there's no merit in that, for I am naturally as obstinate as a Pig. What I mean is, Lizzie, that I am a mere impertinent piece of conceit, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... this merit—a merit he shared with Huxley alone of His contemporaries—that he imposed his convictions. He fought against resistance. He excited (and still excites) a violent animosity. He exasperated the surface of his time and was yet too strong for that surface to reject him. This ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... formerly used; a more perfect fermentation is now requisite to keep up the genuine distinction in that flavour of porter from ordinary beers and ales, which, since the change of lengths, has much declined, though the only characteristic quality that gives it merit over other malt liquors—an object that deserves consideration in this great commercial branch of trade, and source of national wealth, where the loss of distinction will be the loss of trade. The rough, ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... to assent, with a dive of her girlish head. "Well, it's a merit in some things to be heavy, and in others to be light. Some things are meant to go deep, and others to go high. Do you want all the women in the world to ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... with more Glasses than we could have dispensed with, had we not been beholden to Brooke and Hillier. In Gratitude therefore to those good Citizens, I am, in the Name of the Company, to accuse you of great Negligence in overlooking their Merit, who have imported true and generous Wine, and taken care that it should not be adulterated by the Retailers before it comes to the Tables of private Families, or the Clubs of honest Fellows. I cannot imagine how a SPECTATOR ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... sensitive. He reacted warmly to kindness, and showed his gratitude without stint; but he allowed no man to presume upon the obligations he had conferred. He was very conscious of difference of rank, and never sought to ignore it, however little he thought it mattered in comparison with intrinsic merit. But the very degree to which he was aware of the social gap between him and many of his acquaintances put him ever on the alert for slights; and when he perceived or imagined that he had received them, his indignation was sometimes less than dignified and often excessive. Though ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... plays which captivated both the learned and the uneducated by their truth to the life that they depicted, and they held their high reputation long after the death of the author. Moderns have also attested their merit, and our great dramatist in his amusing Comedy of Errors imitated the Menoechmi of this early play-wright. [Footnote: Rude farces, known as Atellan Fabula, were introduced into Rome after the contact with the Campanians, from one of whose towns, Atella, they received their name. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... applause to gain, recounts his claps. Thus the victorious chiefs of ancient Rome, To win the mob, a suppliant's form assume; 10 In pompous strain fight o'er the extinguish'd war, And show where honour bled in every scar. But though bare merit might in Rome appear The strongest plea for favour, 'tis not here; We form our judgment in another way; And they will best succeed, who best can pay: Those who would gain the votes of British tribes, Must add to force ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... and that so very full, that one drop more would have made it spill over. Then he made the sign that they might introduce the candidate. He appeared with that modest and simple air which always accompanies true merit. The president rose, and without saying a word, he pointed out to him with an afflicted air, the emblematic cup, the cup so exactly full. The doctor apprehended the meaning that there was no room for him in the academy; but taking courage, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... unattainable. It is to console some of these dissatisfied beings that we are narrating our dear Becky's struggles, and triumphs, and disappointments, of all of which, indeed, as is the case with all persons of merit, she ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and had his foot slipped, he must have been dashed to pieces: the place was crowded with persons who were in raptures; yet had the man been dancing on level ground, he would have danced far better; and the merit of the dancer seemed to consist in his giving the audience a chance of seeing him break his neck or dash his brains out! If a foreigner were to announce that he would dance on a pack-thread, he would ruin the ropedancer; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... institutions of this description, may perhaps give this hospital an advantage over one situated in the centre of a large city like London; though the semi-insular position of Boston must render space there comparatively valuable; but even this cannot take away from the merit of the people in showing such attention to the comforts of the needy sick. But what papa was most pleased with, was the provision made, on the plan which has been often tried in London, but never with ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... sawdust? Not the talking-over stranger. Yet the house is as free to him as if it was his, and he has his room, and is put upon a footing, and draws about a thousand a year. I am banished to the Bower, to be found in it like a piece of furniture whenever wanted. Merit, therefore, don't win. That's the way it works. I observe it, because I can't help observing it, being accustomed to take a powerful sight of notice; but I don't object. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... myself, having no one else to whom I can murmur it confidentially,—for DAUBINET, having a knowledge of the house, has disappeared down some mysterious passage in order to examine and choose our rooms,—"there is, indeed, some merit in being jolly." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... seen the state of the mothers, wives, and children of the men who were going and should have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... played by each person drawing, say, twenty letters haphazard, and trying to form them into a phrase or sentence, the palm of merit being awarded to the player who, at the same time, produces the most coherent phrase, and also succeeds in using the greatest proportion of ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... occupy the whole of the second floor are extensive, well-lighted, and with a more careful and systematic arrangement of the pictures would be of considerable value to students of art. Valenciennes certainly had painters of merit before the sixteenth century. One of these, celebrated by Froissart, Maitre Andre, was both a sculptor and a painter. In 1364 he became 'imagier' of Charles V. of France. The statues of that king, of Jeanne de Bourbon his ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... indicated to the initiated that the boys had won distinction and were entitled to the honors in Seamanship, Life Saving, Stalking and Signaling. On the jacket of the one addressed as "Jack" were insignia that betokened his rank as Scout Master and also as Star Scout. These had been won by sheer merit. ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... this monument, there is another of some interest and artistic merit. It is to the memory of Percival Smalpace and Agnes his wife, whose boldly sculptured heads are projecting from separate panels above the tablet containing the inscription. This is chiefly in Latin, and ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... for the poor to ape the rich, as for the frog to swell in order to equal the ox. After all, this pride of appearance can not promote health, nor ease pain; it makes no increase of merit in the person; it creates ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... nothing to obtain exact information, and transmit it to their journal in the shortest possible time. The newspapers of the Union, such as the New York Herald, are genuine powers, and their reporters are men to be reckoned with. Gideon Spilett ranked among the first of those reporters: a man of great merit, energetic, prompt and ready for anything, full of ideas, having traveled over the whole world, soldier and artist, enthusiastic in council, resolute in action, caring neither for trouble, fatigue, nor danger, when in pursuit of information, for himself ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... shilling, but by a piece of pantomime she showed that she wanted me to lift my hat to her. So I lifted it, and when I looked behind she had her head in the air and her neighbour was gazing at her awestruck. These little creatures are really not without merit. ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... the God of the evolutionary process is as much a myth as is the god of special creation. He has all the blemishes of the other one—one step removed. The Paleyan God had at least the merit of coming to close grips with his work. The evolutionary one shields himself behind the fact that the work is done by his agents, and then it is found that he created the agents for this special work and all that they do is the product of the qualities with which ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... the works of their less gifted contemporaries, as they are in themselves. Apart from their historical significance, however, all these poems have intrinsic interest, and several, including Dom Diego, Mirrha and Hiren as well as Philos and Licia, have a considerable degree of literary merit as well. Whoever the author of Philos and Licia may have been, he was one who had thoroughly assimilated the conventions of the minor epic, especially those employed in Hero and Leander.[50] Unlike Page, whose imitation of Marlowe is ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... more terrible than the sense of superiority to others. It arises, not from merit or the consciousness of merit, but from sheer tin-like flimsiness of character. It arises from limited sympathies. The really great man, and the really sagacious man, is one to whom nothing is contemptible. To him, even the follies of his fellow-passengers ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... modern drama itself, will be comprehended by only a small number of persons; and it is a pity to tell the tale to a public which cannot enter into its local merit. But who can flatter himself that he will ever be understood? We all die unknown—'tis the saying of ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... families, and the senate out of the kosmoi. And the same observations which may be made on the senate at Lacedaemon may be applied to these; for their being under no control, and their continuing for life, is an honour greater than they merit; and to have their proceedings not regulated by a written law, but left to their own discretion, is dangerous. (As to there being no insurrections, although the people share not in the management of public affairs, this is ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... this single detail, are of much interest to euhemerists pure and simple. The late Sir Daniel Wilson's "Caliban"[11] teems with the realistic doctrine, and so also does a work of (in my opinion) less equal merit, "The Pedigree of the Devil,"[12] by Mr. Frederic T. Hall. In Mr. R.G. Haliburton's "Dwarfs of Mount Atlas: with notes as to Dwarfs and Dwarf Worship,"[13] and also in his "Further Notes"[14] on that subject, the same idea is prominent. All of these writers, with ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... and other crimes! But that arn't for the like o' me to speak of now. I'm a dying man, and trust soon to be in a better world. Ef I ever did you wrong, Simon Girty, I don't remember it now; and I'm very sartin I never did nothing to merit this. You came to my house, and war treated to the best I had, and here am I in return for't. Howsomever, the reckoning's got to come yit atween you and your God; and ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... in His justice removed in this striking way his only witness, as a punishment for his sins and his mad indulgence in acts so little short of crime as to partake of its guilt and merit its obloquy? ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... a work was published in London with the following title: "The Question of Witchcraft Debated; or, a Discourse against their Opinions that affirm Witches." It is a work of great merit, and would do honor to a scholar and logician of the present day. The author was John Wagstaffe, of Oxford University: he is described as a crooked, shrivelled, little man, of a most despicable appearance. This circumstance, together with his writings ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... necessarily include me as a principal object in the measures censured, of the falsehood of which I have the most unqualified consciousness.... I acknowledge that I cannot be entirely patient under charges which impeach the integrity of my public motives or conduct. I feel that I merit them in no degree, and expressions of indignation sometimes escape me in spite of every effort to suppress them." There were only two men in the country whom he could have had in mind when he wrote such words as these. In all Washington's career ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... Ulf's story," the armourer said when they reached the shadow of the cathedral. "It is to him that the matter was committed, and though he was forced to take me into his confidence, the merit of following up the matter, if merit there ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... always been accustomed to "go her household ways" in her own country. She did not choose to adopt English fashions because she was obliged to live in England; she adhered to her old Belgian modes, quite satisfied that there was a merit ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... teachers continually boasting of their spirit of toleration. That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal neglect is not impartial kindness. The species of benevolence which arises from contempt is no true charity. There are in England abundance of men who tolerate in the true spirit of toleration. They think the dogmas of religion, though in different degrees, are ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... That this committee present their cordial thanks to the said young ladies for so spirited a performance; look upon these resolutions to be sensible and polite; that they merit the honor, and are worthy the imitation of every young lady ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... is not only one of the most picturesque and striking instances of stage effect to be found in the ancient or modern drama, but by the skilful manner in which it is prepared, it has, wonderful as it appears, all the merit of consistency and truth. The grief, the love, the remorse and impatience of Leontes, are finely contrasted with the astonishment and admiration of Perdita, who, gazing on the figure of her mother like one entranced, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... husbands, and from their rich and varied experience did excellent execution. In order to secure opposition, I used to let the negative open and close, other wise the debate was sure to be tame or no debate at all. In all my experience it was the same; the "affirmative" had the merit and the argument. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... they never suggest that the lowest of them is not perfectly suited to the highest position! Those occupying any station above the lowest have got there merely by superior luck and favoritism, not merit—that is what they preach." ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... By hands that used their country's ark to bear? This hateful truckling to misguided power, Combined in palace, temple, hall, and bower, To crush an outcast Queen, with evidence By facts refuted, ridiculed by sense?— Tales that would merit but an equal fate, Told of the veriest wench in Billingsgate! FATHERS! and BRITONS! whence this alien band Of miscreant lechers bribed from sea and land?— By England spurn'd, yet plied with England's gold, Till every scoundrel's stock of oaths ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... approach this epoch without doing homage to Henry Adams, whose "History of the United States," 9 vols. (1889-1891), is at once a literary performance of extraordinary merit and a treasure-house of information. Skillfully woven into the text is documentary material from foreign archives which Adams, at great expense, had transcribed and translated. Intimate accounts of Washington and its society may ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... may be clouded by adversity, but cannot be wholly concealed; for true merit shines by a light of its own, and, glimmering through the rents and crannies of indigence, is perceived, respected, and honored by ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... family distresses. The least of these considerations always inclined Butler to measures of conciliation, in so far as he could accede to them without compromising principle; and thus our simple and unpretending heroine had the merit of those peacemakers, to whom it is pronounced as a benediction, that they ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... endeared to my memory as having shown me the earliest of George Stephenson's great works—the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. This magazine has now passed away, but it has been amply replaced by others of equal merit, carrying out its principles of giving a sound and cheap literature to the people; it was a boon to all who cared for instruction, and at the same time had to take care of a penny. Now we have our daily papers at a penny, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... pleas'd, and words as light as air, Which scarce could claim regard from FOLLY'S ear; O'er-weening arts, which, tho' in smiles array'd, By base-born fears have ever been betray'd; A few fair deeds, whose merit has been lost In selfish ends, or Pharisaic boast; Soft, gentle Phrases, and meek, smiling Lies, Which could not veil his bare hypocrisies; Dull hours of Courtship with the unwilling Fair, Who wonder'd rosy Love was never there; Curses pour'd forth upon the nuptial hour, Which sadly ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... from Cairo, advise him to go, at a venture, on the said voyage with him; and I believe they were acquainted at Cairo where he has been several years; and not only in Egypt and Syria, but almost through all the known world, and thence by reason of his merit is esteemed another Amerigo Vespucci, another Fernando Magellan and even more; and we hope that being provided with other good ships and vessels, well built and properly victualed, he may discover some profitable ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... its skirts, and, of course, we could only look at it. Its cathedral church loomed up; and we longed to see its interior, where Vandyke's greatest picture—the Crucifixion—is found in the altar. The tower shows well at a distance. The other churches have some pictures of great merit, by Rubens. After passing Mechlin, we saw at our right a large town, lying, perhaps, two miles off, and then a still smaller one to the left, and a fine old castle, which looked in good preservation. The road led us through ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... in prison, but the Protector had given orders, that they should be provided with handsome apartments, and every comfort compatible with confinement at the public expence. But though Monthault took on himself the merit of this lenient treatment, the prejudices of the whole family against him formed an insuperable bar to his designs. His change of conduct was too pointedly obtrusive; his piety and penance too ostentatious to pass on a man who was thoroughly conversant with the marks of genuine ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... would be an impropriety to mention in general orders a service such as you have rendered. To do so might subject you to greater peril, or to ill treatment were you to fall into the hands of the enemy. I needed no fresh proof of your merit to bear it in remembrance. No one can feel more sensibly the value of your gallant conduct, or ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Lord St. Vincent, dated the 19th of April, Admiral Nelson says, speaking of Captain Le Gros.—"If his account be correct (he was then upon his trial), he had great merit for the order in which the ship was kept. The fire must have originated from medicine chests breaking, or from wet getting down, which caused the things to heat. The preservation of the crew ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... but also from the evidence it affords of the care and unremitting labor evinced by modern astronomers in the investigation and comparison of the older calculations, and the ingenious application of the results thus obtained to the observation of new facts. The merit of having paved the way for the discovery of the planet Neptune is due to M. Bouvard, who, in his persevering and assiduous efforts to deduce the entire orbit of Uranus from observations made during the forty years that succeeded the discovery of that planet in 1781, found the results yielded ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... officers nearing certain camp-fires felt caucuses dissolving at their approach into an innocence of debating societies engaged with Fabius Maximus or Scipio Africanus. Certain sergeants and corporals dreamed bars instead of chevrons, and certain high privates, conscious of merit, saw worsted chevrons, silk chevrons, and gold bars all in one ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... merely guides to the reader in long bibliographies and bibliographies containing works of very unequal merit. ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... me not, oh, mighty Spirit! Thou canst make the blind to see; Witnesser of Jesus' merit, Speak the word of power ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... proprietress by this sudden invasion of Gillray's favourite subjects. But Burke reassured her with a smile: "Were I to prosecute you it would be the making of your fortune; and that favour, excuse me, Mrs. Humphrey, you do not entirely merit at my hands." ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... substance of our existence here," add they, with tremendous emphasis, as if they had no hand in producing the sad catalogue. The trouble is, we set too high a value on our own merits; we imagine ourselves deserving of great favours and privileges, while we are doing nothing to merit them. In this respect, we are not altogether unlike the young man in the parable, who, by-the-by, was also a professor—he professed very loudly of having done all those good things "from his youth up." But when the command came, "go sell all thou hast, and give to the poor," &c., it soon took ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... him a walking, breathing, incarnate proof of the efficacy of prayer. I was a little fascinated by it—and then, could I have argued with him? You don't argue against such evidence, and besides it would have looked as if I had wanted to claim all the merit. Already his gratitude was simply frightful. Funny position, wasn't it? The boredom came later, when we lived together on board his ship. I had, in a moment of inadvertence, created for myself a tie. How to define it precisely I don't know. One gets ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... and VI. and was killed at the battle of Verneuil. Joseph Hume died when David was an infant, leaving himself and two elder children, a brother and a sister, to the care of their mother, who is described by David Hume in My Own Life as "a woman of singular merit, who though young and handsome devoted herself entirely to the rearing and education of her children." Mr. Burton says: "Her portrait, which I have seen, represents a thin but pleasing countenance, expressive of great intellectual acuteness;" and as Hume told Dr. Black that she had "precisely ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... range, the pecan is found growing farther north along the Mississippi River, in Iowa and Illinois, than anywhere else in the country, and naturally we turned to these pecan forests hoping to find a variety bearing nuts of a size and quality to merit propagation and dissemination north of the belt where it is safe to recommend the planting of the Indiana varieties. As a result of correspondence with an Iowa nurseryman in the fall of 1914, I engaged the services of a competent man ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... waited but too long. I burn to see the sultan, and am tempted to offer him my service, as a young stranger: no doubt but he will accept of it, and I will not discover myself, till I have performed some glorious actions: I desire to merit his esteem before he knows who I am." Pirouze approved of his generous resolutions, and Codadad departed from Samaria, as if he had been going to the chase, without acquainting prince Samer, lest he should thwart ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... great merit in loving such a perfect queen," said the little king. "I don't know what prevented me from kissing you before the whole court when you danced the branle with the torches last night! I saw plainly that all the other women ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... terminerent en lui disant, "Ah, Monsieur Galland, si vous ne dormez pas, faites-nous un de ces beaux contes que vous savez si bien." Galland profita de la lecon, et supprima dans les volumes suivants le preambule qui lui avait attire la plaisanterie. This legend has the merit of explaining why the Professor so soon gave up the Arab framework which he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... of Desdemona, confident of merit and conscious of innocence, her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected, are proofs of Shakespeare's skill ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... 'tis she! Confusion seize your charitable blindnesse! Are you a prison visiter for this, To cherish my dishonour for your merit? ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... and outs, the fine points, the ethics of it all were not quite clear to Jim; but the derision in Bob's laugh was unmistakable; and on that derision and on that laugh hung his unfaltering confidence that dad would not, could not, do anything to merit either. ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... subject to possible revision; but we need not, on that account, deny that philosophy is, what it has in the past been believed to be, an earnest search for truth. A philosophy that did not even profess to be this would not be listened to at all. It would be regarded as too trivial to merit serious attention. If we take the word "science" in the broad sense to indicate a knowledge of the truth more exact and satisfactory than that which obtains in common life, we may say that every philosophy worthy of the name is, at least, an attempt at scientific knowledge. Of course, ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... joined by the militia of Pennsylvania and Kentucky, amounted to 1,453 men. About the middle of October Colonel Harden, who commanded the Kentucky militia, and who had been also a continental officer of considerable merit, was detached at the head of 600 men, chiefly militia, to reconnoiter the ground and to ascertain the intentions of the enemy. On his approach the Indians set fire to their principal village and fled with precipitation to the wood. As the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... has overtaken me, and not by caprice. There has been no actual contact of my person with thy seed, O illustrious deity of blazing flames! Our union, having for its cause the distress that has overtaken the deities, has been suitable and not of the flesh, O thou of great splendour. Whatever merit or otherwise there may be in this act (intended to be done by me), O eater of sacrificial libations, must belong to thee. Verily, I think, the righteousness or unrighteousness of this deed must be thine.' Unto her the deity of fire said, 'Do thou bear the seed. Do, indeed, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... unspoken messages directed heavenward. The kindly eyes of the old Beloit station have looked out upon many a scene of enthusiastic greeting and hearty well-wishing, but rarely has it seen these good offices extended to one of more apparent merit than handsome Warren E. Waring. One of the National Temperance societies had been utilizing the promising declamatory powers of the high school students of the country, through a series of county, district and state competitions, to influence ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... from the hall at night—then they are only the more pathetic. For the small pictures of pulpy babies photographed as cupids, the tin souvenirs and the pseudo-Turkish scarves draped over trunks rob the rooms of the simplicity which is their only merit. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... on the reef. The former read the morning service, from beginning to end, while the latter sat by, an attentive listener. The only proof given of any difference in religious faith between our mariners, was of so singular a nature as to merit notice. Notwithstanding Bob's early familiarity with Mark, his greater age, and the sort of community of feeling and interest created by their common misfortune, the former had not ceased to treat the last with the respect due to his office. ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... the higher talents that mark great men, but he possessed the two essential qualities of the head of a state - firmness and judgment. He showed this by the way in which he chose and supported those who built up his greatness, and this merit is rarer than is generally supposed. A soldier above all, he saw that Prussia's ambitions could be realized only with a ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... reform the civil service. Congress had made a timid experiment in civil service reform early in the seventies, but had soon wearied of it. Schurz announced that his subordinates would be chosen on merit, and acted ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... on fire. She neither screamed nor ran, but quietly permitted Charles K. Sharpe to extinguish the fire, which he did with great coolness and dexterity. All who saw her, especially the friendly Celts, gave her merit for her steadiness, and said she came of good blood. I was very glad and proud of her presence of mind. My own courage was not put to the test, for being at some distance, escorting the beautiful and lively Countess of Hopetoun, I did not hear of the accident till it ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... preparing yourself for the church, but I do hope that your final determination will not until then be taken, and that whatever events may occur in the interval, you will give them such weight and consideration as they may appear to merit.... Your mother is much as usual.—With our united and affectionate love, I ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Vallorbes clapped her hands softly and laughed. And her laughter, having the merit of being perfectly genuine—for the young man very really pleased her fancy—was likewise very infectious. Richard found himself laughing too, he knew not why, save that he was ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of Pearl, where the Queen was seated on her throne dispensing the graceful wreaths, which, woven by her own hand, were the choicest rewards bestowed in Fairy-land. It was easy to adjudge the crowns of merit among the fairies, for their beauty increased, or waned, according as they had ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... for a fixed result, for a certain number of volumes, is realized. But in what is this manifested? In the cheap price of books. For the good of whom? For the good of the consumer—of society—of humanity. Printers, having no longer any peculiar merit, receive no longer a peculiar remuneration. As men—as consumers—they no doubt participate in the advantages which the invention confers upon the community; but that is all. As printers, as producers, they are ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... people in the United States busy with their own affairs who look on the Canadians as living up north somewhere toward the Arctic Circle and not very numerous, that old criterion of worth which discovers in the glare of battle's publicity merit which already existed has given to the name Canadian a glory which can be appreciated only with the perspective of time. The Civil War left us a martial tradition; they have won theirs. Some day a few of their neutral neighbours ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... he was glad, on the contrary, to bequeath his hypotheses to the younger generation. Every twenty years theories changed; established truths only, on which science continued to build, remained unshaken. Even if he had only the merit of giving to science a momentary hypothesis, his work would not be lost, for progress consisted assuredly in the effort, in the onward march ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... order of merit to George Cruikshank, amongst his own contemporaries, if we except only Theodore Lane, comes Robert Seymour. With a style and manner peculiar to himself, and a power of invention and realization which amounted almost to genius, Seymour was superior in every ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... warbled feebly on the flute, and was adored as a curate, not only for his tootle-tooings, but for his diligent presence at mothers' meetings, and conscientious labours among the poor. A preacher Kidds never pretended to be; but he had the singular merit of brevity, and crowded more harmless heresies into ten minutes' pulpit oratory than Colenso or Voysey could have done in double the time. The young ladies made a dead set at him, of course, for Kidds was in every respect eligible; ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... these conventions a number of times and there have been those who claimed that the larger pieces were all ground up anyway and that the varieties from which you can recover large pieces were of no particular merit commercially. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... to the removal of the pulpit. "You ought not to touch it, Mr. Dean," he said with great emphasis one morning, when the two were standing before it: "you don't know what mischief you may do." "Mischief? it's not a work of any particular merit, Canon." "Don't call me Canon," said the old man with great asperity, "that is, for thirty years I've been known as Dr. Ayloff, and I shall be obliged, Mr. Dean, if you would kindly humour me in that matter. And as to the pulpit ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... until she is able to be removed in my carriage. But tell me, sister, among all these unhappy sick, do you not know some who particularly merit my interest and pity, and to whom I can be useful before ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... make not the 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 a ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... be worth if he could not disguise himself! A great merit, forsooth! And I tell you, I hate it! But I could not think of coming to Sauveterre in my own person, a detective. Ugh! Everybody would have run away; and what a pack of lies they would have told me! So I had to assume that hideous masquerade. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... culture had brought to so high a polish. The experience of the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so much saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through one's fingers; and above all it had the merit that so many things gave it and that nothing could take it away. He had noted in a moment how straight Francie Dosson gave it; and now, seeing her a second time, he felt her promote it in a degree which made acquaintance with her one of those ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... a writer; and opinions vary as to his merit. Some say he has talent; others say it is all eccentricity and affectation. One thing is certain—his books bring about the changes he demands. And then he is in earnest; he has taken a good many alleged ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb had established a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, but high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out to three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I was employed to contribute an article a week at $12. But the journal still languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Power, I am forspent, if merit there can be In self accusing, in this darkest hour O hear me, and I pray thee pity me, For I have sinned, O fool, unwise and blind! And I am Atma; whom thou hadst designed For life of sanctity and holy quest. Lord, I am Atma, and I have ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... PARC] prov. This phrase has two possible interpretations: (1) "While your suggestion may have some merit, I will behave as though I hadn't heard it." (2) "While your suggestion has obvious merit, equally obvious circumstances prevent it from being seriously considered." The charm of the phrase lies precisely in this subtle ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... to do in the future it is hard to say, and if I return again to my first love, base-ball, it will not be as a player, but wherever I may be or whatever I may do I shall still strive to merit the approval and good will of my ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... by emigrants, by "furriners," that all these things were done. What, therefore, can be more ungrateful, if not more unjust, in the "nativists," than to attempt to rob the poor emigrant of the rewards of his labor and merit, in order that they may enjoy all the fruit of the latter's toil? This is the height of ingratitude and injustice; a far more glaring instance of both than that of the reputed forefathers of these "nativists" ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... wonder he "did not like reviewing at all," especially as he "never could understand why reviews were instituted; works of merit do not require to be reviewed, they can speak for themselves, and require no praising; works of no merit at all will die of themselves, they require no killing." He forgot "The Dairyman's Daughter," and he could not foresee the early ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... that particular cause was lost. These are not days in which it is exactly obvious that an agricultural society was more dangerous than an industrial one. And even Southern slavery had this one moral merit, that it was decadent; it has this one historic advantage, that it is dead. The Northern slavery, industrial slavery, or what is called wage slavery, is not decaying but increasing; and the end of ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... more they cost, the worse they are. It does not follow, because newspapers say, "magnificent bridge," "two million feet of timber," "eighty or one hundred tons of iron," "cost half a million," that there is any merit about either the bridge or its builder; as one span is, so is the whole; and a bridge fifty feet long, and costing only a few hundreds, may show more engineering skill than the largest and most costly viaducts in America. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... great municipality as Mayor, a glance at his life shows that he has won his way to that position by the exhibition of qualities, such as all self-educated men possess. His private and public life fully illustrate that true merit is sooner ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... was upon the spot, in close conversation with her, and scarcely five minutes after the oath had been sworn that bound her to me for life! Less wonder I was jealous. That the feeling lasted only for an instant might be some palliation, but it was no merit of mine that brought it so quickly to a termination. I cannot screen my conduct behind an act of volition; for although the poisoned sting rankled but for a few seconds of time, during that short period I yielded obedience ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... afterwards distinguished himself in Admiral Keppel's memorable action of the 27th of July 1778; as well as in that of Admiral Greaves, off the Chesapeak, the 5th of September 1781, where he lost a leg; was then under sailing orders for Gibraltar, with a convoy. He had too much merit of his own, not soon to discover it in another; and was so well satisfied with his young officer, as to place the utmost confidence in his ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... the circumstance that Brahman is connected with the hearts of all living beings it does not follow that it is, like the embodied Self, subject to fruition. For, between the embodied Self and the highest Self, there is the difference that the former acts and enjoys, acquires merit and demerit, and is affected by pleasure, pain, and so on; while the latter is of the opposite nature, i.e. characterised by being free from all evil and the like. On account of this difference of the two, the fruition of the one ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... The earliest Assyriologists, H. Rawlinson, Oppert, considered the local kings as having been, for the most part, kings of all Chaldaea, and placed them in succession one after the other in the framework of the most ancient dynasties of Berossus. The merit of having established the existence of series of local dynasties, and of having given to Chaldaean history its modern form, belongs to G. Smith. Smith's idea was adopted by Menant, by Delitzsch-Murdter, by Tiele, by Winckler, and by all Assyriologists, with modifications suggested by ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... deny that under such a system the man with the glib tongue and the persuasive manner, the babbling talker and the scheming organizer, would secure all the places of power and profit, while patient merit went to ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... the ordinary way. The man loves only the race in his wife, the woman in her husband only the degree of his ability and social position, and both love in their children only their creation and their property. Under those circumstances fidelity comes to be a merit, a virtue, and jealousy is in order. For they are quite right in tacitly believing that there are many like themselves, and that one man is about as good as the next, and none of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... partners in domestic economy. Alice had experienced the troubles of poverty, and had never met with excellence in men except in poems, which she had long ago been taught to separate from the possibilities of actual life. She had, therefore, no conception of any degree of merit in a husband being sufficient to compensate for slender means of subsistence. She was not base-minded; nothing could have induced her to marry a man, however rich, whom she thought wicked. She wanted money; but she wanted ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... and wrote with the skill of an expert. Vocal and instrumental pieces of his own composition, preserved among the manuscripts at the British Museum,[57] rank among the best productions of the time; and one of his anthems, "O Lorde, the Maker of all thyng," is of the highest order of merit, and still remains a favourite in ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... bestowed upon me the title of 'incomparable observer,' the epithet has often come back to me, from this side and from that, without my yet understanding what particular merit I have shown. It seems to me so natural, so much within everybody's scope, so absorbing to interest one's self in everything that swarms around us! However, let us pass on and admit that the compliment is ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... this book of "Wanderings" with a hesitating hand. It has little merit, and must make its way through the world as well as it can. It will receive many a jostle as it goes along, and perhaps is destined to add one more to the number of slain in the field of modern criticism. But if ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... will have 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
... cured more than any school of cures, and has sustained all its diplomates financially and otherwise. I write this article on blood for the student of Osteopathy. I want him to put nature to a test of its merit, and know if it is a law equal to all demands. If not, he is very much and seriously limited when he goes into war with diseases. What is to be ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... mouth to mouth. His evident approval had somewhat the effect of subduing the men's resentment, although not much, and when he died that night there was none left, save I, to lend our leader countenance. And I was only his half-friend, without enough merit in my heart truly to be the right-hand man I was by right of seniority. I was willing enough to die at his back, but not to share contempt ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... found. I felt, too, that my knowledge was appreciated. George Hammond had that one best gift that belongs to all successful leaders, whether of armies, colonies, or bands of miners: he recognized merit when he saw it. From that morning a feeling of self-respect dawned upon me, I was not so altogether ignorant as I had thought myself, I had some available knowledge; and with that feeling came the determination to raise myself out of that slough ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... literature of the day, and in consequence, there are few authors of any celebrity, especially the cotemporaries of Johnson, of whom he does not possess interesting anecdotes, as well as an acquaintance with the merit which they were severally allowed ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... substitution need not take place beside water. The heroine is a stranger who, generally after long wanderings, finds a prince really or apparently dead, by patient watching all but effects his cure, but is at the last moment supplanted by a servant, who gives the final touch to the work, claims its entire merit, and is made the wife of the grateful patient. In the Indian tale the prince lies motionless, his body "stuck full of needles." The heroine sits down by the side of his couch, and there remains for a whole week "without eating, or drinking, or sleeping, pulling ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... have been his work at any time; certainly none too good to have been the work of his boyhood. And I have met with no conjecture on the point that bears greater likelihoods of truth, than that another three, far different in merit, were addressed, much later in life, to the same object. The prevailing tone and imagery of them are such as he would hardly have used but with a woman in his thoughts; they are full-fraught with ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... weekly, monthly, or quarterly, there is not one especially intended to assist Men of Letters and of research in their pursuits. Literary Journals there are in abundance, many of them of the highest degree of merit, which in their Reviews and Announcements show the current sayings and doings of the literary world. There is not, however, one among them in which the reading many may note, for the use of himself and his fellow-labourers in the wide field of Literature, the minute facts ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various
... greatly overrated exemplar. It stimulates a certain bashfulness, hangs its head, and passed as modest among our simple grandparents. Its special merit is its perfume, and it pretends to wish to hide that from every eye. But, withal, the fragrance is as far-reaching as any I know. It droops ingenuously. "How could you come to me," it seems to say, "when all these really brilliant flowers invite you?" Mere fishing for compliments. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty, and supped with Infamy.' And after all, of what use is this pride of appearance, for which so much is risked, so much is suffered? It can not promote health, nor ease pain; it makes no increase of merit in the person; it ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Atonement was asserted. It may be admitted at once that when the term substitute is interpreted without reference to this basis of fact it lends itself very easily to misconstruction. It falls in with, if it does not suggest, the idea of a transference of merit and demerit, the sin of the world being carried over to Christ's account, and the merit of Christ to the world's account, as if the reconciliation of God and man, or the forgiveness of sins and the regeneration of souls, could be explained without the use of higher categories than are employed ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... vice which constitute the very essence of his worship; when you think of the countless multitudes that annually congregate there, from all parts of India, many of them measuring the whole distance of their weary pilgrimage with their own bodies; when you think of the merit-earning assiduities constantly practiced by crowds of devotees and religious mendicants, around the holy city, some remaining all day with their head on the ground, and their feet in the air; others ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... argument against establishing in England any literary body having the power of pensioning literary men.[468] On this subject he said, "There is ... really no occasion for encouraging by a society the competition of authors. The land is before them, and if they really have merit they seldom fail to conquer their share of public applause and private profit.... I cannot, in my knowledge of letters, recollect more than two men whose merit is undeniable while, I am afraid, their circumstances are narrow. ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... an army so formed will in quality and character, in native energy, in the comprehension which each individual has of the cause for which he is fighting, exceed in merit any army in the world. We have only to have a chance of even numbers or anything approaching even numbers to demonstrate the superiority of free-thinking, active citizens over the docile sheep who serve the ferocious ambitions of drastic Kings. [Cheers.] Our enemies ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... pretension, were produced one after the other; and I thus had Hamburg hung beef, Westphalia ham, and even St Petersburg caviare; preserved pine apple formed my desert, and a capital glass of claret "for the gentleman," of which the ladies, however, professed themselves incapable of discovering the merit, was followed by an equally capital bottle of brandy, which they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... point of view, Henry's well-known project of expelling the House of Austria from all its possessions, and dividing the spoil among the European powers, deserves the title of a chimera, which men have so liberally bestowed upon it; but did it merit that appellation in the second? It had never entered into the head of that excellent monarch, in the choice of those who must be the instruments of his designs, to reckon on the sufficiency of such motives as animated himself and Sully ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... old man, can create such a being as that; and I have heard visitors to this village, leisured and cultured folk, whose own creative abilities amount to no more than the arranging of some decorative art in strata of merit, talk down to the old fellow who can think out a vessel like that after supper, and go out after breakfast to direct the laying of her keel—talk down to him, kindly enough, of course, and ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... a Danish Prince. The moral inculcated by it is, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." It is replete with quotations from the best authors, and contains many passages of marked ability. Its literary merit is unquestionable, though it lacks the vivacity of BOUCICAULT, and possesses no situation of such intense interest as the scene in ROSINA MEADOWS where the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... to your lordship the merit of Sir James Saumarez, which cannot be surpassed. In a conversation I accidentally had with him last evening, I learned that his ambition had been much disappointed in not being created a baronet; and he thought I was wanting, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... is with the pursuers rather than with the pursued. The subtle characterisation of the various occupations reaches a high level of artistic merit. Mr. Barrie himself could scarcely have succeeded better in ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... stories. We are going to let your knocks await a reply from Dr. Smith. The Editor does not desire to find himself between the upper and lower millstones represented by an author and his critic. But you certainly make amends for your criticism by what you say about the merit of "The Skylark Stories." We hope ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... from the historical side that we shall view him in the main, because his importance for the readers of the twentieth century is almost entirely dynamical. His work is by no means devoid of aesthetic merit. He was, like so many of the Elizabethans, a writer of beautiful lyrics which are well known to this day; but, though the rest of his work is undoubtedly that of an artist of no mean ability, the beauty it possesses is the beauty of a fossil in which few but students would profess any interest. ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... set us to do by ourselves between Saturday morning and Monday, were theses on various subjects, or original verses, on some chosen theme; the writer still possesses several of these, of varied merit. They taught us, however, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... with forty detailed plates, made their appearance, they were hailed as an admirable contribution to the knowledge of a comparatively little known department of the animal kingdom. In the interests of science, perhaps, their chief value is to be recognized, not so much in their own high merit, as in the practical training which their preparation gave the author in anatomical detail and classification. He spoke of it himself afterward as a valuable discipline, and Professor Huxley truly affirms that the influence of this discipline was visible in everything ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... to her, and that, by dint of trying all kinds of ways, I have gained the privilege of saying a word now and then, and of speaking at random on any subject. Sometimes I do not succeed as I should like, but at others I succeed very well. Leave it to me, then; I am your friend, I love men of merit, and I will choose my time to speak ...
— The Magnificent Lovers (Les Amants magnifiques) • Moliere
... children in the Windsor Castle picture, and this one, which hangs in the Turin Gallery, was probably painted before the birth of the fourth child in 1636. It is celebrated for its colouring as well as for its great artistic merit. The children are surely childlike enough, despite their stately attire, and they little dream of the sad fate awaiting the whole of the Stuart ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... drawn up in a symbol in the person, as it were, of the whole Church, which is united together by faith. Now the faith of the Church is living faith; since such is the faith to be found in all those who are of the Church not only outwardly but also by merit. Hence the confession of faith is expressed in a symbol, in a manner that is in keeping with living faith, so that even if some of the faithful lack living faith, they should endeavor ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... greater than is consistent with the men's giving a full day's work to their industrial occupations the unpaid nature of the service cannot be maintained, and the men must be paid for their time. The merit of the man's free gift of himself is ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... neck was hidden and her cheeks made to seem coarse by the stiff collar, while her plump arms looked as though stuck on like those of a doll in their sleeves of black cloth which contrasted with the bodice and skirt of fawn-coloured serge. Her straight fringe that had had the merit of suiting her face was now frizzed, while the rest of her hair was twisted into what was known as a "tea-pot handle" at the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... these defects in the rendering of the ancient classics, it would be unjust not to acknowledge the great artistic merit and value of the performances, given—as Oratorio should be—in the church. To hear l'Enfance du Christ (Berlioz) as performed at the Sorbonne, with its particular facilities for obtaining the ppp effects of the distant or receding angelic chorus, is to be impressed to a degree impossible ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... their motives, is often subtle, but always sane; his interpretation of the master's own dealings with them, and of the language which he puts into their mouths, is often highly imaginative, but it is rarely fanciful. Take, as an illustration of the first-mentioned merit, the following acute but eminently sensible estimate of the character ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type, but is the crown and flower of all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as all the defects. It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these. The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... have already appeared before the public, similar in character to this little work, that it is with feelings of diffidence we bring our humble offering, especially when we consider the rich merit possessed by many of its predecessors. But our apology must be found in the fact that these publications are, from their size, and consequent expense, inaccessible to many of the class whose improvement they are so well ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... concerning the man of colossal finance. One can never blame Fleet Street for "booming" any man or woman. A couple of thousand pounds to a Press agent will secure for a burglar an invitation to dine at a peer's table. Plainly speaking, in Europe since the war, real merit has become almost a back number. ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... pointing out the Means of alleviating those Miseries, which necessarily attend a Military Life in the Time of Service, be acceptable, I shall obtain the utmost of my Wishes; it being the greatest Ambition of my Heart ever so to act as to merit Your MAJESTY's Approbation, and ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... confidence in progress and in the triumph of truth; inspiring good will, humane affections, philanthropic activity, and personal holiness; faith in God as the Father of man—man's universal Saviour and inspirer—man's merit consists wholly in being his child and the pupil of his grace in nature, life, the church, and the unseen world—these are the permanent articles of Christian faith, which is not so much faith ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... re-publish them. I have added many others, which are now first printed. I shall be well satisfied, if they find as favourable a reception as their precursors; and are thought not to have increased the size, without at all increasing the merit, of the book. ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... set the tables and cooked the food and prepared the beds for these wayfaring men. And their name was legion. Every circuit had one or more, though unavoidably and without rivalry some one easily ranked all contemporaries of any given neighborhood, and some, from position as well as real merit, acquired almost a national reputation, so that a strange preacher or a bishop would be directed, when hundreds of miles distant, to what were known as "Methodist taverns," by the way. The presiding elder, before leaving home for a series of quarterly meetings, always mapped out ...
— The Heroic Women of Early Indiana Methodism: An Address Delivered Before the Indiana Methodist Historical Society • Thomas Aiken Goodwin
... consideration—a scrupulous regard to their feelings—to which they were not, perhaps, at all times accustomed, and which both charmed and benefited them; because, while it elevated them in their own eyes, it made them emulous to merit ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Law, and the commercial proscription, drove the iron ever deeper and deeper into the souls of Irishmen. It is but small merit in the Irish Parliament of George I. and George II., if under these circumstances a temper was gradually formed in, and transmitted by, them, which might one day achieve the honours of patriotism. It was in dread of this most healthful process, that the English Government set sedulously to work ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry Campbell remembered it Palme on Booterstown strand. That was the talk of the town that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of original verse of 910 distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish Times), breakers running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore in commotion petrified with horror. Then someone said something about the case of the s. s. Lady Cairns of Swansea run into by the Mona which was on an opposite tack in rather muggyish ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... to think that these hasty Letters, destitute as they are of all literary merit, written during a visit to the 'New World,' may be, just now, worth presenting to 'every-day sort of people,' like myself, who have little time to travel; and, unable to do both, would rather watch the ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... brief an acquaintance—was so firmly fixed upon her sister's countenance that nothing else seemed to signify. It was by this time past two o'clock, and the repast, which arrived in successive relays, had, at all events, the merit of || combining the leading features of breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea in one remarkable procession, Julia Connolly, having inaugurated the entertainment with tumblers of dark brown steaming whisky and water, was impelled from strength to strength by her growing ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... of course the merit of being cheaper, but this was more than offset by the fact that in place of panes of glass their windows had slats of wood with white cotton stretched over them,—an ingenious contrivance for shutting out the view and a good bit of the light, ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... There are many of these places in the city, and I am familiar with them all. They are the poor man's club and opera. Of course, the performers are not of a high order of talent, and generally not of a high order of morals; but occasionally singers or actors of real merit and good character begin on these humble boards, and afterwards rise to great ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... and bravery—are intimately connected with the cultivation of chastity and asceticism.[70] It is true that savages seldom have any ideal of chastity in the degraded modern sense, as a state of permanent abstinence from sexual relationships having a merit of its own apart from any use. They esteem chastity for its values, magical or real, as a method of self-control which contributes towards the attainment of important ends. The ability to bear pain and restraint is nearly always a main element in the initiation ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of unusual merit, but it was enough that Tom called her Magsie, and was pleased with her. There was nothing to mar her delight in the whispers and the dreamy silences, when she listened to the light dipping sounds of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... melting down my materials into one mass, and constantly speaking in my own person, by which I might have appeared to have more merit in the execution of the work, I have resolved to adopt and enlarge upon the excellent plan of Mr. Mason, in his Memoirs of Gray[95]. Wherever narrative is necessary to explain, connect, and supply, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... whom he had sent out, was not allowed in those days any credit for the success which was achieved under his orders. There was great reason to doubt the man at the helm. But nevertheless he had been lucky. There is no merit in a public man like success! But now, when the evil days were wellnigh over, came the question whether he had not been too successful. When a man has nailed fortune to his chariot-wheels he is apt to travel about in rather a proud fashion. There are servants who think that their masters cannot ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... stock" (U.S. pat. 9,457). The inference is that such a tool form was already a familiar one among the woodworking trades in the United States. Disregarding the screwdriver attachment, which is not without merit, Switzer's stock represents an accurate rendering of what was then a well-known form if not as yet a rival of the older wooden brace. Likewise, J. Parker Gordon's patent 52,042 of 1866 exemplifies the strengthening of a basic tool by the use of iron (fig. ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... in England, whether for or against, were all personal. The Dost was the favourite—which was generous—as he had no solitary merit to plead except that he had lost the election; or, as the watchmaker's daughter so pointedly said on behalf of Nigel Lord Glenvarloch, "Madam, he is unfortunate." Searching, however, in all corners for the undiscovered virtues of the Dost, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... the two novels last named, she had presented the world with a more ambitious work, whose merit was to compel universal acknowledgment—the most important, in fact, she had ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... worthy proprietress by this sudden invasion of Gillray's favourite subjects. But Burke reassured her with a smile: "Were I to prosecute you it would be the making of your fortune; and that favour, excuse me, Mrs. Humphrey, you do not entirely merit at ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... the light of his own conscience, and through no other compulsion. Meanwhile, I have known many righteous men who have followed thy intended profession in honesty and uprightness of walk. The greater their merit, who walk erect in a path which ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... told me that she had additional reasons now for going with us. There was sure to be trouble, she admitted that much; but then wasn't her place by my side, more especially if things weren't all they should be? Her logic left much to be desired, but it had the one merit of achieving its object. It was devastating; it completely crushed all my arguments and left me without a leg to ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... I was too bold, I must confesse indeede, To touch the seluage of thy sacred weede: For which my selfe Ile punish as thou wilt, VVith any paine, for my deserued guilt. Doe but pronounce the sentence of my death, These hands shall be the butchers of my breath: But since the merit of my fault's no deeper, Oh let me be thy Prisoner, thou my Keeper; So shall thine eyes be witnesse of the woe, VVhich for my bold offence Ile vndergoe. Pronounce thy sentence then. VVherwith she spake, You are your Crafts-man Sir: and there she brake. Yet turning backe, quoth she, o would ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... remembrances, very narrowly escaped being defaced and dishonored, by an attempt to convert them into barracks for French prisoners of war. The late President Blair, as zealous a patriot as he was an excellent lawyer, had the merit of averting this insult upon one of the most striking objects of antiquity which Scotland yet affords. I am happy to add that of late years the Court of Exchequer have, in this and similar cases, shown much zeal to preserve our national antiquities, and stop the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... did not merit so much as the smell of such a thing. But this is but one cake, father; and you informed me that there were three, if you ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... oder hand, I explain that my wife has imparted to me sufficient to enable me to perfectionate the discovery, and if the reserve be continued, it is just to demand compensation, I am met with indignation even greater. I appeal to zie captain. Is this treatment such as my proposals merit?" ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... attention to those soldier-writers of verse who, in my judgment, expressed themselves with most originality during the war. There is a temptation to continue the inquiry, and to expatiate on others of only less merit and promise. Much could be said of Charles Hamilton Sorley, who gave evidence of precocious literary talent, though less, I think, in verse, since the unmistakable singing faculty is absent in Marlborough (Cambridge University Press, 1916), than in prose, a ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... question by experiments. The most remarkable of these are two which were made by Tennyson. One of them, called "Hendecasyllabics," is little more than a trick played with extreme skill, and in no serious sense does it merit the name of poetry. The other, "An Ode to Milton," is no less charming as a poem than as a conquest over technical difficulties. Let ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... seize, gag, and muffle the damsel so securely, that, with the keys in our possession, we might open the gates, and pass without question the only sentinels who guarded the exterior corridor. Germaine was eloquent upon the merit of his scheme, while, to my mind, it indicated the bungling project of a beginner, and was promptly rejected, because I would not injure with violence the innocent girl I had trifled with, and because I would not dishonor ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... toiled a slave may come anew a prince For gentle worthiness and merit won; Who ruled a king may wander earth in rags For things ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... small, light instrument in that form, but without pedals, so light, that they can lift it with one hand; and yet the music they bring from it is surprising; one air after another, a little monotonously, but with great ease and a certain execution, and with the additional merit of being self-taught. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... abruptly. I thought it not proper, before that merchant, to give a favourable answer to the discovery you made of your affection for me. But to speak the truth, I was so far from being offended at it, that it gave me pleasure; and I account myself infinitely happy in having a man of your merit for my lover. I do not know what impression the first sight of me may have made on you, but I assure you, I had no sooner beheld you than I found my heart moved with the tenderest emotions of love. Since yesterday I have done nothing but think of what ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... that the promoter never convinced his friend that he could successfully invest for him a half million dollars along the lines indicated. Nevertheless the corporate plan is not without merit. For example, if a father should incorporate his farm, he could provide for the inheritance of the preferred stock, among the heirs, as he desires. He could give to the son who operates the farm all the common stock, together with what preferred ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... a ferocity which the incident scarcely seemed to merit and exchanged a significant glance with someone who had approached and who now stood behind me. Turning, I met a second black gaze—that of the quadroon who having restored order had returned from the cafe door and now stood regarding me. "Did you ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... served as Sheriff of London and was three times Lord Mayor. In the last year of his mayoralty he entertained King Henry V and his Queen, after his conquest of France, upon which occasion the King, in consideration of Whittington's merit, said: "Never had prince such a subject"; which being told to Whittington at the table, he replied: "Never had subject such a king." His Majesty, out of respect to his good character, conferred the honor of knighthood ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... My poor friend, what could you do with it? You have gained a good deal of merit already, just for having looked at them. I know well enough that they are croutes. They would stick in ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... if not the sole merit of this little book consists in the illustrations which adorn it; and I must express my sincere gratitude to Mr. Gould, the eminent ornithologist, for his kind permission to copy some of the magnificent drawings in his work on 'The Birds of Great Britain.' ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... Having light winds and calms, we were three days on the passage, and each watch below, during the daytime, I spent in the same manner, until I had finished my book. I shall never forget the enjoyment I derived from it. To come across anything with the slightest claims to literary merit, was so unusual, that this was a perfect feast to me. The brilliancy of the book, the succession of capital hits, lively and characteristic sketches, kept me in a constant state of pleasing sensations. It was far too good for a sailor. I could not ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... full of character. The book is one to be enjoyed; all the more because it smacks of the forest instead of the museum. John Burroughs says: "The volume is in many ways the most brilliant collection of Animal Stories that has appeared. It reaches a high order of literary merit." ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... second prize of $50. The judges awarded the first prize to Mr. Blanshard and the second prize to Mr. Weisman. So great, however, was the interest of the guests at Mohonk Lake, and so nearly equal in merit were the orations, that a gentleman present gave an additional $25 to Mr. Weisman to make the prizes equal, and Mr. Joshua Bailey of Philadelphia gave each of ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... defined they took a lodging together in the Piazza del Grano. Their first work in partnership may probably have been the "Baptism of Christ,'' for the Florentine Compagnia dello Scalzo, a performance of no great merit, the beginning of a series, all the extant items of which are in monochrome chiaroscuro. Soon afterwards the partnership was dissolved. From 1509 to 1514 the brotherhood of the Servites employed Andrea, as well as Franciabigio and Andrea Feltrini, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ourselves, all that has lifted us to the level at which we stand, all that has overcome the evil days and the evil instincts of human nature: all this could have been no more than lies and illusions if such men as these, such a mass of merit and of glory, were really annihilated, had really forever disappeared, were forever useless and voiceless, forever without influence in a world to which they ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... monopoly of which every singing-master is wont to claim for himself. C.F. Becker, too, the eminent organist and industrious collector, belonged to this circle, as well as many more young and old artists of more or less merit and talent."[B] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... their domestics with more suitable accommodations, and are more indulgent; but there is still a latent spirit of something like contempt for the position. That they treat their servants with so much consideration seems to them a merit entitling them to the most prostrate gratitude; and they are constantly disappointed and shocked at that want of sense of inferiority on the part of these people which leads them to appropriate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... filled with a number of dried Imuran heads grinning horribly up at me! I turned away in disgust, when I saw the chief looking at me with a glance of triumph in his eye, just as a civilised person would have been pleased at exhibiting a collection of his orders of merit for gallantry in battle or sagacity in the council. They were trophies, I found, taken by the chief in his wars with neighbouring tribes. Probably it was the possession of these which had raised him to his position ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... amount of misdirected labour would have been saved. But although many of the attempts at a change failed, yet some of them succeeded, and have gradually produced ameliorations and improvements in the art of teaching. Still it must be observed, that philosophy has had little or no share in the merit. Her labours in this important field have yet to be begun. Valuable exercises have no doubt been introduced; but the principles upon which the success of these exercises depends, remain in a great measure concealed from the public generally:—And the reason of this is, that the ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... that made her catch her breath, was the quality of the big laugh with which he concluded it. He didn't ask her to be sorry for him. He wasn't sorry for himself one bit,—nor bitter—nor cynical. He didn't even seem trying to make a merit of his refusal to acquiesce in that sordid point of view. He just dismissed the thing with a cymbal-like clash of laughter and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Buckthorn is a slender shrub, which occurs in our woods and thickets. The juice of its berries is aperient, without being irritating, and is well suited as a laxative for persons of delicate constitution. It possesses the merit of continuing to answer in smaller doses after the patient has become habituated to its use. The berry of the Rhamnus frangula may be known by its containing only two seeds. Country people give the bark boiled in ale for jaundice; and this bark is the black dogwood ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... dreadful doom: I do believe the bad must go From thence, to everlasting woe: I do believe the good, and I, Shall live with Him eternally: I do believe I shall inherit Heaven, by Christ's mercies, not my merit. I do believe the One in Three, And Three in perfect unity: Lastly, that JESUS is a deed Of gift from ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... an important part, of the wars undertaken by Thutmosis to "fix his frontiers in the ends of the earth." Scarcely a year elapsed without the viceroy of Ethiopia having a conflict with one or other of the tribes of the Upper Nile; little merit as he might gain in triumphing over such foes, the spoil taken from them formed a considerable adjunct to the treasure collected in Syria, while the tributes from the people of Kush and the Uauaiu were ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... literary man. Desirous of having his dramas accepted at the London theatres, and finding no one to favor him. Too noble to be dependent, and going days without food. In 183ty something he published, "Gisippus," a tragedy, famed of the greatest merit. Finally he became weary of his literary life, and entered an Irish convent, where, within two or three years, he died. His father's family in greater part have removed to America, and his elder brother, a physician of note, has recently published his memoirs, the reviews of which I have happened ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... obscured by more urgent affairs, for his own part he had never set any value upon them at all, but a time might come when they would be at least interesting, and in short he wished to confer the Order of Merit upon Leblanc. His sole motive in doing so, he added, was his strong desire to signalise his personal esteem. He laid his hand upon the Frenchman's shoulder as he said these things, with an almost brotherly affection. Leblanc received this ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... deliberately and surveyed our hero. It is not within the range of the author to read the thoughts of a grizzly, but, from the indifference with which he turned away and resumed his watch, it may be inferred that he considered Tom too small game to merit his attention. This was rather satisfactory to our young hero, who was not ambitious to come in close quarters with so formidable ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Walks her sad sister Sorrow. So my brush Began depicting sorrow, heavy-eyed, With pallid visage, ere the rosy flush Upon the beaming face of Joy had dried. The careful study of long months, it won Golden opinions; even bringing forth That certain sign of merit—a critique Which set both pieces down as daubs, and weak As empty heads that sang their praises—so Proving conclusively the pictures' worth. These critics and reviewers do not use Their precious ammunition to abuse A worthless work. That, left alone, they know Will ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... was informed that Savoy was to go for Lombardy, and Nice for Venetia; others said that Nice was to be the price of the Duchies and Legations. There was a persistent impression that the island of Sardinia was mentioned, which would not merit record but for the general correctness of the other guesses. There is no reference, however, to Sardinia, in the version of the treaty which has since been published, and Cavour indignantly repudiated the idea of ceding ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of cowardice before those who appreciate true merit and bravery, according to his way of thinking, and pride comes to his aid. A man will meet death like a Roman under such circumstances, who would be weak as a woman if he ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the hope of catching the eye of some powerful personage, of being advanced to some high position of trust, of even ending his days as a partner, a subordinate assistant plutocrat. Or he may win a quite agreeable position by literary or artistic merit. A pretty girl, a clever woman of the middle class would have before her even more brilliant and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... lift it is! It just shows what luck can do. Well, I don't care. I shouldn't care to be a painted accident—I shouldn't value it. I am prouder to have climbed up to where I am just by sheer natural merit than I would be to ride the very sun in the zenith and have to reflect that I was nothing but a poor little accident, and got shot up there out of somebody else's catapult. To me, merit is everything—in fact, the only thing. All else ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... just even in anger. Come to me with these words when y' are grown and come to man's estate, and I am no longer your guardian, and so helpless to resent them. Come to me then, and I will answer you as ye merit, with a buffet in the mouth. Till then ye have two courses: either swallow me down these insults, keep a silent tongue, and fight in the meanwhile for the man that fed and fought for your infancy; or else—the door standeth open, the woods ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Tribune' should single me out in this way from the midst of a dozen Americans of higher political prominence, is a problem which I cannot solve. Beyond a somewhat intimate knowledge of Spanish history and a profound veneration for its great names and illustrious deeds, I feel that I possess no merit that should peculiarly recommend me to this royal distinction. I cannot deny that Spanish history has always been mother's milk to me. I am proud of every Spanish achievement, from Hernando Cortes's victory at Thermopylae down to Vasco Nunez de Balboa's discovery of the Atlantic ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and in adapting his existing stock to the requirements of the new curriculum. Of these lectures, and of others which he wrote in later years, it must be said that, while all of them were the fruit of conscientious and strenuous toil, they were of unequal merit, or at least of unequal effectiveness. Some of them, particularly in his Apologetic courses, were brilliant and stimulating. Whenever he had a great personality to deal with, such as Origen, Grotius, ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... enthusiasm and superstition; its outward form is decent and respectful, without affected ostentation; and what shews its excellence above all others is, that every other church allows it to be the best, except itself: and it is an established rule, that he has an undoubted right to the first rank of merit, to whom every ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... O, suffer me, among so many men, To tread aright the traces of thy pen, And light my link at thy eternal flame, Till with it I brand everlasting shame On the world's forehead, and with thine own spirit Pay home the world according to his merit. Thy purer soul could not endure to see Ev'n smallest spots of base impurity, Nor could small faults escape thy cleaner hands. Then foul-fac'd vice was in his swaddling-bands, Now, like Anteus, grown a monster is, A match for none but mighty Hercules: Now can ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... down causes a fresh flow of oil. The ruder sex occupied one half of the ring, and the rest was appropriated to dame and damsel. The Batuque is said to be the original Cachucha; Barbot calls it a danse des filoux, and it has the merit of perfectly expressing, as Captain Cook's companions remarked of the performances in the South Sea Islands, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... toga virilis with us, the first dignity bestowed on the young man. Before this he was looked upon as part of his father's household—now he is a member of the State. Eminently noble birth, or great merit on the part of their fathers, assigns the dignity of a chief[27] even to very young men. They are admitted to the fellowship of other youths stronger than themselves, and already tried in war, nor do they blush to be seen among the henchmen.[28] There is a gradation ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... resignation being, in common, as perfect as his previous arrogance was insupportable. The two old senators perceived at once that Don Camillo and his fair companion were completely beyond the reach of their power, and they instantly admitted the wisdom of making a merit of necessity. Having no farther occasion for Jacopo, they summoned the keepers, and ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the literary field. With a versatility of talent which sometimes recalled Voltaire's "proteanism," he attacked in succession the most difficult styles. Besides their poetic value, his dramas had this positive merit, the highest in the theatre world they were money-makers; so the managers greeted him with due respect, while collaborators swarmed about him. The journals paid for his articles in their weight in gold; reviews snatched every line of his yet unfinished novels; his works were illustrated by Porret ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... since I've been yours, I swear to you that I've not belonged to anyone else. I don't claim any merit for this; I should have found ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... excellent; but it seemed to me curious that the speaker should be denouncing competition in the very same breath with proofs of its influence in encouraging education. When I was a lad, a clever boy and a stupid boy had an equal chance of getting an appointment to a public office. The merit which won a place might be relationship to a public official, or perhaps to a gentleman who had an influence in the constituency of the official. The system was a partial survival of the good old days in which, according to Sam Weller, the young nobleman got a position because his mother's ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to know the history of the family. I was never in the county till my husband brought me here." Mrs. Charmond did not care to pursue this line of investigation. Whatever mysterious merit might attach to family antiquity, it was one which, though she herself could claim it, her adaptable, wandering weltburgerliche nature had grown tired of caring about—a peculiarity that made her a contrast to her neighbors. "It is of rather more importance to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... There is no special merit that all the works of the Lord should thus praise the Lord in their expression, because below the stage of a human being there is no option. The lower forms of life are like lamps on a circuit which light up by reason of the current over which they exercised ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... possessed of a fine taste, are employed in making artificial flowers. The establishments in which umbrellas and parasols are made depend almost exclusively on the labor of women, while the millinery and straw-goods branches owe most of their prosperity and merit to the handiwork of female taste and skill. There are many who work for the dentists, manufacturing artificial teeth. Even at the repulsive business of cigar-making, in a close, unwholesome atmosphere continually loaded with tobacco-fumes, there are many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... story of the Hopkins watch diverges from the interests who later brought out the rival Waterbury watch, it seems appropriate to call the reader's attention to the basic points of novelty and merit in the Hopkins watch which carried over to what became the Waterbury, somewhat as an hereditary characteristic passes from generation to generation. Previous writers have realized that one of these watches led to the other and have grouped ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison
... in Mr. Trollope's [16] History of Christ's Hospital, and its companion that of Coleridge, characterize the two youths, and plainly point out that the selection of these poems was influenced more by a merit belonging purely to talent than from any display of genius in either. The verses of Middleton are more indicative of strength than of power; they are the verses of a well-tutored youth, of commanding talents. Those of Coleridge show more of fancy, but do not exhibit the ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... of the blind." He said he was the "blind monarch of the one-eyed." I must still differ with his lordship on that point; but I must own, that, after all which I have seen and read, posterity, in my opinion, will differ not a little with one person respecting the amount of merit to be ascribed to Mr. Wordsworth; though who that one person is, I shall leave ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... acquired reputation for engraving directly from nature, without the intervention of brush or pencil. One may judge of the results of his work by the plates in Whittier's "Poems of Nature," issued as a special holiday volume the present season. The pictures vary in merit, but they all show what the skilled workman is capable of doing ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... woman, and she, without a word, accepts it as her due, your only consolation will be to fall back on the comforting thought that you have behaved like a gentleman, and that any discourtesy of hers cannot detract from the merit of your action. You did not do it for the thanks you might receive, but because it is right. It is not pessimistic to assert that all through life, we are working on this principle—not that we may receive the credit for what we do, but doing good for the good's sake. Do not be so rash ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... these, he discovered so much of Caroline's taste, literature, and feeling, that he could not quit the Oriel. Lady Angelica had followed to prevent mischief, and Mrs. Hungerford had followed to enjoy the pleasure of seeing Caroline's modest merit appreciated. Whilst Mr. Barclay admired in silence, Sir James Harcourt, not with his usual politeness, exclaimed, "I protest I had no notion that Miss Caroline Percy ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... politics. Otherwise it is questionable whether the class who are called on to earn the suffrage by intelligence or productive industry are not really as well off as the class to whom it is given regardless of merit. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... inventions in the mechanical departments; an organization for schools, by which, instead of one or two overlabored agents upon a mass of reluctant subjects, that whole mass itself shall be animated into a system of reciprocal agency. It has all the merit of a contrivance which associates with mental labor a pleasure never known to young ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... had discovered a new route to Farther India, he could not, as we have seen, claim the merit of having originated the idea, which, even in detail, he had taken from Toscanelli. But his claim is even a greater one. He it was who first dared to traverse unknown seas without coasting along the land, and his example was ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... irrelevance! She'd tell you about London. She was here for six whole months. And she got something out of it I don't believe even you have. A Certificate of Merit.' ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... has distinguished Your self this way, and every Science has raised it self under Your Auspicious Bounty. So true a Notion of Merit, and so nice a Discernment of what is Curious, is but rarely found among Persons of an advanced Age; but You my Lord, by an uncommon Felicity of Genius, do even in the Bloom of Youth make Your Entrance in the World with the most ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... I may claim the merit of having originated the suggestion that the will should be looked for in the box. After some search, it was found in the box, at the bottom of a horse's nose-bag; wherein (besides hay) there was discovered an old gold watch, with chain and seals, which Mr. Barkis had worn on his wedding-day, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... from Java, seemed to merit the gloomy name of Death, by her grim, ferocious aspect. Completely black, she lay crouching and rolled up in the bottom of her cage, and her dark hues mingling with the obscurity which surrounded her, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... next nearest, and so they go on giving honour in proportion to distance; and they hold least in honour those who dwell furthest off from themselves, esteeming themselves to be by far the best of all the human race on every point, and thinking that others possess merit according to the proportion which is here stated, 141 and that those who dwell furthest from themselves are the worst. And under the supremacy of the Medes the various nations used also to govern one ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... Alec saw that it was in compliance with his desire that, though reluctant, she went a second time to the piano. The song she had just sung was insignificant enough; but the second was one of the ballads of her old Thulian nurse, and had the merit of an antique northern foundation at least, although it had evidently passed through the hands of a lowland poet before it had, in its present form, found its way northwards again to the Shetland Isles. The first ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... principle of business—that a reputation for trustworthiness can be built only on the rock of real merit. The appearance of the store must not tell one lie—not one—from front door to back—not even the shadow of a lie. Nothing must be left to the customer's discretion. If he pays so much money he must get so much value, whether he knows it or not." He stopped abruptly, waited for a little, ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... for his dwarfish stature, he would have taken his place among the handsomest and most accomplished young men of his time. He was well read in the Greek and Latin authors, as well as in all the moderns of any merit who had written in English, French, or Italian. He had a good ear for music, and was no indifferent performer on the violin, which he used to play like a bass viol, seated on a chair with the instrument between his legs. To the music of the harpsichord and clavichord he ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... a wreck. Then he will be ambitious; perhaps he may succeed. I do not think so.—What is he? A man of intrigue, who may have the business faculty to perfection, and be able to gossip agreeably; but he is too presumptuous to have any sterling merit; he will not go far. Besides—only look at him. Is it not written on his brow that, at this very moment, what he sees in you is not a young and pretty woman, but the two million francs you possess? He does not love you, my dear; he is ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... yet your heart, regardless of my approval, has pledged its faith, as well as its love, without my knowledge. I do not repent of my indulgence; but your conduct certainly annoys me; it is a way of acting which the tender friendship I have borne you does not merit. ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... than ordinary merit, with a rather remarkable plot, which gives a peculiar charm to lady ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... life of a religious student at Benares, and wholly engaged in the contemplation of the Deity. This work is not to be used merely as an instrument for satisfying our desires. A person acquainted with the true principles of this science, who preserves his Dharma (virtue or religious merit), his Artha (worldly wealth) and his Kama (pleasure or sensual gratification), and who has regard to the customs of the people, is sure to obtain the mastery over his senses. In short, an intelligent and knowing person, attending ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... memopads scribbled over with clef signs on his desk, I could do nothing, for upon his retention depended his father's goodwill—the general's assignment to a fieldcommand hadnt altered the status of our contracts—and we had too many unscrupulous competitors to rely solely upon merit for ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... to owe its name to king Charles the Second, who, dining upon a loin of beef, and being particularly pleased with it, asked the name of the joint; said for its merit it should be knighted, and ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... nothing till you can produce faith of a certain kind and quality, whose excellences will entitle you to blessing? Do not bewilder yourself. Do not suppose that your faith is a price, or a bribe, or a merit. Is not the very essence of real faith just your being satisfied with Christ? Are you really satisfied with Him and with what He has done? Then do not puzzle yourself about your faith, but go on your way rejoicing, having thus ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... the additional keys or the highest notes, which are apt to be thin and wiry, but with Mr. Soufleto's pianos it is not the case, the tone being soft and full, with a proportionate degree of force with the rest of the instrument. His merit has been duly acknowledged, having not only received the King's patent, but having been twice presented with medals, and appointed manufacturer to the Queen. As most English families who come to Paris for the purpose of residing or sojourning ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... as he could render himself intelligible in the French language, he confirmed all that had been said of the salubrity, beauty, and richness of his native country. The pious Jacques Cartier most of all strove to impress upon the king the glory and merit of extending the blessed knowledge of a Savior to the dark and hopeless heathens of the West; a deed well worthy of the prince who bore the title of Most Christian King and Eldest Son ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Pavier). None of these six plays have any internal claim to Shakespeare's authorship; nevertheless all were uncritically included in the third folio of his collected works,(1664). Schlegel and a few other critics of repute have, on no grounds that merit acceptance, detected signs of Shakespeare's genuine work in one of the six, 'The Yorkshire Tragedy;' it is 'a coarse, crude, and vigorous impromptu,' which is clearly by a far less ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... knowledge, Pray what have you done as the captain of college? Have you patronized learning, or sapping commended? Have you e'er to your fags, or their studies, attended? To the school have you given of merit a sample, And directed by ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... himself is new, either merit or good fortune is implied, and if we consider the most excellent examples, such as Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and the like, we shall see that they owed to fortune nothing beyond the opportunity which they seized. Those who, like these, come to the princedom ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... call it a silly joke. It put the lid on me right enough. Just give him the chance he wanted to show that Americans is not like us: that they recognize and respect merit in every class of life, however humble. Them words is in his blooming will, in which, Henry Higgins, thanks to your silly joking, he leaves me a share in his Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that I lecture for his Wannafeller Moral Reform ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... reeched Detroit. This bein a Democratic city, the President wuz hisself agin. His speech here wuz wun uv rare merit. He gathered together in one quiver all the sparklin arrows he had used from Washington to this point, and shot em one by one. He swung around the cirkle; he didn't come to make a speech; he hed bin Alderman uv his ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... the town stand the remains of the palace where the Gonzagas formerly resided. This I could not resist looking at, and was amply rewarded. Several of the apartments, adorned by the bold pencil of Julio Romano, merit the most exact attention; and the grotesques, with which the stucco ceilings are covered, equal the celebrated loggios of the Vatican. I don't recollect ever having seen these elegant designs engraven, and believe it would be perfectly worth the pains of some capital artist to ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... recorded that in the same year (A.D. 660), forty-seven men of Sushen were entertained at Court, and the inference is either that these were among the above "savages"—in which case Japan's treatment of her captured foes in ancient times would merit applause—or that the Sushen had previously established relations with Japan, and that Hirafu's campaign was merely to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... score or more of plays which captivated both the learned and the uneducated by their truth to the life that they depicted, and they held their high reputation long after the death of the author. Moderns have also attested their merit, and our great dramatist in his amusing Comedy of Errors imitated the Menoechmi of this early play-wright. [Footnote: Rude farces, known as Atellan Fabula, were introduced into Rome after the contact with the Campanians, from one of whose ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... one of his own, was a mere amatory songster. Yet, diversified as the genius of the Roman was, there is no species of poetry in which he shone in which the Welshman may not be said to display equal merit. Ab Gwilym, then, has been fairly styled the Welsh Ovid. But he was something more—and here let there be no sneers about Welsh: the Welsh are equal in genius, intellect and learning to any people under the sun, and speak a language older than Greek, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... true. It has this merit in common with the opposite theory of no inspiration. Both are simple, precise, and very easy of application. But simplicity is not always a sign of truth. The facts of nature and life are more apt to be complex than simple. Theories distinguished by their simplicity ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... gives far too much attention to rum-and-water, brandy-and-water, and the varieties of drinking and eating in general. He has neither the ease nor the self-restraint which mark the thoroughly well-bred man of the world; but he is, nevertheless, good-natured, amusing, and likable. The chief merit of his book arises from the fact that he has seen much and many parts of the world, has been a student of life and manners, and thus has acquired skill in observation and facility of comparison. The conclusions which he draws from what he sees may be right or wrong; but he knows well how ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... part of the original is either so obscure, or so freely rendered by Sir Walter Scott's translator, that we have attempted the present version, not without some little perplexity as to the sense of one or two allusions. We claim, on the whole, the merit of almost ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... silver plates of an oval form; and the chiefs of the guard who had distinguished themselves by acts of extraordinary heroism were presented with medals bearing complimentary inscriptions in the Arabic character. There were also various other rewards of military merit established, such as epaulettes of beaten silver, daggers with silver hilts, and ensigns decorated with fine needle-work. And to correspond with these marks of honorable distinction were instituted badges of disgrace, such as the ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... was to sit, and (being crowned) hear them contend in verse and prose for the privilege of her love for the day. It was all arranged. She was to have a favourite every day, man or maid. Favour was to go by merit among her slaves. The theme was always to be her incomparable virtues—her beauty, discretion, wit (poor dumb fish!), her shining chastity, power of binding and loosing by one soft blue ray from her eyes, etc. They displayed her emblems on the walls—the peacock, because her beauty was her pride, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... for the clock we had heard struck again: midnight. We felt deliciously creepy! Of course I hadn't wanted Jack not mended yet from the trenches to go crawling on all fours into perfectly irrelevant caves with no Orders of Merit or Victoria Crosses attached to them. At the same time, we were keyed for comedy, and just excited enough to forget the skeletons in our closets at home: Caspians, and Shusters, and money-lenders, and unpleasant things ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... leading-staff in the attitude of command. Next to Marlborough, Prince Eugene is the most prominent figure. In the way of upholstery, there can never have been anything more magnificent than these tapestries; and, considered as works of Art, they have quite as much merit as nine pictures out ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... silently if he pleased, though that is no merit in a boy's eyes. He had flung open the study-door without knocking—another sin—and looked at them suspiciously. "Very sorry, indeed, I am to see ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... course, and had some merit in the way of workmanship. It has probably been taken as curious rather than for its specific value; though to me, as I have just said, the ship itself could scarcely be of more account—certainly not as ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... they merit the praise men give to them. Methinks Brother Emmanuel could teach them many things both in precept and practice. But it is not for me to be the judge in such matters; yet if he were in any kind of peril, I would lay down my life to ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... natures that fall into temptation or succumb to evil influences. He dreaded the power of the Church of Rome; he shivered as he thought of the terrors of England's laws against traitors. He loved his country in a way, and he was proud of her; yet, having done nothing to merit the applause of his fellow-countrymen, he was maliciously envious of those who had risen to emergencies, or deliberately planned great deeds, and thus won themselves fame. He loved Mistress Dorothy, and he felt that, if she would only love him, he could be ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... who in former times filled the same high stations. In view of these facts, it may be that the military regime about to be ushered in as a consequence of the great existing war, will of itself be an improvement, since it must be acknowledged there is some merit in the devotion and sacrifices of those who fight the battles of the Union, while it is notorious that corrupt political parties too frequently select and reward their leaders without regard ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a little under four letters. Of course, another way of saying that is that the words are generally Anglo-Saxon, and, while in the original spelling they were much longer, yet in their sound they were as brief as they are in our present spelling. There is no merit in Anglo- Saxon words except in the fact that they are concrete, definite, non-abstract words. They are words that mean the same to everybody; they are part of common experience. We shall see the power of such words by comparing a simple statement in Saxon words from the English Bible ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... Codrington says ("Memoirs," i, p. 310): "But I well know the system of favoritism and borough corruption prevails so very much that many people are promoted and kept in command that should be dismissed the service, and while such is the case the few Americans chosen for their merit may be expected to follow up their successes except where they meet with our best officers on even terms." [Footnote: To show that I am not quoting an authority biassed in our favor I will give Sir Edward Codrington's opinion of our rural better class (i, 318). "It is curious to observe ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... like to do this for me?" assuming the superior attitude of one who feels that to give an opportunity to do a kindness is itself to confer a favour. The Continental European shares with the American the merit of having manners on the self-regarding pattern of noblesse oblige, while the Englishman wants to know who you are, so as to put on his best manners only if the force majeure of your social standing compels him. No one wishes the Englishman to express more than he really feels or ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... by this phenomenon, even before she left the country for London, that the presses teemed with tributes to her extraordinary merit, in verse and prose. Learning poured forth it praise in deep and erudite criticism—Poetry lavished its sparkling encomium in sonnets, songs, odes, and congratulatory addresses, while the light retainers to literature filled ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... truth, more malice than honesty. You think that the court has judged on false principles, and acted on an impulse rather than on reason; that the king has consulted his own ease in affecting to do justice; that the courtiers have paid a homage to their master, in affecting to pay a homage to merit; and that nothing in this life is pure or free from the taint of falsehood, selfishness, or vanity. Alas! this is too much the case with us monikins, I must allow; though, doubtless, among men you manage a ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the sake of a little more reputation, men can keep brooding over a new fact, in the discovery of which they might, possibly, have very little real merit, till they think they can astonish the world with a system as complete as it is new, and give mankind a prodigious idea of their judgment and penetration; they are justly punished for their ingratitude to the fountain of all knowledge, and for their want of ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... service, and from the corrupting influence of those who promise and the vicious methods of those who expect such rewards; and those who worthily seek public employment have the right to insist that merit and competency shall be recognized instead of party subserviency or the ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... new freedom and the vast opportunity presented in the young republic encouraged, to a degree not paralleled before or since, that change of occupation which, with all its drawbacks, had the one great merit that it educated men to various activities. It was no disgrace to an American to go into one business after another, seeking the one which would prove most profitable and agreeable. Thus, Peter Cooper worked successively as a hatter, a coach-builder, a machinist, a machine-maker, a ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... in it when there was a thunder-storm you could not get struck by lightning, as my boy once proved by being in it when there was a thunder-storm and not getting struck. This in itself was a great merit, and there were grape-arbors and peach-trees in his yard which added to his popularity, with cling-stone peaches almost as big as oranges on them. He was a fellow who could take you home to meals whenever he wanted to, and he liked to have boys stay ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... the secrets of his prison house, and Dr. Page ruthlessly refused to discuss medicine, philosophy, or the Japanese. But here and there allusion was made by one or another of the company to something which had been done in the world of letters, or art, or music, which possessed merit or deserved discouragement. What was said was uttered simply, often trenchantly and lightly, but never as a dogma, or with the solemnity which Mrs. Earle had been wont to impart to her opinions. Just as the party ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... good comedian, who mimicked with archness a serious character. Such is the malignity of human nature; we love to laugh at those whom we esteem most, and by this make ourselves some recompense for the unwilling homage which we pay to merit. The parodies upon these poets, made by Aristophanes, ought to be considered rather as encomiums than satires. They give us occasion to examine whether the criticisms are just or not in themselves; but, what is more important, they afford no proof that Euripides, or his predecessors, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... upon my thoughts!— All for my father's peace and poor Ravenna's. And this Paolo, with his cavalcade, His minstrels, music, and his pretty airs, His showy person, and his fulsome talk, Almost made me contented with my lot. O! what a fool—in faith, I merit it— Trapped by mere glitter! What an easy fool! Ha! ha! I'm glad it went no further, girl; [Laughing.] I'm glad I kept my heart safe, after all. There was my cunning. I have paid them back, I warrant you! I'll marry ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... the faith, so fully expressed in the beautiful face. Three arrows are fixed in the body, which is nude except a slight veil across the loins; an angel, also nude, holds the palm to him. Connoisseurs do not think this painting equal in merit to the other works of Fra Bartolommeo. It is true it may have been overrated at the time, for the Frate's chief excellence lay in the grandeur of his drapery; the test of authenticity for a nude study from him would lie more in the colouring ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... through the day he regarded that poster with a sardonic eye. He had pitilessly resolved not to repeat the folly of the previous month. To say that this moral victory cost him nothing would be to deprive it of merit. It cost him many internal struggles. It is a fine thing to see a man seizing his temptation by the throat, and wrestling with it, and trampling it underfoot like St. Anthony. This was the spectacle Van Twiller was ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... about it than you do," replied Tom. "I suppose she must, for she certainly could marry richer men than Harry if she wanted to. She has the merit, at least, of disinterestedness." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... matter of fact, history when well written is as fascinating as any story that ever was penned, and it has the merit of being true. Sometimes it is a little harder to read than the light things that are so numerously given us by magazines and story books, but no one shuns hard work where it yields pleasure. A boy will play football ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... tree of great merit; hardy except in the coldest parts of New England; difficult to transplant, but growing rapidly when established; comes into leaf rather early and holds its foliage till mid-fall, shedding it in a short time when mature; adapts itself readily to good, light soils, but grows best in moist loam. ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... years a captain, and behaved himself with great gallantry in several engagements, and at several sieges; but having a small estate of his own, and being next heir to Sir ROGER, he has quitted a way of life in which no man can rise suitably to his merit, who is not something of a courtier, as well as a soldier. I have heard him often lament, that in a profession where merit is placed in so conspicuous a view, impudence should get the better of modesty. When he has talked to this purpose, I never heard him make a sour expression, but frankly ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... my mother with reverence and tender love for her continual proofs of goodness and love. In my youth people called me a good son; it was certainly no special merit on my part, for how would it have been possible not to be a good son with so faithfully self-sacrificing a mother?—Should I die before her, her blessing will follow me ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... "I merit all your reproaches," replied the abbot; "but it may he some satisfaction, to you to learn, that I have endured far greater suffering than if I had ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... from the cradle with more than paternal tenderness, who, with incredible pains, strove to educate him for government, and to qualify him for the succession to so great an empire? How much more imperatively does such a crime merit death. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... exhausting the matter. Several of these dictionaries went back to a very early date, and tradition ascribes to Sargon of Agade the merit of having them drawn up or of having collected them in his palace. The number of them naturally increased in the course of centuries; in the later times of the Assyrian empire they were so numerous as to form nearly one-fourth ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... persecuted by an adverse and hostile fortune; whence it is clearly manifest that she acknowledges as her children those who depend upon her without the aid of any talent, since it pleases her to exalt by her favour certain men who would never be known through their own merit; which is seen in Pinturicchio of Perugia, who, although he made many works and was assisted by various helpers, nevertheless had a much greater name than his works deserved. However, he was a man ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... that faculty of eliciting the truth from fabulous, imperfect, or contradictory evidence, at all times so necessary to a traveller, and indispensably so at the period when he travelled, and in most of the countries where his enquiries and his researches were carried on. His great and characteristic merit consists in freeing his mind from the opinions which must have previously occupied it;—in trusting entirely either to what e himself saw, or to what he learned from the best authority;—always, however, bringing the information acquired in this latter mode to the test of his own ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... of your money get into that rascal's pocket! It's no merit of his that the poor old Italian nurse has not made her ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... this exemption not only from all manner of constraint or compulsion but also from all necessity and this command over my own actions that render me inexcusable when I will evil, and praiseworthy when I will good; in this lies merit and demerit, praise and blame; it is this that makes either punishment or reward just; it is upon this consideration that men exhort, rebuke, threaten, and promise. This is the foundation of all policy, instruction, and rules of morality. The upshot ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... Contract" is full of inaccuracies in its references to history; it is often self-contradictory, and it has not even the merit of originality. From Hobbes Rousseau borrowed the notion of authority in the State; from Locke the seat of this authority; the nature of the original pact and of citizenship from Spinoza; from the Huguenot Languet the doctrine of fraternity; and from Althusius the doctrine of the ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... "absurd," first because the animal in question bears no more resemblance to a hyena than it does to a hedgehog; and, secondly, because "hunting dog" is a very ridiculous appellation, since any dog may merit ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... republic now than we were in 1848. We have found that it does not imply war, or bankruptcy, or tyranny; but we still feel that it is not the government that suits us. This was apparent from the beginning. Louis Napoleon had the merit, or the luck, to discover, what few suspected, the latent Bonapartism of the nation. The 10th of December showed that the memory of the Emperor, vague and indefinite, but therefore the more imposing, still dwelt like an heroic legend in the imaginations of the peasantry. ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... feeling that his faculty was a merit. He took the credit of his individual humanity, as if the good working of his brain, the thing he most admired, was attributable to his own will and forethought. The idea had never arisen in that brain, that he ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... fate which did our union ban Hath made me, fated—wed another man. Let Duty still be queen! Yea, let her break The heart she pierces, yet can never shake. The virtue, once thy pride in days gone by Doth that same worth now merit blasphemy? Bewail her bitter fruit—but praised be The rights that triumph over thee ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... perhaps, in the field of jurisprudence, the most destructive critic that ever appeared, had the merit which in his day was somewhat novel among reformers, and marked him out as something very different from Continental radicals—of being also highly constructive. Indeed, his labors in providing substitutes for what he sought to overthrow are among the most curious, and, we might add, valuable ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... . . bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that ardent controversy does not call for such labour; I believe at least that I shall attain my aim, by concentrating my attention on two or three writings which, by the strength of the arguments, the merit of the style, or the reputation of their authors, have left some ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... defended private interests, or the interests of parties, whether religious, political, or literary, never gained that influence which was freely conceded to those who were willing to serve the public at large in pointing out real merit wherever it could be found, and in unmasking pretenders, to whatever rank they might belong. The once all-powerful organ of the Jesuits, the "Journal de Trevoux," has long ceased to exist, and even to be remembered; the "Journal des Savants" still holds, after more ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... the biographers give a long list of publications, besides those above-mentioned, romantic, ethical, and spiritual, in verse and in prose. But he wrote mainly for his own pleasure, he never sought fame, and consequently his reputation never equalled his merit. His name, however, still smells sweet, passing sweet, amid the corruption and the frantic fury of his day, and the memory of the witty, genial, and virtuous litterateur still blossoms in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... subscription. His life being of no farther use to himself or his friends, he takes this method of endeavouring to turn his death to some account; and the novelty of the performance, he hopes, will merit the attention ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... less fortuitous than it seemed to be. As a reward of merit for having saved the mate's life, he had been told off to serve temporarily as man-of-all-work for the day pilot, who chanced to be without a steersman. His watch in the pilot-house was over, and he was on his ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... degree of self-reliance unusual, at their age; but the architect's was the assurance which a man gains by toil and his own merit, Dion's that which is bestowed by large possession and a high position in society. Those who were ignorant that the weight of Dion's carefully prepared speech had more than once turned the scale ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... History, and Archaeology. The copious notes of Gordon and Murphy left little to be desired in this line; and these notes are not only accessible to American scholars in their original forms, but have been incorporated, more or less, into all the college editions. If any peculiar merit attaches to this edition, in this department, it will be found in the frequent references to such classic authors as furnish collateral information, and in the illustration of the private life of the Romans, by the help of such recent works as Becker's Gallus. The editor has ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... content, the Duke of York, at coming out, told me that it was carried for D. Gawden at 6d. 8d., and 8 3/4d.; but with great difficulty, I understand, both from him and others, so much that Sir Edward Walker told me that he prays to God he may never live to need to plead his merit, for D. Gawden's sake; for that it hath stood him in no stead in this business at all, though both he and all the world that speaks of him, speaks of him as the most deserving man of any servant of the King's in the whole ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... is at once arrested by the magnificent remains of the temple of Jupiter Olympus, and by the Arch of Hadrian. Whether from its proximity to the gorgeous monument first named, or that it is intrinsically deficient in that species of merit which appeals directly to the senses, the Arch of Hadrian attracts comparatively little notice. It is, however, a highly interesting monument, bearing unmistakable marks of the decline of art; yet distinguished for much of that quality of beauty which gives so peculiar a character to the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of this series, entitled "Ralph in the Switch Tower," another vivid phase of his ability and merit has been depicted. He rendered signal service in saving a special from disaster and prevented a treasure train from being looted ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... shortage of zinc. Within a month or so of the outbreak of the war the British Government had to take urgent and energetic steps to secure this essential ingredient of cartridge cases. Individualism had let zinc refining drift to Belgium and Germany; it was the luck rather than the merit of Great Britain that one or ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... its name was Shelthorpe, but it had an air about it which suggested a certain amount of money and a certain amount of taste. There were decent water-colours in the drawing-room. Madonnas of acknowledged merit hung upon the stairs. A replica of the Hermes of Praxiteles—of course only the bust—stood in the hall with a real palm behind it. Agnes, in her slap-dash way, was a good housekeeper, and kept the pretty things well dusted. It was she ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Minister informed the public that Home Rule meant the presence of a German fleet in Belfast Lough—at whose invitation he did not explain, though he probably did not intend to insult Ulster. This wild talk has not even the merit of a strategical foundation. It belongs to another age. Ireland has neither a fleet nor the will or money to build one. Our fleet, in which large numbers of Irishmen serve, guarantees the security of New Zealand, and if it cannot maintain the command of ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... form of ARNOLD, extended on the earth). Clay! not dead, but soul-less! Though no man would choose thee, An Immortal no less Deigns not to refuse thee. Clay thou art; and unto spirit All clay is of equal merit. Fire! without which nought can live; Fire! but in which nought can live, 460 Save the fabled salamander, Or immortal souls, which wander, Praying what doth not forgive, Howling for a drop of water, Burning in a quenchless lot: Fire! the only element ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the case of a galvanometer, a coefficient expressing its delicacy. It is the reciprocal of the current required to deflect the needle through one degree. By using the reciprocal the smaller the current required the larger is the figure of merit. The same term may be applied to ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... dear Miss Ellen, dinna let it come to your father's ken; ye're his very heart's idol; he disna merit ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in reducing the first Order nearer the second, he was for bringing them both to an Equality, and raising the third to a Level with them, by making all Employments and Dignities venial; and, without any Regard to Merit, constantly bestowing them on the highest Bidder. Thus, as the same Posts and Honours were equally attainable by the Citizen and Gentleman, there was no material Distinction betwixt them. The Government ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... Condamne" by a festive song of this class. The Spaniards possess a large collection of Romances de Germania, by various authors, amongst whom Quevedo holds a distinguished place. We, on the contrary, have scarcely any slang songs of merit. With a race of depredators so melodious and convivial as our highwaymen, this is the more to be wondered at. Had they no bards amongst their bands? Was there no minstrel at hand to record their exploits? I can only ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... have been a little more elegantly expressed, but Waldo, as a rule, cared more for substance than form, and his speech possessed one merit, ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... I tell ee, putten thy spoke in; does thee think the Queen 'as old 'orses in her stable? It's merit, I tell ee—ain't it, ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... much because it is my wish that the principles which have guided me in the composition of these Memoirs may be understood. I am aware that they will not please every reader; that is a success to which I cannot pretend. Some merit, however, may be allowed me on account of the labour I have undergone. It has neither been of a slight nor an agreeable kind. I made it a rule to read everything that has been written respecting Napoleon, and I have had to decipher many of his autograph documents, though ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... species of birds or mammals that is accused of offenses sufficiently grave to merit destruction shall be condemned undefended and unheard, nor without adequate evidence of a character which would be acceptable in a ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... villa—staring and commonplace. Her features were regular, and her complexion, if somewhat all too red, was fresh withal; so that, possessing an income of many thousands, she passed for a beauty of exceptional merit. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... national parties; again broken into a thousand subdivisions of war and faction, by the various provocations of interest and resentment. The public strength, instead of being united against a foreign enemy, was consumed in obscure and intestine quarrels; and the personal merit which had placed a successful leader at the head of his equals, might enable him to subdue the freedom of some neighboring cities; and to claim a rank among the tyrants, [186] who infested Britain after the dissolution of the Roman government. III. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... afternoon these many weeks past I have waited and listened. Something here, Cary"—laying his hand on his breast—"told me it was impossible but that you should think of me. Not that I merit thought; but we are old acquaintance—we ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... doubt not that thou rememberest my promise, made some time since, which I have now the pleasurable opportunity to fulfill. Much it pleaseth me to offer thee a place, the duties of which will keep thee near thy daughter, and, moreover, the reward of such being not below the merit of him who, by my knowledge, most honestly gained it, and is well worthy. If it suit thee to accept the charge I have to offer, the naming of which I shall defer until we meet, detach thyself from thy present occupation, repair to London with all likely haste, and seek ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... about it. Simplicity and strength are happily combined in its pages, and no one can begin it without desiring to read it through. All the works of Mrs. Ann S. Stephens are books that everybody should read, for in point of real merit, wonderful ingenuity and absorbing interest they loom far above the majority of the books of the day. She has a thorough knowledge of human nature, and so vividly drawn and natural are her characters that they seem instinct with life. Her plots are models of construction, and she excels ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Note. "Condignity implies merit, and of course claims reward on the score of justice. Congruity pretends only to a sort of imperfect qualification for the gifts and reception of God's grace."—Manet's Church ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... Thence she digressed into hints of the advantages that might accrue from cultivating Dr. Campbell's good opinion; admitted that Henry was strangely prejudiced in favour of his rough friend Forester; but observed that Mr. Forester, after all, though singular, was a young man of merit, and at the head of a very considerable estate. "Archibald," said she, "we must make allowances, and conciliate matters—unless you make this young gentleman your friend, you can never hope to be on an eligible ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... this deep interest in me? I do not merit nor require it. Surely any one would think we had been acquainted with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... ever do—about the drains, and such like, which isn't fit for no lady to speak of! As if Water Lane weren't as sweet and clean as it has any call to be, and as if we didn't know what was right by our tenants, which are a bad lot, and don't merit no money to ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are wanting: thus, instead of saying, "This action increased his former services," say, "This action increased the merit of his former services."—"How many [kinds of] substantives are there? Two; proper and common."—See E. Devis's Gram., p. 14. "These changes should not be left to be settled by chance or by caprice, but [should be determined] by the judicious application ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in the hand that has dealt with us so strangely, that all our remaining members will in time be brought together; and then the case may merit a reviewed and enlarged edition of this tract, when other important matter will ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... The old woman likes her quarters, and has no settled home. She makes a merit of stopping, and says I ought to feel under eternal obligation to her and Maude for sacrificing themselves to a solitary man and his household. But you should have heard the uproar she made upon discovering I had been to the Rectory. She had my room ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... are reproductions of sketches taken by me while in the country, and though, perhaps, they want much in artistic merit, I venture to hope that they will be ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... 1579 by Sebastianus Nivellius; and other editions by the same publisher followed in 1584 and 1589. This edition does not contain the Tripartite History, the Exposition of the Psalter, or the 'Complexiones' on the Epistles. Some notes, not without merit, are added, which were compiled in 1578 by 'Gulielmus Fornerius, Parisiensis, Regius apud Aurelianenses Consiliarius et Antecessor.' The annotator says[185] that these notes had gradually accumulated on the margin ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... in the language of truth. Thou hast called thy present work a poem, wherefore it shall be a poem. There shall be no poets whose works may equal the descriptions of this poem, even, as the three other modes called Asrama are ever unequal in merit to the domestic Asrama. Let Ganesa be thought of, O Muni, for the purpose of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... have worked out your lecture, and are waiting for the hour to strike, test its merit by this question: Does it contain enough valuable information to make a distinct addition to the education of an average listener? If you cannot affirm this, whatever merits otherwise it may have, ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... as is produced by the two revolutions of America and France. By the former, freedom has a national champion in the western world, and by the latter in Europe. When another nation shall join France, despotism and bad government will scarcely dare to appear. The present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... blade to test its quality. Every boy knows that if the film of moisture is quick to vanish, there can be no question about the superlative merit ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... there to tell her that she has my future in her hand. She's such a lady by instinct that she's made it all a triumph, and I thank God that I haven't done or said anything to mar it. Even that beast of a Hicks didn't; it's no merit. I've made love to her,—I own it; of course I have, because I was in love with her; and my fault has been that I haven't made love to her openly, but have gone on fancying that I was studying her character, or some rubbish of that sort. But the fault is easily repaired." ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... football field. This spirit of desire and combat may be seen further in all parts of this great subject. It has developed into a cult of sportsmanship; so universally accepted among men as of superlative merit as to quite blind them to other ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... coast of Africa called the Grain Coast, the chief towns of which are Settra Kroo, Little Kroo, Kroo Barru, Kroo Settra, and King Will's town. It does not appear that it extends any distance inland. The manners of the natives are sufficiently curious to merit some description. They are pagans, and place much faith in charms, auguries, and oracles. The most celebrated place for oracles is near the banks of the river Cavally, a little to the westward of Cape Palmas, and this spot is in as great ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... technical, though not wholly unreal, disputation. There is this merit in Mr. Balfour's essay: that it states in its most extreme form a view for which there is something to be said and which has been gaining in favour in modern times. It is a reaction against the view which became established ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... a man of merit, handing over his name, his fortune, and his arms to a stranger. This was an error; in taking the name and arms of Mazarin, young De la Meilleraye was giving up those which he ought to have given up, and assuming those which it behove him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... given proof of their excellence in the Chapel of Pope Sixtus, excepting Filippino, and also in the Spedaletto of the Magnifico Laurentio, and their merit ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... were blacksmiths, carpenters, stonecutters, workers in ivory, silver, and gold, weavers, potters, and glass blowers. The creations of these ancient craftsmen often exhibit remarkable skill. Egyptian linens were so wonderfully fine and transparent as to merit the name of "woven air." Babylonian tapestries, carpets, and rugs enjoyed a high reputation for beauty of design and color. Egyptian glass with its waving lines of different hues was much prized. Precious stones were made into beads, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Thy presence, Lord, 'Tis an exceeding great reward; And if at last I see Thy face, 'Tis not of merit, but ...
— Mother Stories from the New Testament • Anonymous
... a visit to see Michael Angelo's notion of executing repairs to statuary alone. He gave the place the benefit of his most serious attention, pulling his beard a good deal before Titian's Venus (which poppa always did in connection with this goddess, however, entirely apart from the merit of the painting) and obviously making allowances for her of Medici on account of her great age. At the end of the hour we spent there it had the same effect upon him as upon Colonel Bramley, he did not wish to go any further; and we parted from the Miss Binghams, ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... apology, therefore, I shall state at once my objections to all the definitions that have hitherto been given of Life, as meaning too much or too little, with an exception, however, in favour of those which mean nothing at all; and even these last must, in certain cases, receive an honour they do not merit, and be confuted, or rather detected, on account of their too general acceptance, and the incalculable power of words over the minds of men in proportion to the remoteness of the subject from ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... three extracts are from a work of considerable merit, intitled "The Crescent and the Cross." It contains, not only much valuable matter relative to Egypt and Abyssinia, but many interesting anecdotes, of which we give ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... enthusiastic spoon in an ice-cream dish? Or was the love of sack ever a virtue, and has Falstaff become a saint? If he now sing in the Upper Choir, the bench must sag. But persons of this turn of argument make a point of their willingness to walk out in a June rain. They think it a merit to go tripping across the damp grass to inspect their gardens. Toasted cheese! Of course they like it. Who could help it? This is no proof of merit. Such folk, at best, are but sisters ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... eyes met those of Arthur. He thought that it was no merit in Ellison to be fond of her. ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... placed his fair burden on a chair, when Alick and Jos bundled the old lady in after her, with a very scant ceremony; indeed there was no time for any; and then they closed the door and walked a little way off, and tried to look as unconcerned as if they had done nothing to merit the anger of ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... that the poor woman was possessed by the sombre and simple idea that her son must have perished because he did not want to be saved. It could not have been that he despaired of his country's future. That was impossible. Was it possible that his mother and sister had not known how to merit his confidence; and that, after having done what he was compelled to do, his spirit became crushed by an intolerable doubt, his mind distracted by a ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... Delhi; Kalpiwal from Kalpi. Besides the bainks or septs by which marriage is regulated, they have adopted the Brahmanical eponymous gotra-names as Kashyap, Garg, Sandilya, and so on. These are employed on ceremonial occasions as when a gift is made for the purpose of obtaining religious merit, and the gotra- name of the owner is recorded, but they do not influence marriage. The use of them is a harmless vanity analogous to the assumption of distinguished surnames by people who were ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... him, the other made his brave, by being over them. And though Philopoemen was unfortunate certainly, in always being opposed to his countrymen, yet this misfortune is at the same time a proof of his merit. Where the circumstances are the same, superior success can only be ascribed to superior merit. And he had, indeed, to do with the two most warlike nations of all Greece, the Cretans on the one hand, and the Lacedaemonians on the other, and he mastered the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... iii. of the same work is another paper by the same author, entitled, "Conjectures respecting the Origin of Alphabetic writing," pp. 365-384. Reference to these papers is principally made, not on the ground of any assumed merit, but because all that has been written on any given subject ought, if possible, to be brought before the minds of those engaged in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... dressed yet?" he inquired without looking at his wife as he entered—for having long ago lost his pride of possession in her, he had ceased to regard her as of sufficient importance to merit the ordinary civilities. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Persephone, although by that time Christianity was well established in Italy. From that epoch Roman literature practically ceased to exist, for although various attempts at Latin epics were made by mediaeval poets, none of them proved of sufficient merit ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Nor strain each nerve thy foot to stay. Wise lords, whose king, by passion led, The path of sin begins to tread, Restrain him while there yet is time: But thine,—they see nor heed the crime. These by their master's will obtain Merit and fame and joy and gain. 'Tis only by their master's grace That servants hold their lofty place. But when the monarch stoops to sin They lose each joy they strive to win, And all the people people high and low Fall in the common overthrow. Merit and fame and honour spring, Best ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... normal old age, the calmness ... OF VIRTUE, that thing that people ridicule, and that I mention in mockery, but that corresponds by an emphatic and silly word, to a condition of forced inoffensiveness, without merit in consequence, but agreeable and good to experience. It is a question of rendering it useful to art when one believes in that, to the family and to friendship when one cares for that; I don't dare to say how very simple and primitive I am in this ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... author of numerous magazine articles of merit and earnestness, afterwards republished as books; known to her readers ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... town of Lymington rising among the green trees and green fields. I had, I confess, a feeling—grand as I had to appear—that I knew less than anybody else on board about affairs nautical; but modesty is the frequent companion of merit, and though I was very little, I might ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... them. I am a defeated man, was intended from the first to be a defeated man and I needed something to cling to, something with which to justify my defeat. I realize that now. I am a dependent. I shall never try to sing now because I am one who has at least one merit. I know defeat. I can ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... wrote: "Mrs. Darner's busts from life are not inferior to the antique. Her shock dog, large as life and only not alive, rivals the marble one of Bernini in the Royal Collection. As the ancients have left us but five animals of equal merit with their human figures—viz., the Barberini Goat, the Tuscan Boar, the Mattei Eagle, the Eagle at Strawberry Hill, and Mr. Jennings' Dog—the talent of Mrs. Damer must appear in the most ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... abruptly: I thought it not proper, before that merchant, to give a favourable answer to the discovery you made of your affection for me. But to speak the truth, I was so far from being offended at it, that I was pleased when I heard it; and I account myself infinitely happy in having a man of true merit for my lover. I do not know what impression the first sight of me could make upon you; but I assure you that I no sooner saw you than I had tender thoughts of you. Since yesterday I have thought only of what you said to me; and the haste I made to come and find you out this ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." This tendency to let surprise sit in the seat which belongs to judgment is greatly intensified by professional knowledge. The architect is apt to exaggerate the merit of a building placed on a very awkward site, the artist to think a piece of very difficult foreshortening more beautiful than it really is. The public may not be so good a judge either of the building or of the drawing: but, knowing nothing of the technical ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... training for his profession. But at the beginning of his career he had won a rich prize in an architectural competition, and afterwards commissions and rewards and honors had flowed in upon him in constantly increasing measure. While he did not yet quite merit the adjective which Isabella Marne had applied to him, there was every promise that he would soon be, in truth, a ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... caste system does not thrive in the geography class and snobbery languishes. The pupils have the same books, the same assignments, the same teacher, and share alike in all the privileges and pleasures which the class provides. Their grades are given on merit, with no semblance of discrimination. In short, they achieve the democratic attitude of spirit by means ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... to have had not a little merit and forbearance, and to have exhibited a highly creditable degree of family affection. The life at Fairoaks was uncommonly dull to a man who had the entree of half the houses in London, and was in the habit ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my old companion-in-arms, Geordie Murray. They couldn't have planned it better if they had wished it, but it's absurd to say they wished it. There ought to be a cashiered captain and a half-flayed dragoon somewhere south of us. Damme, I merit that at least." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... hour. As far as beauty is concerned there can be no comparison of the merits of the two pictures. Yet the motion picture draws more people and holds them at attention longer than do the masterpieces, not through any intrinsic merit of its own, but because it depicts unfolding events, the outcome of which the audience is breathlessly waiting. It possesses the element of struggle, which never ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... been Indiana's proud boast that money unsupported by honest merit has never intruded in her politics. A malign force threatens to mar this record. It is incumbent upon honest men of all parties who have the best interests of our state at heart to stop, look, listen. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... these poems has varied somewhat, but their merit has never been put very high, nor, to tell the truth, could it be put high by any one who speaks critically. In the first place, they are written for the most part on very bad models, both in general plan and ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... was very animated. Many compliments were paid Paganel on his twofold talents as hunter and cook, which the SAVANT accepted with the modesty which characterizes true merit. Then he turned the conversation on the peculiarities of the OMBU, under whose canopy they had found shelter, and whose depths he ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Avice. "When I have ensured mine own salvation, and won mine husband's soul from Purgatory, and heaped up great store of merit belike!—Woman, I live but of bread and water, with here and there a lettuce leaf; a draught of milk of Sundays, but meat never saving holydays. I sleep never beyond three hours of a night, and of a Friday night not at all. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... ordering a battle, preparing artillery, and that old captains marvelled at her skill in placing cannon.[65] The Duke quite understands that all these gifts were miraculous and that to God alone was the glory. For if the merit of the victories had been Jeanne's he would not have said so ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... underneath, leaving the inner shell in place. A second inner shell is then adjusted to the outer shell in its new position, the annular mold is concreted and the outer shell again pulled ahead. Continued repetition of the operations described completes the invert. The merit of the device lies in the fact that the inner shell is not moved until the concrete has attained some degree of rigidity; when, in such devices, the inner mold is slid ahead on the green concrete it is likely so to "drag" forward the ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... published a burlesque life of Van Buren, "heir apparent to the Government, and appointed successor of Andrew Jackson," which, in the mixture of truth, error, wit, sense, and nonsense in about equal parts, has certainly the merit even at this day of being entertaining. Crockett's favorite expression was, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead." When Texas commenced its struggle for independence he went there, and was killed while gallantly fighting at San Antonio. His son, John W. Crockett, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... whose personality—to say the least—was well-nigh as romantic as that of the exiled scion of the house of Orleans. He had seen rather than heard a young and passionate nature pouring into girlish ears the avowal of an unselfish and ardent love which had the infinite merit ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... the cavilling bigot it may be said that whoever declared that "man is the head of the woman," if he designed to justify the present interpretation of that expression, has forfeited all claim to the apostleship of a religion whose highest merit it is to equalize the people by elevating the oppressed. But Paul ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the first stone before Caesar is back here again. Farewell, my noble friends! Greet your bridegroom from me, my child. His work belongs to me. Pollux will be the first among his fellow-artists, and it has been my privilege to discover this new star—the eighth artist whose merit I have detected while he was still unknown. Your future brother-in-law too, Teuker, will turn out well. I am having a stone cut by him with a portrait of Antinous. Once more farewell; I must go to the Council. We shall have to discuss ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... when it is pronounced in the prescribed forms of law, participates in the virtue of the said forms and through them continues august, efficacious and of high merit. What it contains of wrong is temporary and of little consequence, and concerns only the particular instance, whereas the good in it derives from the fixity and permanence of the organization of the laws, and therefore is ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... these personages were not embedded in this drama, their portraits would have the merit of representing one of the aspects of the aristocracy after its overthrow in 1793. From this point of view, a sketch of the salon at Cinq-Cygne has the raciness ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... this advice; and the result of her deliberations was a determination to make a final effort towards a reconciliation with the King. In the letter which she addressed to him she declared that it was her most anxious desire to merit his favour, and to conform to his wishes. She besought him to remember that she was his mother; to recall all the exertions which she had made for the welfare and preservation of his kingdom; and finally she urged him to disregard the counsels ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... himself as a general, is a stately-looking man, at that time about forty-five years of age, and of a very agreeable exterior; he was born in Talcaguana, of very poor parents, and, without enjoying any particular advantage of education, has raised himself, by his own merit alone, to the high ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Rosalie devoured the 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
... of either inventors or improvers of the high pressure engine, which the English are so anxious to award to them.... When it is considered under what unfavorable circumstances Oliver Evans worked, his merit must be much enhanced; and all attempts made to lessen his fame only show that he is neither understood ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... and the choicest wines. They were sitting around this luxurious table, somewhat excited by drink, when the emperor arose and said with a peculiar smile: 'I must go now to prepare for you an agreeable surprise and practical joke, which you will confess has the merit of originality.' He left the room, and the tipsy senators did not observe that the doors were locked and bolted from without. They continued to drink and sing merrily; suddenly a glass door in the ceiling was opened, and the voice of Heliogabalus was heard, saying: 'You were never satisfied with ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... was approved by the committee, and I had the anonymous satisfaction to know that arguments and choice were wholly mine. In the recasting of the plan which followed, my part was even larger; for I designed and cast with my own hand a hot-air grating for the offices, which had the luck or merit to be accepted. The energy and aptitude which I displayed throughout delighted and surprised my father, and I believe, although I say it whose tongue should be tied, that they alone prevented Muskegon capitol from being the eyesore of ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Your revolution would leave no place for doubt. Your hearts are hard and burning; your brains like geometric patterns. Everything or nothing. No shading! But what would life be without it? It is its greatest charm and its chief merit as well; fragile beauty and goodness, weakness everywhere. We must offer love and help; day by day, and step by step. The world is not transformed by force, or by a miracle, in the twinkling of an eye; but second by second it moves forward in infinity and the humblest who ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... faith, and is guilty of the loss of so many million souls, there is no doubt that any one who puts her out of the world with the proper intention of serving God thereby, not only commits no sin but even wins merit, especially seeing that the sentence of the late Pius V is standing against her. If, therefore, these English nobles have really decided to do so fair a work, your honor may assure them that they commit no sin. Also we may trust in God that they will ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... low tone, which grew in depth and sweetness as she proceeded. Surely, if the author had never had the vanity to deem his brief production possessed of merit, he would have grown into conceit of it had he heard it falling so sweetly from ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... his merit known, And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty state's decrees, And shape the whisper of ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... arms, jewels and furniture, which was more magnificent than selling it, and brought him back double. In fact, how could a man to whom ten thousand livres were owing, refuse to carry away a present of six thousand, enhanced in merit from having belonged to a descendant of Henry IV.? And how, after having carried away that present, could he refuse ten thousand livres more to this generous noble? This, then, was what had happened. The duc had no longer a dwelling-house—that had become useless to an admiral, whose ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... what was my horror to see it filled with a number of dried Imuran heads grinning horribly up at me! I turned away in disgust, when I saw the chief looking at me with a glance of triumph in his eye, just as a civilised person would have been pleased at exhibiting a collection of his orders of merit for gallantry in battle or sagacity in the council. They were trophies, I found, taken by the chief in his wars with neighbouring tribes. Probably it was the possession of these which had raised him to his position ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... if he is held rigidly in a pattern and not permitted to step out of that pattern. In ancient times, a slave was born at the bottom of the social ladder, and he remained there all his life. Only rarely did a slave of exceptional merit manage to rise above ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... look; "His eyes still glisten; savage all his form. "Thus one house perish'd, but not one alone "The fate deserves. Wherever earth extends, "The fierce Erinnys reigns; men seem conspir'd "In impious bond to sin; and all shall feel "The scourge they merit: fixt is ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Star.—Mr. Printer—If the productions of a simple ploughman can merit a place in the same paper with Sylvester Otway, and the other favourites of the Muses who illuminate the Star with the lustre of genius, your insertion of the enclosed trifle will be succeeded by future communications ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... complete restraint against retaliation, though statesmen hinted that it would be just. Your training developed patriotism and courage, but not revenge. Ungrateful as Republics are said to be, ours has aimed to recognize merit and reward it, and those who at first hailed you with contumely, are now glad to greet you as heroes and saviors of a ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
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