"Demerit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are thus described by himself:—"Wandering over almost every part in which our language extends, I have gone about like a mendicant; showing against my will the wound with which fortune has smitten me, and which is often falsely imputed to the demerit of him by whom it is endured. I have been, indeed, a vessel without sail or steerage, carried about to divers ports, and roads, and shores, by the dry wind that springs out ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... to be added to the noble roll of saintly penitents we all have in our minds taken out of Scripture and Church History. Neither great Saintliness nor great service was forfeited by this penitent; and he is constantly telling us how the extreme of demerit and the extreme of gracious treatment met in him; how he had at one time destroyed himself, and how God had helped him; how, where sin had abounded, grace had abounded much more. In one of the very last letters he ever wrote—his letter to James Guthrie ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... himself said: "The subject of the whole work, then, taken literally, is the state of the soul after death, regarded as a matter of fact; for the action of the whole work deals with this and is about this. But if the work be taken allegorically, its subject is man, in so far as by merit or demerit in the exercise of free will, he is exposed to the rewards or punishment ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... was considered as a demerit. The second, it was said, might be effected by other means. Bills of exchange and treasury drafts would supply the place of bank notes. Perhaps indeed bank bills would be a more convenient vehicle than treasury orders; but a little difference in the degree of convenience can not ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... 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
... merit? No. A brave man does not CREATE his bravery. He is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. It is born to him. A baby born with a billion dollars—where is the personal merit in that? A baby born with nothing—where is the personal demerit in that? The one is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is neglected and despised—where is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from sin-made-easy—a condition which money has bought for the rich. If the State abrogated the Sixth {116} Commandment for the rich, and made it lawful for a rich man to commit murder, it would at least be no demerit if it refused to extend the permit to ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... her legislative powers do not develope themselves, nor appear to act, till the reasoning powers of the person begin to expand. Then, and then only does the pupil of Nature, who has not had the benefit of previous moral instruction, begin to decide on the merit or demerit of actions. Infants, and children who are left without instruction, appear to have no distinct perception that certain actions are right, and others wrong. In infancy, we frequently perceive the most rebellious outbreakings of ungoverned passion, with tearing, and scratching, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... derived from the feelings of humanity, with which it affects the spectators. It appears to be matter of fact, that the circumstance of UTILITY, in all subjects, is a source of praise and approbation: That it is constantly appealed to in all moral decisions concerning the merit and demerit of actions: That it is the SOLE source of that high regard paid to justice, fidelity, honour, allegiance, and chastity: That it is inseparable from all the other social virtues, humanity, generosity, charity, affability, lenity, mercy, and ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... tears, no doubt; but a man must take what comes his way, and be thankful. He, who had never before been guilty of the like, now composed a set of verses of atrocious demerit. Indeed, the first two ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... spit it out. What sort of character would you have given me then?" "I'd have called you," said Sir William boldly, "a disreputable drunken loafer who never did an honest day's work in his life." Which had the merit of truth, and, he thought, the demerit ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... written! "In the golden highest sheath dwells the stainless, changeless Brahman; It is the radiant white Light of lights, known to the knowers of the Self."[35] "When the seer sees the golden-coloured Creator, the Lord, the Spirit, whose womb is Brahman, then, having thrown away merit and demerit, stainless, the wise one ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... chivalry. Scott says: "James was, in fact, equally attentive to restrain rapine and feudal oppression in every part of his dominions. 'The King past to the isles, and there held justice courts, and punished both thief and traitor according to their demerit. And also he caused great men to show their holdings, wherethrough he found many of the said lands in non-entry; the which he confiscate and brought home to his own use, and afterwards annexed them to the crown, as ye shall ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the Mabinogion, deals with Arthur's struggle against the wild-boar king Twrch Trwyth, who with his seven cubs holds in check all the heroes of the Round Table. The adventures of the three hundred ravens of Kerverhenn similarly form the subject of the Dream of Rhonabwy. The idea of moral merit and demerit is almost wholly absent from all these compositions. There are wicked beings who insult ladies, who tyrannise over their neighbours, who only find pleasure in evil because such is their nature; but it does not appear that they incur wrath on that account. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... demerit of the individual had comparatively little to do with the regards which the other members of the family cherished towards him. Now it goes far towards a total determination of those regards. Multitudes of the nearest ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... expectation he entertained of his natural abilities and transcendent genius," adding that the honour of having been his instructor was far greater than that of being his father-in-law, and that he felt it no demerit to be surpassed by so brilliant ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... marked well all absentees from the Court, found out the reason of their absence, and never lost an opportunity of acting towards them as the occasion might seem to justify. With some of the courtiers (the most distinguished), it was a demerit not to make the Court their ordinary abode; with others 'twas a fault to come but rarely; for those who never or scarcely ever came it was certain disgrace. When their names were in any way mentioned, "I do not know them," the King would reply haughtily. Those who presented ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... remembered, Lance had shortly before taken part in, over the grave of an old lay-vicar, who, boy and man, had served the Cathedral for nearly sixty years. Often, too, the poor little fellow seemed struggling with some sense of demerit—whether positive disgrace, or suspicion, or the general Christian feeling of unworthiness, Wilmet and John Harewood could never make out; and they did not choose to speak of these wanderings either to Will or to Mr. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but such a doctrine is not reconcilable with the belief that the Eternal Other is also the Eternal Father. The Divine Autocrat of Calvinism, who pre-ordained some of His creatures to eternal damnation—not for any demerit of theirs, but "just choosing so"—is not unthinkable; what is unthinkable is that we could love such a One—a God who had predestined all human sin and woe, who had fore-ordered things in such a manner that unnumbered hapless souls were doomed evermore to stumble ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... has, within himself, sufficient light from reason, and sufficient admonition from conscience, to guide himself, as an individual, in the path of truth and happiness. A single fact will correct such a supposition. Conscience, the great arbiter of the merit and demerit of human conduct, has little intuitive sense of right, and is not guided entirely by reason, but is governed in a great measure by what men believe. Indeed, faith is the legitimate regulator of the conscience. If a man has correct views of duty to God and men, he will ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... invaded by the conquerors of Spain. [25] The decline of the French monarchy invited the attack of these insatiate fanatics. The descendants of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the last kings of the Merovingian race. [26] They ascended the throne without power, and sunk into the grave without a name. A country palace, in the neighborhood of Compiegne [27] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... gone very deeply into you, notwithstanding all that you say; and sure I am that you have never got to the point where you can understand it most clearly and most deeply. The sense of sin, the consciousness of personal demerit, the feeling that I have gone against Him and His loving law,—that is as important and as essential an element in all deep personal religion as the clear and thankful apprehension of the love of God. Nay, more; there never has been and there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... infinite; and worship is the conscious outgoing of the man in his weakness and imperfection to his Maker, and it attains its fullest exercise in (a) reverence, humility, and devotion. The feeling of dependence and sense of need, together with the consciousness of utter demerit and inability which man realises as he gazes upon the majesty and grace of God, awaken the (b) instinct of prayer. 'It is the sublime significance of prayer,' says Wuttke, 'that it brings into ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Maryland," was another travesty, of about the same literary merit, or rather demerit, as "The Bonnie Blue Flag." Its air was that of the well-known and popular negro minstrel song, "Billy Patterson." For all that, it sounded very martial and stirring when played by ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... effort on woman's part. It would add a huge feather to their caps should they give us the history of the cause of the need of such reformation. It can not be because woman placed herself in so degrading a position. So, the merit of the up-lifting hardly reaches the demerit of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and quoth she,—"I thank you much, Mynheer, though I am 'feared you reckon mine understanding higher than it demerit: yet I fear there shall scantly be opportunity this morrow. I have divers dishes to cook that shall be cold for this even, and a deal of flannel-work ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... suit. I labored hard to send over shoes, stockings, and shirts in proportion, and so far as it was effected, the suit complete, with shoes, stockings and shirt, does not amount in the whole to forty shillings sterling. These facts being known, I am content to take on myself the merit or demerit ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... 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 ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... this night is too glorious to waste in talking politics, so you young people get out of my hearing and thresh out your candidate's merit and demerit and leave me to think," I said, for politics were in the air and they were touching upon them. They obeyed me, and soon were lost to view in the dark of the osage and quince hedges grown as breakwinds on the west of Grosvenor's orangery. Soon I could not ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... name for the region of Chiang-chiu), you met with the mishap of doggish thieves taking advantage of your want of watchfulness! Truly, the blame of this rests on me. How, then, can I have the hardihood to receive from you a present of value! A reward of demerit, how can I endure it! During the three stages of life, (youth, middle age, and old age,) I shall not be able to repay. It is only by inheritance (not by my own merit) that I obtained the imperial favor of office. Thus, ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... looked strong and imposing, and seemed to be secure against the assaults of its enemies, yet it was far from being as compact and powerful as it appeared to the outward observer. In the first place, it had the demerit of being founded solely on a negative, and upon opposition to a single line of policy. The reason why these men were assembled together in council as a government was that they were opposed to confederation, and, this question having been disposed of, they were free to differ ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... "Take a demerit for that, and stay after school," I told him. "I could kind of read in that man's face, that there is going to be some fun ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... proportion to His merits; therefore it is infinite. Now there is no merit in paying a debt which we owe; and hence the fullest discharge of our duty deserves no reward. On the other hand, there is demerit in refusing to pay a debt; and therefore any short-coming deserves an infinite penalty (vi. 155). Without examining whether our duty is proportional to the perfection of its object, and is irrespective ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... men knew themselves and their own sinfulness, they would not challenge God with unrighteousness, but put their mouth in the dust, and keep silence. And it is from this ground, that this people do not charge God. Sin is of such infinite desert and demerit, because against infinite majesty, that God cannot go beyond it in punishment; and therefore Jeremiah, when he is wading out of the deep waters of sore temptation and sad discouragement, pitcheth and casteth anchor at this solid ground, "It is of the Lord's ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of the Regent and demanded the return of the seals. D'Aguesseau was a little affected and surprised. "Monseigneur," he wrote to the Duke of Orleans, "you gave me the seals without any merit on my part, you take them away without any demerit." He had received orders to withdraw to his estate at Fresnes; the Regent found his mere presence irksome. D'Aguesseau set out at once. "He had taken his elevation like a sage," says St. Simon, "and it was as a sage too that he fell." "The important point," wrote the disgraced ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... gas had been lighted, and the meals spread, at the accustomed hours. At the accustomed hour, too, the bell had sounded thrice to call the family to worship. And at the thought, a pang of regret for his demerit seized him; he remembered the things that were good and that he had neglected, and the things that were evil and that he had loved; and it was with a prayer upon his lips that he mounted the steps and thrust ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... confinement of fetters is the same whether the chain be of gold or iron." "The knowledge which realizes that everything is Brahm alone liberates the soul. It annuls the effect both of our virtues and vices. We traverse thereby both merit and demerit, the heart's knot is broken, all doubts are split, and all our works perish. Only by perfect abstraction, not merely from the senses, but also from the thinking intellect and by remaining in the knowing intellect, does the devotee become identified with Brahm. He then remains as pure glass when ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... adorned particular professions, is yet much more frequently—nine times out of ten—employed by the minister of the day as his instrument to serve particular views of public policy; and is often given to actual demerit—to men who hire themselves out to do his commands through thick and thin. The peerage is now full of persons who have obtained possession of it by ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... fortunately in one piece, and they dove into them with little ceremony. The three presented themselves flushed of cheek and somewhat rumpled as to hair, but properly gowned and apologetic, just as grace was ended. To be late for grace only meant one demerit; the first course came higher, and the second higher still. Punishment increased by ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... himself and made others do the same, or seem to do so, at least. He had no vanity—which is but an inordinate desire for those qualities that bring self-respect, and often the result of conscious demerit—but he knew himself, and knew that he was entitled to his own good opinion. He was every inch a man, strong, intelligent and brave to temerity, with a reckless disregard of consequences, which might have been dangerous had it not been tempered by a dash of prudence ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... kings, Vikarna hath answered the question, according to his own knowledge and judgment. Ye should also answer it as ye think proper. Knowing the rules of morality, and having attended an assembly, he that doth not answer a query that is put, incurreth half the demerit that attacheth to a lie. He, on the other hand, who, knowing the rules of morality and having joined an assembly answereth falsely, assuredly incurreth the sin of a lie. The learned quote as an example in this connection the old history of Prahlada and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... the happier age Which by demerit halteth short of end; Yet must this Law of Love reign King of all Before ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... no reason to suppose that the sin and demerit he speaks of is that of leaving his home. And even if it were, it is Macduff that speaks, not Shakespeare, any more than Shakespeare ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... moments answered: "The only person in this country that owns anything is the King; in the service of his people he afflicts himself with that burden. All property, of whatsoever kind, is his, to do with as he will. He divides it among his subjects in the ratio of their demerit, as determined by the waguks—local officers—whose duty it is to know personally every one in their jurisdiction. To the most desperate and irreclaimable criminals is allotted the greatest wealth, which ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... Fort Coulonge to take Mr. S.'s place for the summer. He returned from Montreal about the end of August, and I was much gratified to learn from him that I had been again appointed to the charge of the Chats, so that all the merit or demerit of good or bad management would now be entirely my own. A few days after, a middle-sized canoe arrived, manned by three Canadians, with whom I embarked for the scene of my first essay ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... death in the 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 ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... flowing over the proud arch, lustrous and wrinkled like satin, were ranged in a glittering hemicycle. They affected my friend like the youth and beauty of his earliest evening parties; he experienced a sense of bashfulness, of sickening personal demerit. He could not have had the audacity to bid on one of those superb creatures, if all the Chevaliers together had whispered him that here at last ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... appealed to for an opinion. I had once known the man (which, however, I did not think it worth while to mention) and I did not feel justified in criticising him in public. Besides, what I knew of him was excellent, and entirely apart from the literary merit or demerit of his work. The others, however, were within their right when they censured or praised him, and they did both. Farrar, in particular, surprised me by the violence of his attacks, while Miss Trevor ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... them, I should injure the name of Roman. I should think also, conscript fathers, that in deliberating on such a measure, it ought also to be considered, (if you are disposed to be over severe, which you cannot do from any demerit of ours,) to what sort of enemy you would abandon us. Is it to Pyrrhus, for instance, who treated us, when his prisoners, like guests; or to a barbarian and Carthaginian, of whom it is difficult to determine whether his rapacity or cruelty be the greater? If you were to see the chains, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... to trace this happy condition to its sources. He begins with a negation. The antecedent cause of our salvation and calling was not our works; we were not treated according to our works; not after the measure, the proportion, the merit or demerit of our works: these might have brought punishment, but could never have procured for us blessings so great and undeserved. The real cause was the purpose of God and his grace given in Christ before the ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... evil;" viz., that no man deliberately chooses evil as evil. And Plato is, at the same time, careful to guard the doctrine from misconception. He readily grants that acts of wrong are distinguished as voluntary and involuntary, without which there could be neither merit nor demerit, reward nor punishment.[670] But still he insists that no man chooses evil in and by itself. He may choose it voluntarily as a means, but he does not choose it as an end. Every volition, by its essential nature, pursues, at least, an apparent good; because ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the law of retribution constantly interchanging their residences in a succession of rising and sinking existences, ranging through all the earths, heavens, and hells of the universe, bound by the terrible links of merit and demerit in the phantasmagoric dungeon of births and deaths. The Vishnu Purana declares, "The universe, this whole egg of Brahma, is everywhere swarming with living creatures, all of whom are captives in the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the incident at Gallup, did not scorn Wampus so openly as before; but he still reserved a suspicion that the fellow was at heart a coward and a blusterer. The chauffeur's sole demerit in the eyes of the others was his tremendous egotism. The proud remark: "I am Wampus!" was constantly on his lips and he had wonderful tales to tell to all who would listen of his past experiences, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... on the part of Great Britain. That it increased the cost of the war both in lives and in treasure to the British nation is obvious. But this is a consideration which does not affect any estimate of the merit or demerit displayed by the British Army in the field that may be formed either by British or foreign critics. In order to prove competency it is not necessary to show that no single mistake was made or that nothing that was done might not have been done better. No war department, ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... text will help us to answer. 'Thou shalt lift up thy face unto God.' That is a clear enough metaphor to express frank confidence of approach to Him. The head hangs down in the consciousness of demerit and sin. 'Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me,' wailed the Psalmist, 'so that I am not able to look up.' But it is possible for men to go into God's presence with a sense of peace, and to hold up their heads ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... attack or defend a minister in such a government as ours, where the utmost liberty is allowed, always carry matters to an extreme, and exaggerate his merit or demerit with regard to the public. His enemies are sure to charge him with the greatest enormities, both in domestic and foreign management; and there is no meanness or crime, of which, in their judgment, he is not capable. Unnecessary wars, scandalous ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... as ever—those who express wonderment at the survival of all the delightful features of the European raree-show—have not realised the power of the Spirit of Antiquity, and the power of the sentiment about him—that sentiment which gives birth to the great human dream about hereditary merit and demerit upon which society—royalist or republican—is built. What is the use of telling us that even in Grecian annals there is no kind of heroism recorded which you cannot match in the histories of the United States and Canada? What is the use of telling us that the travels ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... whereof we have spoken, it is to say, I trust Christ with my soul. I lean it wholly upon Him. I have no hope in myself; He is mine hope. I have no righteousness of myself; He is my righteousness. I have no standing before God,—I demerit nought but hell; but Christ standeth before God for me: His blood hath washed me clean from all sin, and His pleading with God availeth to hold me up in His ways. And unless or until you can from your heart thus speak I pray you say not again that you ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... those who have succeeded in distracting the many have put into their work some fineness which commends it also to the few. It is only in theory that there is a fixed boundary between works of art and the works which Philistines enjoy. In practice, merit and demerit exist side by side; works crude in conception reveal a hundred finenesses, and works fine in conception reveal crudenesses of execution. And just as there are authors who mingle good and bad in their books, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... contrary Doctrines: For whilst the more prudent and moderate of the Clergy are shifting and trimming between two Parties, the hot ones of one side assert with Vehemence, that it is meritorious as well as lawful for the people, to put their King to Death whenever he deserves it; and that of this Demerit, the Majority of the same People are the only Judges. The Zealots on the other, are as positive, that Kings are not accountable for their Actions, but to God only; and that, whatever Enormities they may ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... specially needed 62 Temptations to luxurious idleness 63 Rectification of false ideals.—The conqueror 64 The luxury of ostentation 64 Glorification of the demi-monde 66 Study of ideals 67 The human mind more capable of distinguishing right from wrong than of measuring merit and demerit 67 Fallibility of moral judgments 68 Rules ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... mountains. His colouring is so badly managed that the effect of distance, light, and shade are lost. Thus a man will so insist upon the use of difficult words by George Elliot that a person unacquainted with her writings would think that the whole merit or demerit of that author lay in her vocabulary. A man will so exalt the pathos of Dickens or Thackeray that he will throw their wit and humour into the background. Some person's only remark on seeing Turner's Modern Italy will be that the colours ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... right and justice, deserves to be repressed by force, and punished when committed, equally in the absence of any law or contract: that man naturally recognizes the distinction between the merit and demerit of actions, as he does that between justice and injustice, honesty and dishonesty; and feels, without being taught, and in the absence of law or contract, that it is wrong for vice to be rewarded or go unpunished, and for virtue to be punished or left unrewarded: ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... however, was compelled to stand by and see a hundred lieutenancies filled in the Regular Army, many in his own regiments, only to find himself overlooked and to be forced to feel that his services however valuable, could not outweigh the demerit of his complexion. ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... Saturday, and then the work will only be planned for the real opening of the term on Monday. But we're all supposed to arrive in time to attend service Sunday morning. Mrs. Tellingham is very strict about that. Those who arrive after that have a demerit to work off at ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... at the expense of "optimus" and 1, munificentissimus" the late Prince of Wales, "in loci amoenitatem et memoriam advent'us ejus." There are several paltry Chinese buildings and bridges, which have the merit or demerit of being the progenitors of a very numerous race all over the kingdom: at least they were of the very first. In the church is a beautiful tomb of an Earl and Countess of Downe, and the tower is in a good plain Gothic style, ind was once, they tell you, still more beautiful; but Mr. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... consequence God, at least in His knowledge, has limitations, is not omnipotent. St. Augustine replies confusedly (for the question is undoubtedly insoluble) that we have an illusion of liberty, an illusion that we are free, which suffices for us to acquire merit if we do right and demerit if we do wrong, and that this illusion of liberty is a relative liberty, which leaves the prescience of God, and therefore His omnipotence, absolute. Man is also extremely weak, debilitated, and incapable of good on account ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... an encroaching jurisdiction (for it is in its nature to encroach, when once it has passed its limits) coming to confine the juries, case after case, to the corporeal fact, and to that alone, and excluding the intention of mind, the only source of merit and demerit, of reward or punishment, juries become a dead letter ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that compose any preposition. Belief is a passion, or involuntary operation of the mind, and, like other passions, its intensity is precisely proportionate to the degrees of excitement. Volition is essential to merit or demerit. But the Christian religion attaches the highest possible degrees of merit and demerit to that which is worthy of neither, and which is totally unconnected with the peculiar faculty of the mind, whose presence is essential to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and vexed me, and given me cause of suspicion. For, after all, my dear, Mr. Lovelace is not wise in all his ways. And should we not endeavour, as much as is possible, (where we are not attached by natural ties,) to like and dislike as reason bids us, and according to the merit or demerit of the object? If love, as it is called, is allowed to be an excuse for our most unreasonable follies, and to lay level all the fences that a careful education has surrounded us by, what is meant ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... had that air of fashion, that look of being able to look down the unfashionable, which was so much in the eyes of Sir Henry; though in those of George Bertram it had been almost a demerit. With Caroline, as with many women, this was an appearance rather than a reality. She had not moved much among high people; she had not taught herself to despise those of her own class, the women of Littlebath, the Todds and the Adela Gauntlets; ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... punished for it by the civil magistrate, yet he doth not, therefore, fall from his ecclesiastical office or dignity; of which sort experience showeth many; or else such as being punished according to their quality and demerit, a man, by necessary consequence, falleth from the ecclesiastical function and dignity which before he had: this was Abiathar's case, and the case of so many as, being justly punished by proscription, incarceration, or banishment, are secundario et ex consequenti shut from their ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... shall not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." This denunciation included an exposure not only to temporal, but to eternal death, as might be shown from the nature and demerit of sin, the means which were afterwards employed to destroy its effects in the work of Christ, the repeated declarations of Scripture, and the peculiar energy of the original expression; it is literally, "Dying, thou shalt die." The weight of the condemnation rested on the sinner's ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... blame himself, not me, if he was an unwelcome guest at General Richman's. He lamented the prejudices which my friends had imbibed against him, but flattered himself that I was more liberal than to be influenced by them without any positive proof of demerit, as it was impossible that his conduct towards me should ever deviate from the strictest ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... objections is the most popular, but they have all failed to produce the intended effect, to an extent desired by the disaffected few. The object contemplated is, to produce an excitement that will prevent me going to England, and induce the Conference to retrace its steps. The merit or demerit of the measure has been mainly ascribed to me; and on its result, should I cross the Atlantic, my standing, in a great measure, depends. If our proposals should meet with a conciliatory reception, and your Committee would recommend measures, rather ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... 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 of the merit and demerit of human actions rests upon ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... Peterson, of Bavaria, who maintained that cases required treatment according to the degree of demerit shown on the prisoner's trial, and therefore, that instead of laying down one principle, the right course was to leave the judges to decide what should be ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... time when nonsense, dullness, lewdness, and all manner of profaneness and immorality are daily practised on the stage, I have prevailed on my modesty to offer to your lordship's protection a piece which, if it has no merit to recommend it, has at least no demerit to disgrace it; nor do I question at this, when every one else is dull, you will be pleased to find one ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... individual, and perhaps unfortunate, idiosyncrasy as a matter of pride. I happen to be devoted to Macbeth, whereas I very seldom read Hamlet (though I like parts of it). Now I am humbly and sincerely conscious that this is a demerit in me and not in Hamlet; and yet it would not do me any good to pretend that I like Hamlet as much as Macbeth when, as a matter of fact, I don't. I am very fond of simple epics and of ballad poetry, from the Nibelungenlied and the Roland ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... was crucified on his right hand, whose name was Dimas, answering, rebuked him, and said, Dost not thou fear God, who art condemned to this punishment? We indeed receive rightly and justly the demerit of our actions; but this Jesus, what evil ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... surely I have great reason, that I shall be too unworthy to hold the affections of so dear a gentleman!—God teach me humility, and to know my own demerit! And this will be, next to his grace, my surest guard, in the state of life to which, though most unworthy, I am going to be exalted. And don't cease your prayers for me, my dear parents; for, perhaps, this new condition may ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... good actions? Holbach gives to this and the various other ways of describing fatalism as dangerous to society, the proper and perfectly adequate answer. He turns to the quality of the action, and connects with that the social attitude of praise and blame. Merit and demerit are associated with conduct, according as it is thought to affect the common welfare advantageously or the reverse. My indignation and my approval are as necessary as the acts that excite these sentiments. My feelings are neither more ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... a cadet, and all were so proud and hopeful when he left them for the Point. He was the image of Uncle Barney, who was killed leading his splendid brigade in one of the earliest battles in Virginia, and, like Uncle Barney, brother was high-spirited and impatient. Mathematics and demerit set him back in '70 and dropped him out entirely in '71, when father was weeks away across the deserts of Arizona, and they were in lodgings at San Francisco, and poor mother was nearly distraught with grief and anxiety. Brother never came back to them. He went straight, it ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... all in favor of any very romantic predilection in behalf of the rest of the human race. In short, the Herr Hofmeister was a bailiff, much as Balthazar was a headsman, on account of some particular merit or demerit, (it might now be difficult to say which,) of one of his ancestors, by the laws of the canton, and by the opinions of men. The only material difference between them was in the fact, that the one greatly enjoyed his station, while ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... of course, paid a visit to Mistress Lucy immediately on reaching port. She took me very severely to task for leaving the port without a word of farewell, and seemed to find it a demerit in me that I had returned without a wound, praising Dick Cludde very warmly for the part he had taken in the fight. I answered with some heat that if I was not wounded 'twas from no shirking of duty, and I would have desired nothing better than that ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the famous occasion when Mr. Naseby, becoming engrossed in securing the election of a sound party candidate to Parliament, wrote a flaming letter to the papers. The letter had about every demerit of party letters in general: it was expressed with the energy of a believer; it was personal; it was a little more than half unfair, and about a quarter untrue. The old man did not mean to say what was untrue, you may be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has actually suggested the terms of a bargain by which he thinks the difficulty can be settled, which, in addition to the gross assumption of having a voice in a matter that in no manner belongs to him, has the palpable demerit of recommending a pecuniary compromise that is flagrantly wrong ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... his own sinfulness. He had no new facts; but new meaning and vitality were given to the facts that had long been familiar to him. The first result of this was a new conviction of his own hollowness and evil; and then, side by side with that sense of demerit and sin, came this other trembling apprehension of personal consequences. And so, not thinking so much about the sin as about the punishment that he thought must necessarily come when the holy and the impure collided, he cried, 'Depart from me, for I am ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fresh was still the wound within. "When I skulk into a corner lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim, 'What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some previous state of existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the keys of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?... Often as I (p. 090) have ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... demerit it possesses remains for the reader to ascertain. His judgment will be unprejudiced if he finds no word of ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... the shares went in small amounts—$10 and $25 and $50, and a good many $2 and $3 lots. And the bald and inviolate cranium of President Atterbury shines with enthusiasm and demerit, while Colonel Tecumseh Pickens, the rude but reputable Croesus of the West, consumes so many apples that the peelings hang to the floor from the mahogany garbage chest that he ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... concerning them; and that so little, so false and misbeseeming the ingenuitie of an historian, that he seemeth to have aimed at no other end than, by bitter invectives against Henry VIII., and Cardinal Wolsey, to demerit the favour of Queen Mary," &c., Godwyn's translation of the Annales of England; edit. 1630, author's Preface. "It is also remarkable that Polydore Virgil's and Bishop Joscelin's edition of Gildas's epistle differ so materially that the author of it hardly seems to be one and the same ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... something to be said for me. To begin with, no one can help being what they are. There's no more merit in your being good than there is demerit in my being ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... witnessed continual agitation in favor of establishing the English Church. False word reached the Privy Council that immorality was rife in the colony owing to a lack of religious instruction, and that Catholics were preferred in its offices. This movement succeeded, in spite of its intrinsic demerit, by passing itself off as part of the rising in favor of William and ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... afterwards, brought him into the society of every rank and condition of man. He is himself the hero of his books: he is wild Tom Jones, he is wild Captain Booth, less wild, I am glad to think, than his predecessor, at least heartily conscious of demerit, and anxious to amend. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that of practicability, when another person, one under his command, was concerned? Some discretionary power is obviously implied in every system of orders intended for rational and accountable beings. The use made of it is one of the data, on which the determination of the degrees of merit or demerit as to conduct, must be founded. On no other principle than one involving some liberty, nay some duty of judging, can the intelligence of mankind be availing in the execution of projects. Divine authority alone, unequivocally made known, can dispense with acquiescence to the demands of reason, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... that the real grandeurs of the Pacific coast are not Yo Semite and the Big Trees, but Hank Monk and his adventure with Horace Greeley. [And what makes that worn anecdote the more aggravating, is, that the adventure it celebrates never occurred. If it were a good anecdote, that seeming demerit would be its chiefest virtue, for creative power belongs to greatness; but what ought to be done to a man who would wantonly contrive so flat a one as this? If I were to suggest what ought to be done to him, I should ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... monstrous delusion of his life, swelling with every grain of sand that shifted in its glass, he urged her on, he little thought to what, or considered how; but still his feeling towards her, such as it was, remained as at first. She had the grand demerit of unaccountably putting herself in opposition to the recognition of his vast importance, and to the acknowledgment of her complete submission to it, and so far it was necessary to correct and reduce her; but otherwise he still considered her, in his cold way, a lady capable of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... successful conclusion a German translation of the Prophets from the Hebrew, a work which Hetzer had begun. This important piece of scholarly work was published under the title, Alle Propheten nach hebraeischer Sprache verteutscht, in Worms, April 3, 1527, and had a wide circulation and use, its main demerit being that it had been ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... shall expect more than just hard work from you. I want everything you have to offer. Not just good performance, but excellence! I will not tolerate anything less, and if I'm forced to resort to extreme disciplinary action to get what I demand, then you can expect to receive every demerit in the book!" He stepped closer to the three cadets. "Remember! Spacemen—or nothing! Now, stand ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... weapon of oppression; the chiefs of nations, the kings and priests, found in this a new instrument of domination by the privilege which they reserved to themselves of distributing the favors and punishments of the great judge, according to the merit or demerit of actions, which they took care to characterize as ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... they believe that the most atrociously wicked must go to a state of punishment after death. They consider murderers, especially, as under this doom. But the offences so adjudged, according to any settled estimate they have of the demerit of bad actions, are comprised in a very short catalogue. At least it is short if we could take it exclusively of the additions made to it by the resentments of individuals. For each one is apt to make his own ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... teeth that were heard when an intelligent portion of the Press induced Mr. Tate to withdraw his offer to build a gallery and furnish it with pictures by Messrs. Herkomer, Fildes, Leader, Long, are not forgotten. It was not urged that the pictures were valuable pictures; the merit or demerit of the pictures was not what interested, but the fact that a great deal of money was going to be spent, and that titles, badges, medals, crowns, would be given to those whose pictures were enshrined in the new temple of art. The Tate Gallery touched these folk as would an imposing review of troops, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... not necessary to utter more than that. No hint of wickedness, deformity, or any physical or moral demerit; merely the name and tone of mockery: "Oh, Jean-ah Poquelin!" and while they tumbled one over another in their needless haste to fly, he would rise carefully from his seat, while the aged mute, with downcast face, went on rowing, and rolling up his brown fist and extending it toward the urchins, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... occurred to gentlemen who have been thus situated, that although they have in truth had no part in the decision, yet the Society and the public will justly attribute a portion of the merit or demerit of their award, to those to whom that trust ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... Night and day is this death-watch on me, and its paradoxical function is to see that I do not die. I must be kept alive for the hanging, or else will the public be cheated, the law blackened, and a mark of demerit placed against the time-serving warden who runs this prison and one of whose duties is to see that his condemned ones are duly and properly hanged. Often I marvel at the strange way some men ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the left, and is liable to a due responsibility for his words and actions, still the Just Judge alone can and must make allowance for the innate inclinings of heredity and the outward influences of circumstance, and He only can hold the balance between the guilt and innocence, the merit or demerit, of ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... those who see it in black colours to urge the No Popery cry. So far, I am disposed to justify the Anti-Maynooth war. Sir R. Inglis may be a bigot in his view of Romanism ... but I think he is not 'out of order' in intruding the religious demerit of Romanism into a parliamentary discussion. If this measure had been thrown out, I fear Ireland would have been awfully embittered. Yet I hope the fierce opposition will stop any future scheme of keeping the sinecure church untouched ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... the whole work is the state of the soul after death, simply considered. But if the work be taken allegorically the subject is man, as by merit or demerit, through freedom of the will, he renders himself liable to the ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... a bathing-towel or a light great-coat. Each of them is in an oratorical attitude, which has all the disadvantage of being affected without even any of the advantages of being theatrical. Let no one suppose that such abortions arise merely from technical demerit. In every line of those leaden dolls is expressed the fact that they were not set up with any heat of natural enthusiasm for beauty or dignity. They were set up mechanically, because it would seem indecorous or stingy if they were not ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... But Mr. Fitzgibbon seemed to care very little about all this, and went so far as to declare that those things were accidents which fell out sometimes one way and sometimes another, and were altogether independent of any merit or demerit on the part of the candidate himself. And it was marvellous and almost painful to Phineas that his friend Fitzgibbon should accept the fact of his membership with so little of congratulation,—with absolutely ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... unalterable in the sight of God. The one absolute right—the charity of God and the sacrifice of Christ—this, from eternity to eternity must be the sole measure of eternal right. But human right or human wrong, that is the merit or demerit, of any action done by any particular man, must be measured, not by that absolute standard, but as a matter relative to his particular circumstances, the state of the age in which he lives, and his own knowledge of right and wrong. For we come ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... sir, I think he is the true Scot, and the true citizen, who wishes equal justice to the merit and demerit of every subject of Great Britain; amongst whom I know but of ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... there are almost infinite degrees of merit and demerit: echoes of echoes reverberating echoes in endless succession; compilations of all degrees of worth and worthlessness. But, as will be shown hereafter, even in this lower sphere the worth of the work is strictly ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... brighter and goodlier for the presence of one that is not so wise, but may even derive pleasure and diversion therefrom. Wherefore as you, my ladies, are one and all most discreet and judicious, I, who know myself to be somewhat scant of sense, should, for that by my demerit I make your merit shew the more glorious, be more dear to you, than if by my greater merit I eclipsed yours, and by consequence should have more ample license to reveal myself to you as I am; and therefore have more patient sufferance on your part than would be due to me, were ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... he told himself, as he lay awake, thinking, thinking, thinking. "Some one has it in for me, of course. But Dan and I together can't find out who the rascal is. He may try nothing against me again, for weeks, but sooner or later he'll turn another demerit trick against me. Before January I shall be home again, looking for some sort ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... conscious of merit or demerit, of self-approval or self-condemnation, in consequence of our actions. If our wills were acted upon by a force beyond our control, we might congratulate or pity ourselves, but we could not praise or blame ourselves, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... order of demerit and impossibility comes the chimney-pot hat, which is not lacking in character, but is ugly and ridiculous. Its one redeeming feature is the difficulty it presents to the draughtsman. It is mathematical, geometrical, with every curve known to science, as hard to represent ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... of a moral agent are in God, in the greatest possible perfection; such as understanding, to perceive the difference between moral good and evil; a capacity of discerning that moral worthiness and demerit, by which some things are praiseworthy, others deserving of blame and punishment; and also a capacity of choice, and choice guided by understanding, and a power of acting according to his choice ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... exquisitely wrought, nerve -centered body of the universe could suffer of physical pain and anguish; God did not make Him to be sin and treat Him as the blackest and most repulsive thing in existence; He did not lay upon Him the weight and demerit of a world's guilt that He might suffer in His innocence, His purity and innate sinlessness on behalf of the vilest outcast this side of Gehenna, the lake of fire, just that He might keep us from lying, cheating, swearing, getting drunk, giving ourselves ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... one, to be sure, but one they were not likely to forget, for each word that they had misspelled was written upon a good-sized piece of paper and pinned upon their breasts "as a reward of demerit," Miss Preston told them, and, although it was all done in fun and joked and laughed over at the time, each girl knew that those words must be thoroughly committed to memory before the Wednesday spelling match began its lively session, or her ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... cries M. Siron, bearing through the court the first tureen of soup. And immediately the company begins to settle down about the long tables in the dining-room, framed all round with sketches of all degrees of merit and demerit. There's the big picture of the huntsman winding a horn with a dead boar between his legs, and his legs—well, his legs in stockings. And here is the little picture of a raw mutton-chop, in which Such-a-one knocked a hole last summer with ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... A marked demerit of the new order of things—the regime of female commercial service—is that its main advantage accrues, not to the race, not to the sex, not to the class, not to the individual woman, but to the person of least need and worth—the male employer. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... difficulties, or rather the impossibilities, with which we are beset whenever we attempt to take to ourselves the functions of the Eternal Judge (except in reference to ourselves where judgment is committed to us), and to form any accurate idea of relative merit and demerit, good and evil, in actions. The shades of the rainbow are not so nice, and the sands of the sea-shore are not such a multitude, as are all the subtle, shifting, blending forms of thought and of circumstances that go to determine the character of us and of our acts. But there is One that ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... any one. More often he tried to arrive with them at a real community of decision. It is often impossible to guess what acts of an Administration are rightly credited to its chief. The hidden merit or demerit of many statesmen has constantly lain in the power, or the lack of it, of guiding their colleagues and being guided in turn. If we tried to be exact in saying Lincoln, or Lincoln's Cabinet, or the North ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... institutions are doubtless both educational and charitable, or at least ought to be, using these words in their ordinary application. It is not a question of merit or demerit on the part of the unfortunates or their families. It is not a question whether they are entitled to an education as much as normal children. So far as there is any real issue, it is one of classification for purposes of administration. The question ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... the declaration of November 30, 1654, are to transplant themselves into Connaught; or by entertaining them as tenants on his lands, or as servants under him, he shall be punished by the articles of war as negligent of his duty, according to the demerit of such ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... of those who care for the little piece of artistry, and since 1894, when it was published, I have matured sufficiently in life's academy not to be too unduly sensitive either as to the merit or demerit of my work. There is, after all, an unlovable kind of vanity in acute self-criticism —as though it mattered deeply to the world whether one ever wrote anything; or, having written, as though it mattered to the world enough to stir it in its course ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... has no part in what is done, we do nothing, another acts through us; 'tis not ours, but the deed of another. An instrument or tool used in the accomplishment of a purpose possesses the same negative merit or demerit, whether it be a thing without a will or an unwilling human being. If we are not free, have no choice in the matter, must consent, we differ in nothing from all brutish and inanimate nature that follows necessarily, fatally, the bent of its instinctive ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... precious qualities of sleep to allow that of their shipmates to be causelessly disturbed by the nervous apprehensions of one who carried with him an everlasting stimulant to fear in the consciousness of demerit. The night passed away undisturbed, therefore, nor was the order of the regular watch broken until the look-outs in the wreck, agreeably to their orders, awoke Captain Truck and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... imperfect duties that are duties of virtue. The fulfilment of them is merit (meritum) a; but their transgression is not necessarily demerit (demeritum) - a, but only moral unworth o, unless the agent made it a principle not to conform to those duties. The strength of purpose in the former case is alone properly called virtue [Tugend] (virtus); the weakness in the latter case is not vice (vitium), but rather ...
— The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics • Immanuel Kant
... too naturally to have made too many of the great dramatic journeymen whose powers were half wasted or half worn out in the struggle for bare bread. No other excuse than this can be advanced for the demerit of Middleton's next comedy. Had the author wished to show how well and how ill he could write at his worst and at his best, he could have given no fairer proof than by the publication of two plays issued under his name in ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and resolution of all the discords of life that the hope of it should prove true in the individual as it will certainly prove true in the universe. For we are unable to weigh individual merit or demerit, and cannot assert for certain that the balance of justice is not maintained even in this present life. But nevertheless the hope that it must and will be so is inextinguishable, and Faith in an Eternal Law of Morals is inextricably bound up with hope of immortality for the being that ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... for persuasion and imposition as enables her to baffle all the schemes of her aged admirer and unite herself to a young gallant more suited to her age. The "Country Wife" of Wycherly is an imitation of this piece, with the demerit on the part of the English author of having rendered licentious a plot which, in Moliere's hands, is ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... gymnasium to rubber shirts, get off fat—nor do I doubt the efficacy of exercise and its accompaniments in the way of sweating and baths and all that; but when a person has a living to make these methods are useless, not through any demerit of their own but because the man who is fat hasn't the time or opportunity and, more than all, soon fails in ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... all question of merit and demerit, of praise and blame, and more especially (but this will shock Mr. Wells) of salvation and damnation—and nothing can be easier than to pay to the works of the Veiled Being the meed of an illimitable wonder. When we think of the roaring vortices ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... king, full of kindness, instantly endeavoured to comfort them. He said, 'I am a minister, and God has sent me to instruct and comfort your mother.' He then sat down on a pack by the side of the pallet, and, taking the hand of the dying Gipsy, discoursed on the demerit of sin and the nature of redemption. He then pointed her to Christ, the all-sufficient Saviour. While the king was doing this the poor creature seemed to gather consolation and hope; her eyes sparkled with brightness, and her countenance ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... sun spirit. Karana Sarira, the causal body; Avidya; ignorance; that which is the cause of the evolution of a human ego. Karma, the law of ethical causation; the effect of an act for the attainment of an object of personal desire, merit and demerit. Karman, action; attributes of Linga Sarira. Kartika, the Indian god of war, son or Siva and Parvati; he is also the personification of the power of the Logos. Kasi, another name for the sacred city of Benares. ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... new; but we found in reality that by subjecting us to a dependence on hours, it diverted our attention from those places where we might have spent half a day to advantage, and familiarized us only with one branch of knowledge,—the merit and demerit of most of the inns on the roads, whose characters I shall not fail to give as we found them. Homely as this species of information may be, I have often regretted the want of it beforehand; and concluding that others may be of the same ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... have condemned him with one voice. And, mark the style in which they would have branded the immoral paradox! "Conscience,"—they would have cried,—"conscience, man's chief glory, was given to him exclusively; the notion of justice and injustice, of merit and demerit, is his noble privilege; to man, alone,—the lord of creation,—belongs the sublime power to resist his worldly propensities, to choose between good and evil, and to bring himself more and more into the resemblance ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... as they are not only meant to impede the measures of that government generally, but more especially, as a great means toward the accomplishment of it, to destroy the confidence which it is necessary for the people to place, until they have unequivocal proof of demerit, in their public servants. In this light I consider myself whilst I am an occupant of office; and if they were to go further and call me their slave during this period, I ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... at engineering drill. In this latter capacity he also had committed the offense of not reporting some of the class for indulging in unauthorized sport. The offense was not so grave as mine, and, besides, his military record was very much better. So he was let off with a large demerit mark and a sort of honorable retirement to the office of quartermaster of the battalion. I still think, as I did then, that McPherson's punishment was the more appropriate. Livingston was one of those charming, amiable fellows with whom nobody could well find any fault, though I believe ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... the North Briton is, to an appreciable extent, a different creature from the Englishman, the assumption is not likely to provoke dispute. No one will deny us the prominence of our cheek-bones, and our pride in the same. How far the difference extends, whether it involves merit or demerit, are questions not now sought to be settled. Nor is it important to discover how the difference arose; how far chiller climate and sourer soil, centuries of unequal yet not inglorious conflict, a separate race of kings, a body of separate traditions, and ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... follow that there would not be a sufficient degree of freedom to render rewards and punishments just and reasonable. It is true that generally we speak as though the necessity of the action put an end to all merit and all demerit, all justification for praise and blame, for reward and punishment: but it must be admitted that this conclusion is not entirely correct. I am very far from sharing the opinions of Bradwardine, Wyclif, Hobbes and Spinoza, who advocate, so it seems,[160] this ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... the angry one is weakened by fear for the person menaced by him, whereas, in the case of kind affections, sympathy is increased by doubling. While our judgment of propriety or decorum rests on simple participation in the sentiments of the agent, our judgment of merit and demerit is based, in addition, on sympathy with the feelings of gratitude or resentment experienced by the person on whom the action terminates. An act is meritorious if it appears to us to deserve thanks and reward, ill-deserving if it seems to merit resentment and punishment. ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... tact of expression, in continuity and equality of style. Vigour is not the principal note of his manner, but compared with the soft effusive ebullience of his master's we may fairly call it vigorous and condensed. But all this merit or demerit is matter of mere language only. The poet—a very pretty poet in his way, and doubtless capable of gracious work enough in the idyllic or elegiac line of business—shows about as much capacity to grasp and ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
