"Demerit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... winneth the happier age Which by demerit halteth short of end; Yet must this Law of Love reign King of all Before the ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... and one of her hind legs cutt offe, lastly my corne in Mile Meadow much damnified with horses, they being staked upon it; it was wheat; All wch injurys, as they do sauor of enemy so I hope they will be looked upon by this honored court according to their natuer and judged according to there demerit, that so your poor suppliant may find some redrese; who is bold ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... Samuel Rutherford's is just another great name 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 ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... eyes of Louis XIV go their rounds at every moment, "on arising or retiring, on passing into his apartments, in his gardens,. . . nobody escapes, even those who hoped they were not seen; it was a demerit with some, and the most distinguished, not to make the court their ordinary sojourn, to others to come to it but seldom, and certain disgrace to those who never, or nearly never, came."[2130] Henceforth, the main thing, for the first personages in the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 be called extravagant—but what does ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... tribunals would 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 of God through liberty and justice.... No; the holy image of virtue was never ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... society, but injustice, unless checked would quickly prove its ruin: Humility exalts; but pride mortifies us. For these reasons the former qualities are esteemed virtues, and the latter regarded as vices. Now since it is granted there is a delight or uneasiness still attending merit or demerit of every kind, this is all that is ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... 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 ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... have now said, I believe you will have already suspected of what nature are those particulars in my conduct, which I set out with an intention of confessing. Whatever may be my merit or demerit in this instance, I will not hide from you that the marquis of San Severino was the original cause of what I have done. You are already sufficiently acquainted with the freedom of his sentiments upon this subject. He is a professed devotee of the sex, and he suffers this ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... 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 by the doctrine of subduing our passions?—But, O my dearest friend, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... duty now 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 for ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... thing was too unrelenting. One was driven by wind and sun; even the clouds took a hand in cudgeling one on. A person must keep at it whether she cared to or not—in actual practice this point never troubled Elliott, who always stopped when she wished to—there were no spectators, and, heaviest demerit of all, it ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... "Holy Path" is yet widely practised in Japan. Elaborate tables are drawn up, containing a list of all good and bad actions it is possible to perform, with the numbers added which each counts on the side of merit or demerit. The numbers range from one to a hundred, or even more; and the tables afford an insight into the relative importance in which all kinds of actions present themselves to the Oriental mind. He who would tread life's journey along the Holy Path must, at least, aim at ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... an attempt to make an appeal for one or another type of economic reform. It is simply a partial view of certain work conditions as they come closest to family life. There is to this writer no more merit or demerit in any form of economic dogmatism than in any special theologic creed. We may all differ, and with reasons sufficient to our thought and without blame, on questions of how we can best attain a true democratization of the ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... 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 is taken from them, little by little, as ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... the security of property assured to the inhabitants, "by which means," says that dull chronicler, Niles, "the poor soldiers lost all their hopes and just demerit [desert] of plunder promised them." In the meagreness of their pay they thought themselves entitled to the plunder of Louisbourg, which they imagined to be a seat of wealth and luxury. Nathaniel Sparhawk, Pepperrell's thrifty son-in-law, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... birds are subjects of pleasure and pain. Then we may be certain that these forms of consciousness were in existence at the beginning of the Mesozoic epoch. From that time forth, pleasure has been distributed without reference to merit, and pain inflicted without reference to demerit, throughout all but a mere fraction of the higher animals. Moreover, the amount and the severity of the pain, no less than the variety and acuteness of the pleasure, have increased with every advance in the scale of evolution. As suffering came into the world, not in consequence of a fall, but ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... 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 ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... doctrine of absolute predestination might be true; 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 ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... one's self which must ever be a sign of self-conscious demerit," said the young girl lightly, "I may say that I am not generally good at Johnsonese; but it may relieve your mind to know that had you kept silence one instant longer, I should have taken the risk ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... 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 magistrate to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... inchoate right into effect, as is apparent in the law regulating the franchise of this District. When that shall have been done, it will be the pleasure of this court to administer the law as they find it. Until this shall be done, the consideration of fitness and unfitness, merit and demerit, are considerations for the law-making power. The demurrer in these cases ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the relation 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 ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... again, the divinity creates, in accordance with the merit or demerit of living beings, things of a special nature, subsisting for a certain time only, and perceived only by the individual soul for which they are meant. In agreement herewith Scripture says, with reference to the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... 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 done ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... 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 ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... conscience is, that 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, and beating the ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... was undisturbed by a Carthaginian war, so it was evident that some of the states remained quiet more from fear, arising from a consciousness of demerit, than from sincere attachment. The most remarkable of them, both for their greatness and guilt, were Illiturgi and Castulo. Castulo had been in alliance with the Romans when in prosperity, but had revolted to the Carthaginians after the destruction of the Scipios and their armies. The Illiturgians, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... an additional 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
... attention and distract the judgment of the public, possess, in the eyes of any serious thinker occupied in estimating the strength of the arguments for and against Home Rule, no material importance whatever. His concern is the merit or demerit of a legislative enactment. He is not concerned at all with the conduct or the character of legislators. Mr. Gladstone's motives may be the highest which can be ascribed to the Premier by the voice of admiring friendship, ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... days after death, the spirit is supposed to visit the different temples, going, as it were, from official court to official court receiving judgment, and cards of merit or demerit to take with it, for the deeds done in the body. On the third day it returns to say farewell to the home, and then leaves for its long journey, and all this paper ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... it, and death will be sweeter to me than life on earth without lover, honour or happiness. Neither war nor death has robbed me of my lover; no sin or fault of mine has robbed me of my honour; neither error nor demerit of mine has made me lose my joy. 'Tis cruel fate that has rendered the most favoured of men thankless, and has caused me to receive the contrary ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... 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 done ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... "Though I am but a little thing, I will get his attention." So he jumped up the throne until he got on the king's head. Here he received recognition from the king by a slap, and when he boasted to a dog of his success, the latter said: "Some get attention by their merit, others by their demerit. In making yourself a nuisance you get recognition before the lords of the realm, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... direct influence of sympathy upon all social beings, is sufficiently obvious, and we immediately perceive its necessary connection with compassion, friendship, and benevolence; but the subject becomes more intricate when we are to analyse our sense of propriety and justice; of merit and demerit; of gratitude and resentment; self-complacency or ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... of 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... "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
... necessary part of the ultimate redressing of all injustice 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 ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... manuscript, to Mr. Howells, when he was editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," so that he could prepare a review of it at leisure. I knew he would say the truth about the book—I also knew that he would find more merit than demerit in it, because I already knew that that was the condition of the book. I allowed no copy of it to go out to the press until after Mr. Howells's notice of it had appeared. That book was always safe. There wasn't a man behind a pen in all America that had the courage to find anything ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... inspecting officer found anything wrong about the room, he simply glanced at the orderly board, and down went the demerit against the lad whose name was posted there. It made no difference who had left a chair out of place, hung a coat where it should not be, or failed to invert the washbowl, the room orderly had to ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... misfortunes 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
... clearly 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, for what we ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... nor Pilate who condemned Jesus. It was the old Jewish party; it was the Mosaic Law. According to our modern ideas, there is no transmission of moral demerit from father to son; no one is accountable to human or divine justice except for that which he himself has done. Consequently, every Jew who suffers to-day for the murder of Jesus has a right to complain, for he might have acted as did Simon the Cyrenean; at any rate, he might not ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... 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 Metaphysical Elements of Ethics • Immanuel Kant
... 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
... both you and myself on occasion of the great favor which you have conferred upon me, I did not think proper to be silent before them, lest any one should construe my forbearance into a consciousness of demerit. As for myself, indeed, nothing that is said of me, I feel assured,[243] can do me injury; for what is true, must of necessity speak in my favor; what is false, my life and character will refute. But since your judgment, in bestowing on me so distinguished an honor and so important a trust, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... engaged in these ungrateful speculations: their disputes chiefly turned upon the effect, which motive, suggested by grace, or the divine favour, has upon will. Does it necessitate? then, there is no free-will,—no merit,—no demerit. Does it not necessitate? then, in the choice of good, man acts by his own power, and thus achieves a good of which God is ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... — N. vice; evil-doing, evil courses; wrongdoing; wickedness, viciousness &c adj.; iniquity, peccability^, demerit; sin, Adam^; old Adam^, offending Adam^. immorality, impropriety, indecorum, scandal, laxity, looseness of morals; enphagy^, dophagy^, exophagy^; want of principle, want of ballast; obliquity, backsliding, infamy, demoralization, pravity^, depravity, pollution; hardness of heart; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... straw about their merit or demerit," said Mr. Galbraith; "poetry is nothing but spoilt prose. What I want to know is, whether they do not suggest a reason for your want of success with Jenny. Do ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... 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 rules of honor ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... alone, and you will bear in mind that thus committing himself unreservedly to this decision, commits him to the next one just as firmly as to this. He did not commit himself on account of the merit or demerit of the decision, but is a 'Thus saith the Lord.' The next decision, as much as this, will be a 'Thus saith the Lord.' There is nothing that can divert or turn him away from this decision. It is nothing ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... though a man be condignly 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
... reason ourselves into any consciousness of merit or demerit, if we are moved only by some vague law of nature whose behest, as described by Mr. Buckle, we cannot resist, whose operations within us we cannot discern, and whose drift or tendency we cannot foresee. It makes little difference whether we build our faith ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... drawls Uncle Jack. "I didn't happen to meet Mr. Lee, either,—he was away on leave; but as Bill and your mother had some such views, I looked into things a bit. It appears to be a matter of record that my enterprising nephew had more demerit before the advent of Mr. Lee than since. As for 'extras' and confinements, his stock was always big enough to bear the market down to ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... This would be suffering our compassion to degenerate into weakness. It would in fact be hardness of heart. It would betray a spirit of indifference to their dearest interest, as by our silence, they might remain in blindness to the demerit of their deeds, and hurry on to the ruin of their reputation, and consequently, of their earthly happiness. True tenderness of heart makes us watchful over the conduct of those we love, and with whom we are connected in life— moves us to lay naked before them their faults, so that they ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... now, 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 ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... according to Spinoza's own rule we must accept what it involves. And it involves that some where or other the influence of causes ceases to operate, and that some degree of power there is in men of self-determination, by the amount of which, and not by their specific actions, moral merit or demerit is to be measured. Speculative difficulties remain in abundance. It will be said in a case, e.g. of moral trial, that there may have been power; but was there power enough to resist the temptation? If there was, then it was resisted. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... poetry, and transcends rather in Dutch minuteness and high finishing, than in Italian ideality and passion. I think besides that Mr. Forrest's rejection of any play of Sheridan Knowles must refer rather to its unfitness for the development of his own personal talent, than to its abstract demerit, whatever Transatlantic tastes he may bring with him. The published title of the last play is 'The Daughter,' not 'The Wreckers,' although I believe it was acted as the last. I am very anxious to read 'Otto,' not to see it. I am not going to see it, notwithstanding an ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... 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 of rashness. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... charge the neglect of any duty as crime, or account its fulfilment a virtue, you suppose the existence of a power to neglect or fulfil; and it is the exercise of this power, in the one way or the other which constitutes the merit or demerit. Is it ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... 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
... can be no more concerned in than if they had never been done: and to receive pleasure or pain, i.e. reward or punishment, on the account of any such action, is all one as to be made happy or miserable in its first being, without any demerit at all. For, supposing a MAN punished now for what he had done in another life, whereof he could be made to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there between that punishment and being ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... one rational method to which, in post-rational systems, the world is still thought to be docile, one rational endeavour which nature is sure to crown with success. This is the method of deliverance from existence, the effort after salvation. There is, let us say, a law of Karma, by which merit and demerit accruing in one incarnation pass on to the next and enable the soul to rise continuously through a series of stages. Thus the world, though called illusory, is not wholly intractable. It provides systematically for ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... 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? ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... I was totally at a loss to account for the strange step which she had taken; and it was not till some years after that I learned the true reason from a female relation of hers, to whom it seems Celestina had confessed in confidence, that it was no demerit of mine that had caused her to break off the match so abruptly, nor any preference which she might feel for any other person, for she preferred me (she was pleased to say) to all mankind; but when she came to lay the matter closer to her ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... nothing or very little 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 ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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
... forbidden to come to the dormitory at this hour." It was Mademoiselle Duroc that spoke. "Report for a demerit this evening. But what is it ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... his gentlest seas, by burying his boats too deeply. When he erred, in this or other matters, it was not from want of pains, for of all accessories to landscape, ships were throughout his life those which he studied with the greatest care. His figures, whatever their merit or demerit, are certainly never the beloved part of his work; and though the architecture was in his early drawings careful, and continued to be so down to the Hakewell's Italy series, it soon became mannered and false ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... Knight; who putting off his coronal, made his humble obeysance to the Prince, by whom he was commanded to draw neer, and understand his pleasure; saying to him; in few words, to this effect: "Palaphilos, seeing it hath pleased the high Pallas, to think me to demerit the office of this place; and thereto this night past vouchsafed to descend from heavens to increase my further honour, by creating me Knight of her Order of Pegasus; as also commanded me to join in the same Society such valiant Gentlemen throughout ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... 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
... liberty not only of trading with their own manufactures, but even their native commodities, forced to seek for justice many hundred miles by sea and land, rendered in a manner incapable of serving their king and country in any employment of honour, trust, or profit; and all this without the least demerit; while the governors sent over thither can possibly have no affection to the people, further than what is instilled into them by their own justice and love of mankind, which do not always operate; and whatever they please to represent ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... 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 ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... intuition has a convincingness which is lacking to intellect: while it is present, it is almost impossible to doubt its truth. But if it should appear, on examination, to be at least as fallible as intellect, its greater subjective certainty becomes a demerit, making it only the more irresistibly deceptive. Apart from self-knowledge, one of the most notable examples of intuition is the knowledge people believe themselves to possess of those with whom they are in love: the ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... 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 same year 1608. "The Family of Love" is, in my judgment, unquestionably ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... acknowledge that it puts some hardship upon the lower orders of society. It makes one's heart ache to think, that one man is born to the inheritance of every superfluity, while the whole share of another, without any demerit of his, is drudgery and starving; and that all this is indispensable. We that are rich, Mr. Tyrrel, must do every thing in our power to lighten the yoke of these unfortunate people. We must not use the advantage that accident has given us with an unmerciful hand. Poor wretches! ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... be in 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 of our capacities, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... alike, another thing. This being so, it is surely obvious that the poetic value cannot lie in that 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? The "formalist" is here perfectly right. Nor is he insisting on something ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... greater severity 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 ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... certainly not as archetypes. That the actions of man will never be in perfect accordance with all the requirements of the pure ideas of reason, does not prove the thought to be chimerical. For only through this idea are all judgements as to moral merit or demerit possible; it consequently lies at the foundation of every approach to moral perfection, however far removed from it the obstacles in human nature- indeterminable as ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... true, 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 particular addition to it, of some offence ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... her life, was very circumspect during recitations that week. She felt that Gee Gee was watching for a chance to demerit her, and the girl did not intend to give the teacher occasion ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... 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
... manifested Universe, for they find predecessors, elder souls in front of them; inequality is intensified when they have reached the human stage, where intelligence and will come into play, for henceforth, inequality in the actions of individuals, variations of what might be called merit and demerit, set up a second factor in the inequality of conditions. Evolution treasures up the causes that have not been able to germinate in one existence, and, by successive returns to earth, realises the aims and ends of that Justice ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... the comfortable range, sat a company of rustics, stuffing themselves with cold meat, washed down with mugs of ale, and cozily talking. They gained indefinitely in my interest from being served by a lame woman, with a rhythmical limp, and I hope it was not for my demerit that I was served apart in the chillier parlor, when I should have liked so much to stay and listen to the rustic tale or talk. The parlor was very depressingly papered, but on its walls I had the exalted company of his Majesty the ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... 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 ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... left to itself, or destitute of divine aid, necessarily determines him to evil, or renders him incapable of good, what becomes of the free-will of man? According to such principles, man can neither merit nor demerit. By rewarding man for the good he does, God would only reward himself; by punishing man for the evil he does, God would punish him for not giving him grace, without which he could not possibly ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... question of a doubt. In Wilmington, Del., Boston and New Bedford, Mass., Albany and Brooklyn, N. Y., and other places too numerous to mention, these enterprises and professions derive support mainly from white patrons, which fact is sufficient to dissipate every suspicion as to the demerit or inferiority of the articles handled or the agents patronized. Why Negro dentists, lawyers and doctors in the professions, merchants, farmers, butchers, smiths, produce and real estate dealers in the business world ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... persons as by 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 his neglect.' ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... speak for themselves, and must stand or fall by their own worth or demerit: thus far I feel highly gratified by your favourable opinion. But my pretensions to virtue are unluckily so few, that though I should be happy to merit, I cannot accept, your applause in that respect. One passage in your letter struck me forcibly: you mention the two Lords Lyttleton in a manner ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... 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 ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... but fright; He did but ask a dreadful right. In this was love, that he loved me The first, who was mere poverty. All that I know of love he taught; And love is all I know of aught. My merit is so small by his, That my demerit is my bliss. My life is hid with him in Christ, Never therefrom to be enticed; And in his strength have I such rest As when the baby on my breast Finds what it knows not how to seek, And, very happy, very weak, Lies, only knowing all is well, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... first sent him on a kind of semi-embassy to the headquarters of the emigrant princes at Coblentz, and he there carried on a semi-negotiation. But success was not to be the fate of any thing connected with these unfortunate men, and failure was scarcely a demerit, from its universality. The next experiment was sending him as a species of private envoy to the Irish Roman Catholics; but there his failure was even more conspicuous, though perhaps it was equally inevitable. Burke's imagination ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... day or other day, under pretence of religion, shall go to any public or private meeting, not established or allowed by public authority or approved by the President, under penalty of a fine, confession, admonition or otherwise, according to the state and demerit of the offence, for fear that such preaching would end in "Quakerism," open infidelity, and the destruction of all Christian religion, and make endless divisions in the Christian church till nothing hut the name of it would ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... refuge. But during my rapid approach, I observed that the external walls of the nameless edifice beneath the arcade were covered, and without a single interstitial interval, by small pictures in oil-colours, equal in size, and equal in demerit, and each and all representing some calamitous crisis of human existence—a fire, a ship-wreck, a boat-wreck, a battle, a leprosy! It occurred to me at the same moment, that this gallery of mortal casualties and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... and 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 be subject to still worse hazards than those I have ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... comparison intended in so setting off these two classes of nations in contrast to one another. It is not a contrast of merit and demerit or of prestige. Imperial Germany and Imperial Japan are, in the nature of things as things go, bent in effect on a disturbance of the peace,—with a view to advance the cause of their own dominion. On a large view of the case, such as many German ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... to-day, and in 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 of original sin, the sin of our ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... struck off and his quarters cast to the dogs. On whose soul God have mercy! Amen. In very deed, I think he deserved a better fate. Secure am I, that many men be hung on gallows which might safely be left to die abed, and many more die abed that richly demerit the gallows. This world is verily a-crooked: I reckon it shall be smoothed out and set straight one day. There be that say that day shall last a thousand years; and soothly, taking into account all the work to be done ere the eve droppeth, ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... dispute between Job and his pretended friends, seems to be, whether the Providence of God distributes the rewards and punishments of this life; in exact proportion to the merit or demerit of each individual. His antagonists suppose that it does; and therefore infer from Job's uncommon calamities, that, notwithstanding his apparent righteousness, he was in reality a grievous sinner: They aggravate his supposed guilt, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... mean; it is quite useless and might do harm to read their books,—shake them up together and make into a paste, add some poetical excerpts of a moral tendency, and spread thick over a violent lad smarting under a sense of demerit justly scorned, Turn him out into the world, then scrape clean and return him to his true friends. Cards, race-meetings, and billiards may be introduced ad lib., also passion, prejudice, a faithful dog, and an infant prattler. Death-scenes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... may be as well to state here that every cadet at Colby Hall was required to keep his room in absolute order, and a monitor came around twice a day to see that this regulation was carried out. If a pupil was lax in any particular regarding his room, he was given a demerit in consequence thereof. ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... What demerit had this little girl that she should be ordered to give up her health and life only that others might wear fine raiment and live in kings' houses? Surely it was not God who had laid ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... have the judges independent of the King. But we have omitted to copy their caution also, which makes a judge removable on the address of both legislative Houses. That there should be public functionaries independent of the nation, whatever may be their demerit, is a solecism in a republic, of the first ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... last one, for it worked both ways. It paid up for what I haven't done this past year and what I'll never do again in the years to come. It made up to me for all I've missed and all I'm going to miss. It was a reward of demerit for not being respectable, and a preventive of further sins. Oh, it was such a volcano as never was. It was a drink and a blue ribbon in one. It was a bang-up end and a bully beginning. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... to the pages of The Family Herald. In the superfine circles of the Sniffy, this fact is sufficient to condemn them unread. For of all fools the most incorrigible is surely the conventional critic who judges literary wares not by their intrinsic merit or demerit, but by the periodical in which they first saw the light. The same author may write in the same day two articles, putting his best work and thought into each, but if he sends one to The Saturday Review and the other to The Family Herald, those who relish ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... "Take a demerit and stay after school," Roy continued. "So I vote that we buy some paint and see if we can't paint the heads of our three patrol animals on the three cabins. Then we'll feel more like scouts and not so much like convicts. If we do that, it will be thirty cents ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... merit or 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 ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Dr. Huntington is ranked a Universalist, equally with those who have been named; but he believed in no punishment hereafter, being Calvinistic in his views of the demerit of sin, and of the atonement ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... 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, ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... 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
... by a certain amount of soil being present on the grapes during fermentation. This must be looked to, especially in the warmer districts, where by giving the wine a greater distance above the ground, a lighter, more delicate, and better wine, quite free from the foregoing demerit, is produced. ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... known passage in the tragic Seneca is not to be compared with it. The 'copia verborum' of the mother Florentine tongue, and the easiness of his style, afterwards brought to perfection by Berni, are the chief merits of Pulci; his chief demerit is his heartless spirit of jest and buffoonery, by which sovereigns and their courtiers were flattered by the degradation of nature, and the ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... moral good or moral evil, proceeds from our nature, and not from our will, has no character of merit or demerit. The reason is evident, and is stated by the apostle Paul. We are only guilty for what we do ourselves, we are only meritorious for what we do ourselves: but what our nature does, we do not do. "Now, then, it is no more ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... either 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 ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... That every act contrary to 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 ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... God.' I hate my sin and despise it for what it is in itself, for what it made him, my redeemer, to endure, but I have peace because he has fully satisfied in my behalf. I have actually satisfied in him and am delivered before God's court of holiness both from the guilt and the demerit of sin. I have, in short, gone through the judgment with Christ on the cross. He has pronounced forgiveness—absolution—upon me, and he has done so by virtue of his power and authority as the living one in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily—as my saviour ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... had gone forward with an equal foot, and the fires and the 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 the key ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... merit or demerit it possesses remains for the reader to ascertain. His judgment will be unprejudiced if he finds no word of promise on the ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... 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 ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... man 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 ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... could not help giving way to a comparative humour, as I may call it, and to think it very hard that my nearer relations did not take the methods which my cousin Morden kindly took, by inquiring into my merit or demerit, and giving my cause a fair audit before they proceeded ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... it. In the supposition that man is only a worm or an earthen vessel in the eyes of the Deity, he would be incapable either of serving him, glorifying him, honoring him, or offending him. We are, however, continually told that man is capable of merit and demerit in the sight of his God, whom he is ordered to love, serve, and worship. We are likewise assured that it was man alone whom the Deity had in view in all his works; that it is for him alone the universe was created; for him alone that the course of nature was so often ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... 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 ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... young. You have had no experience in this line of work." You cannot deny your youth and you should not defend it as if it were a fault. Nor can you claim experience you have not had. But it is unnecessary for you to indicate any feeling that inexperience is a demerit. An ordinary applicant might be discomfited by such resistance to his purpose. If you are a skillful salesman, you will be prepared to deal with this very obstacle and will turn it to good account. ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... grain fields' (poetic 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, my deficiency in the knowledge ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... precepts of innate rectitude and the practice of external policy: let it not then be conjectured that because we are unassuming, we are imbecile; that forbearance is any indication of despondency, or humility of demerit. He that is the most assured of success will make the fewest appeals to favour, and where nothing is claimed that is undue, nothing that is due will be withheld. A swelling opening is too often succeeded by an insignificant conclusion. ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... assure you mine is. Indeed, I never was a rash disbeliever; my chief doubt was founded on this— that, as men appeared to me to act entirely from their passions, their actions could have neither merit nor demerit." "A very worthy conclusion truly!" cries the doctor; "but if men act, as I believe they do, from their passions, it would be fair to conclude that religion to be true which applies immediately to the strongest of ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... a heaven and a hell, to one or the other of which all spirits of men shall be assigned, perhaps on the basis of a very narrow margin of merit or demerit. As it affirms the existence of an infinite range of graded intelligences, so it claims the widest and fullest gradation of conditions of future existence. It holds that the honest, though, perchance, mistaken soul who lived or tried to live according to the light he had received, shall ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... 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 state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the key of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?" I have read somewhere ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... these. Should I compare ourselves with 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? ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... 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 ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith |
