"Demerit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 requisite for ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... 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 ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... statement of the results of special studies of economic condition. Still less is it 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 ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... 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 ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... 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 seems, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... death cell, and the death-watch is set on me. 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
... some esteem for them, it cannot be imputed to vanity; since I should have agreed as implicitly to your opinion, had it been given in favour of any other man's production. Negatively, at least, I may be allowed to say, that had I been sensible of any great demerit in the work, you are the last person to whose protection I would ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... he had left it. It 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
... to whom either merit or accident hath appropriated the most established character. From this position it obviously follows, that such an art must arrive at once to its highest perfection, as the attempts of succeeding performers are estimated not by their own intrinsic value or demerit, but by their conformity to a standard which is previously set before them. It hath happened fortunately for the republic of letters, that the two higher species of poetry are exempted from the bad consequences which might have followed an exact observation of this rule. ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... Animals, he takes occasion to advert to the subject of the African Slave Trade. "It has pleased God," says he, "to cover some men with white skins and others with black; but as there is neither merit nor demerit in complexion, the white man, notwithstanding the barbarity of custom and prejudice, can have no right by virtue of his colour to enslave and tyrannize over the black man. For whether a man be white or black, such he is by God's appointment, and, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... this distinction," said Mr Cranium, "that I avoid the former as a machine containing a peculiar cataballitive quality, which I have found to be not consentaneous to my mode of pleasurable existence; but I attach no moral merit or demerit to either of them, as these terms are usually employed, seeing that they are equally creatures of necessity, and must act as they do from the nature of their organisation. I no more blame or praise a man for what is called vice or virtue, than ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... 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
... of the departed, giving rice to living creatures, and receiving guests with honour. As to the doctrine of a future state, they believe in the transmigration of the soul, but that between the different stages of existence it enjoys, according to merit or demerit, years and years of happiness in some of the heavens, or suffers torments of similar duration in some of the hells. The most wicked, however, after being purged of their crimes by ages of suffering, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... 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, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... or punishments, counsels or warnings. The essential qualities 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 or pleasure, and being capable of doing those things which are in the highest ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... 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 last letters he ever wrote—his letter to James Guthrie ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... treating mere 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 ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the case where faith is sincere, as I 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 these passions, hope and fear; chusing rather to rely on its rewards ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... she replied, "you were never more mistaken in your life. I find you charming, and you may very well have lighted on a fairy godmother. I am not one of those who are given to change their opinions, and short of substantial demerit, those who have once gained my favour continue to enjoy it; but I have a singular swiftness of decision, read my fellow men and women with a glance, and have acted throughout life on first impressions. Yours, as I tell you, has been favourable; and if, as I suppose, you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... accordingly came on the following evening, and accosted me thus: "You perceive that I must possess much tenderness to you, after the affront you have offered me: but still I cannot be reconciled till I have punished you according to your demerit, in not washing your hands after eating of the garlic dish." She then called the ladies, who, by her order, threw me upon the ground; and after binding me fast, she had the barbarity to cut off my thumbs and great toes herself, with a razor. One of the ladies applied a certain root to staunch ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... progress 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 letter ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... expression, diabolical, inasmuch 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 would not ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... 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 ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... 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
... when there. But a little experience and less thought show that royalty cannot take credit for domestic excellence. Neither George I., nor George II., nor William IV. were patterns of family merit; George IV. was a model of family demerit. The plain fact is, that to the disposition of all others most likely to go wrong, to an excitable disposition, the place of a constitutional king has greater temptations than almost any other, and fewer suitable occupations than almost any other. All the world ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... 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 her province, whose living honour ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... 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 ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... regard the welfare of the state. The colored soldier, 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
... has carried his fatherly care even beyond this; he 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 as ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 report at the end of the term would ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... first of the 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 ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... verified are alike inconsistent with the 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
... him on behalf 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, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... back to Scotland at his Majesty's expense, and punished for their audacity with stripes, stocking, or incarceration, according to their demerits—that is to say, I suppose, according to the degree of their poverty, for I see no other demerit specified." ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... 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 of rashness. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... unavoidable effects of 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 chains of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... middle-class dinner. Georgy read a great many books; but they were all novels, procured from the Bayswater branch of a fashionable circulating library, and were condemned unread by Mr. Sheldon, who considered all works of fiction perfectly equal in demerit, and stigmatised them, in a general way, as "senseless trash." He had tried to read novels in the dreary days of his Bloomsbury probation; but he had found that the heroes of them were impracticable beings, who were always talking of honour and chivalry, and always sacrificing their own interests ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... begin until 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
... "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
... holy calling." He then proceeds 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 ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... 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 ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... 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 ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... 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 reward or punishment ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... 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
... absence life 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
... 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
... presented; and nearly all of those that are exceptions to this remark are unfitted for "home consumption," either by the objectionable nature of their subjects, by the still more objectionable tendency of their teaching, or by a yet more fatal demerit,—their lack of interest. They are in some respects notably tame and puerile,—with a puerility which is not childish simplicity, but a lack of inventive fancy, and which exhibits itself in bald repetition. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... 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 ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... stand at their Dores to gard them.' Another sympathetic chronicler, after pouring out the vials of his wrath on the clause which guaranteed the protection of French private property, lamented that 'by these means the poor souldiers lost all their hopes and just demerit [sic] of plunder ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... be) given and resumed at the mere pleasure of the prince; yet when I see a great officer broke, a change made in the court or the ministry, and this under the most just and gracious Princess that ever reigned, I must naturally conclude it is done upon prudent considerations, and for some great demerit in the sufferers. But then; is not the punishment sufficient? Is it generous or charitable to trample on the unfortunate, and expose their faults to the world in the strongest colours? And would it not suit better with magnanimity as well ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... 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 of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... manes 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 was ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... 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 ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... from them or 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 did this or that, it would ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... the elders, whose waning reputations they may through industry either supplant or explode) will be rendered an uneasy struggle, and sometimes almost a curse, by the envy of those who deny approval while blind to success, and the affected disdain of those who exaggerate demerit. Yet these obstacles warm the spirit of honest ambition, and enhance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... 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 ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... 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
... 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, it were small ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... measure, 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 moderation: And, in a word, that it ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... this is the emotion excited by the contemplation of merit and virtue, which turns away from sin and deformity; and the sentiment denoted by our Master's words is one that is not brought into existence by virtue, nor extinguished by demerit ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... immigrants with no favourable eye, but Groot Willem appeared to have a large heart in his huge body, for he received the advance-guard of the party with genuine hospitality. Perhaps he was of an unusually forgiving spirit; or it may be that his innate sense of justice led him to recognise the demerit of himself and his kindred; or perchance he was touched by the leniency extended to himself; but, whatever the cause, he shook the newcomers heartily by the hand, said he regarded them as next door-neighbours, started the echoes of the precipices—which he ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... fear, 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
... appeared a gorgeous officer, in full fig. "Major McDowell!" somebody whispered, as we presented arms. He is a General, or perhaps a Field Marshal, now. Promotions come with a hop, skip, and jump, in these times, when demerit resigns and merit stands ready to step ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... 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 set up. They were even set up sulkily, in a utilitarian ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... 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 be called extravagant—but what does the sixteenth chapter ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... aids in prosecuting his master purpose, and in introducing it to the world. With this clearly in mind, it is easy to understand his subsequent career. Its external details may be read in any of the score of biographies which writers of all grades of merit and demerit have devoted to him, and there is no space for them here. For our purpose it is necessary to refer only to the principal ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... P: That same's the party; In man's apparel! 'Pray you, sir, jog my knight: I'll be tender to his reputation, However he demerit. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... so that its dramatic as well as its musical beauties may be preserved. There is no lovelier merit in Mozart's music than the depth and tenderness with which the honest love of Susanna for Figaro and the Countess for her lord are published; and it is no demerit that the volatile passion of the adolescent Cherubino and the frolicsome, scintillant, vivacious spirit of the plotters are also given voice. Mozart's music could not be all that it is if it did not enter fully and unreservedly ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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 had flown to ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... more than 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 ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... be accounted as his, in the sense that he is accountable for them. The son of the dipsomaniac, for instance, is not responsible for the morbid craving that stirs in him. He begins life, so far as responsibility is concerned, so far as merit or demerit is concerned, with a fresh start. He is not responsible for the craving; he is responsible only for assenting to it. True, the pull in his case is incomparably stronger than in others; still he can ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... 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; but she looked as though she would be able to do ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... alike, another thing. This being so, it is surely obvious that the poetic value cannot lie in the subject, but lies entirely in its opposite, the poem. How can the subject determine the value when on one and the same subject poems may be written of all degrees of merit and demerit; or when a perfect poem may be composed on a subject so slight as a pet sparrow, and, if Macaulay may be trusted, a nearly worthless poem on a subject so stupendous as the omnipresence of the Deity? The 'formalist' is here perfectly right. Nor is ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... 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 ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... time as last year, and I was ordered down to 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 ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... mouth, though it is not peculiar to him. Our obligation towards God, he says, must 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 ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... wisdom, is effectual to destroy that false desire, and therefore our object should be to practise this true apprehension. Right apprehension once produced then there is deliverance from covetous desire, for a false estimate of excellency produces a covetous desire to excel, whilst a false view of demerit produces anger and regret; but the idea of excelling and also of inferiority (in the sense of demerit) both destroyed, the desire to excel and also anger (on account of inferiority) are destroyed. Anger! how it changes the comely face, how it destroys the loveliness of beauty! Anger ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... with Impunity. By this Means a Book, which once this Indignity has been put upon, is in a few Days render'd odious, and in less than a Fortnight comes to be infamous throughout the Kingdom without any other Demerit; Those Polemick Authors among them, who are Party-Men, and write either for or against Courts and Ministers, have a greater Regard to what will serve their Purpose, than they have to Truth or Sincerity. As they subsist by vulgar ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... the persecuted regards the injury to be inflicted upon himself. In kinsmen, therefore, there are both merits and faults. A person destitute of kinsmen never shows favours to any one nor humbles himself to any one. In kinsmen, therefore both merit and demerit may be marked. One should, for this reason, always honour and worship his kinsmen in words and acts, and do them agreeable offices without injuring them at any time. Mistrusting them at heart, one should behave towards them as if he trusted them completely. Reflecting ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... 2: Merit and demerit belong to the state of a wayfarer, wherefore good is meritorious in them, while evil is demeritorious. In the blessed, on the other hand, good is not meritorious, but is part of their blissful reward, and, in like manner, in the damned, evil is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou 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 ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... is the principle of all morality. 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 ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... 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 hear. Syne brought ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... pref. "As for Polydore Virgil, he hath written either 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
... 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
... increasing inasmuch as incessant weeding out worked against them, the functionary, degraded by his work, growing worse along with his function.—Thus the constitutional rights of merit and capacity ended in the practical privilege of incapacity and demerit. And in the allotment of grades and social advantages, distributive justice had given way to distributive injustice, while practice, contrary to theory, instituted permanently, on the one hand, the exclusion ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... withdraws the job from sober, plainly competent, and meritorious Mr. Sparrowbill, generally short of work too; discourages Sparrowbill; teaches him that he too may as well drink and loiter and bungle; that this is not a scene for merit and demerit at all, but for dupery, and whining flattery, and incompetent cobbling of every description;—clearly tending to the ruin of poor Sparrowbill! What harm had Sparrowbill done me that I should so help ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... being a Castilian citizen but a Portuguese (which has been the rock of offense to auditors and citizens, and the motive which has induced the city to complain to your Majesty), I am not aware that it is a crime or a demerit to be a Portuguese. Diego Lopez is a son of the second Lopez Lobo, a nobleman, of the rank that can be easily ascertained in that Council. He went to East Yndia in the service of your Majesty, where he lived for ten years. Thence he came to these islands, where I found him serving worthily with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... 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 ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... Middlebury College "a class-book is kept by each instructor, in which the character of each student's recitation is noted by numbers, and all absences from college exercises are minuted. Demerit for absences and other irregularities is also marked in like manner, and made the basis of discipline. At the close of each term, the average of these marks is recorded, and, when desired, communicated to parents and guardians." This book is called the record of merit.—Cat. Middlebury Coll., ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... and artful language. Yet, since they attack 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 ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... look through the window and see the consul's old ragged Stars and Stripes hanging over his shack. 'You're all kinds of a fool, Billy Casparis,' I says to myself; 'and of all your crimes against sense it does look like this idea of celebrating the Fourth should receive the award of demerit. Your business is busted up, your thousand dollars is gone into the kitty of this corrupt country on that last bluff you made, you've got just fifteen Chili dollars left, worth forty-six cents each at bedtime ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... 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 ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... 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 ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... 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 ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... you, after all that fencing and skulking under hedges? Then I don't. If you'd said it fair out at first, well—may be I might, may be I mightn't. But I don't now, never a whit. And I think you'd best eat the succade I brought you. I believe you demerit it; and if you don't, you soon will, or I'm a mistaken woman, and I'm not apt to be that," concluded Mistress Tabitha, with serene ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... unnoticed. He 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, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... 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 I that do it, but sin ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... 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 bearing office ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... 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. You can say ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... 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: ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... 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
... of the errors of the vulgar 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 best suited ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... in his Ratnaprabha on S'a@nkara's bha@sya, II. ii. 19, explains "bhava" as that from which anything becomes, as merit and demerit (dharmadi). See also Vibhanga, p. 137 and Warren's Buddhism in Translations, p. 201. Mr Aung says in Abhidhammatthasa@ngaha, p. 189, that bhavo includes kammabhavo (the active side of an existence) ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... been by the Constitution appointed sole judge of the merit for which a pension is to be given. We have a right, undoubtedly, to canvass this, as we have to canvass every act of government. But there is a material difference between an office to be reformed and a pension taken away for demerit. In the former case, no charge is implied against the holder; in the latter, his character is slurred, as well as his lawful emolument affected. The former process is against the thing; the second, against ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... had rabbits, swore That he had this demerit— Give him an inch of warren, he Would take ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... 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 heart, she found that ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... 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 'impossibilification' of a ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... 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 rules of ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... 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 correctly ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... than in China, the system of the "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 setting off his ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... government 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
... are 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, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... 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, but ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... book, in 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 ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... fortunes and 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 ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... 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
... the youngsters were, and great as was the temptation to whisper, it happened that not a boy in the eighth grade received a check or a demerit, as it is usually called, for any form of bad conduct that afternoon. Immediately at the close of school the almost solid legion of boys of the seventh and eighth grades started on a run for the big field in which they had ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... much of old mother Eve's talent 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... recurring to the 134th Psalm, which, it was now 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. Beccles. In the intervals ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 in ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... this exemption not only from all manner of constraint or compulsion but also from all necessity and this command over my own actions that render me inexcusable when I will evil, and praiseworthy when I will good; in this lies merit and demerit, praise and blame; it is this that makes either punishment or reward just; it is upon this consideration that men exhort, rebuke, threaten, and promise. This is the foundation of all policy, instruction, and rules of morality. The upshot of the merit and demerit ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... Spain 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. ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... a decision of the Court is to him a 'Thus saith the Lord.' He places it on that ground 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 that I point ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... 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 ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... much loth to offend you; yet I cannot help speaking of your relations, as well as of others, as I think they deserve. Praise or dispraise, is the reward or punishment which the world confers or inflicts on merit or demerit; and, for my part, I neither can nor will confound them in the application. I despise them all, but your mother: indeed I do: and as for her—but I will spare the good lady for your sake—and one argument, indeed, I think may be pleaded in her favour, in the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... 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 whenever it was principal. He would indeed draw a ruined tower, or ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... own judicial sternness and fearlessness unduly at my expense. I think you had a better occasion for the display of these qualities when Webb threw himself entirely upon you for a pardon which he had done all a man could do to demerit. His paper is paying ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... woman without any 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 the down-treading." ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... too late to try and disabuse the minds 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 by one vibration. The world ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... everybody, who [10] will fight the medical faculty, can join this league. It is better to be friendly with cultured and conscientious medical men, who leave Christian Science to rise or fall on its own merit or demerit, than to affiliate with a wrong ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... consequence of this, he was delivered from the persecution of Walpole; and numbered among his friends the dukes of Devonshire and Argyle, the earls of Nottingham and Hay, and lord Townshend. The commons, in order to express their sense of his demerit, presented an address to the king, desiring he might be excepted out of the intended act of grace. The king promised to comply with their request; and in the meantime forbade the earl to appear at court. On the fifteenth day of July, the earl of Sunderland delivered in the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... deservest to die for nothing, and for nothing wilt thou die to-day. And if thou beest really evil-disposed and devoid of all virtue, do thou render us back our weapons and ravish Draupadi after fight. But if through stupidity thou must do this deed, then in the world thou wilt only reap demerit and infamy. O Rakshasa, by doing violence to this female of the human race, thou hast drunk poison, after having shaken the vessel.' Thereupon, Yudhishthira made himself ponderous to the Rakshasa. And being oppressed with the weight, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the rivers of New England where once they swarmed. Mechanical devices for taking them by the hundreds of thousands threaten a like result in the now teeming rivers of Washington and British Columbia. Mr. Lake's invention has the demerit of giving conscienceless profiteers the opportunity to obliterate the oyster from our ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... well as the eagerness with which they have always exerted themselves, devoting all their energies to the sole service of God and your Majesty. They have ceased to exercise their duties in-these posts—the best and chiefest of the kingdom—not through any demerit, but through the suppression of the Audiencia. We trust that your Majesty will look favorably upon them and upon your other servants who have served you in this royal Audiencia; and that you will reward them ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... 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 of lowering your opinion of my taste, provided, of course, ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... been a little idle; but we volunteer gazettes, like other volunteers, are not easily tied down to regularity and rules. We think we have so much merit, that we think we have a right to some demerit too; and those who depend upon us, I mean us gazettes, are often disappointed, A common-foot newspaper may want our vivacity, but is ten times more useful. Besides, I am not in town, and ten miles out of it is an hundred miles out of it for all the purposes of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... 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
... members; and he died, as for many preceding years he had been, its president. It was one of the most cherished objects of his direct care and consideration, and the association of his name with it has probably been its very greatest collateral support. He considered it no demerit in the society that it tended to relieve the slave-holders from the troublesome presence of the free negroes; but this was far from being its whole merit in his estimation. In the same speech from which we have ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... 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 ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "Evelina," or "Cecilia," or in the "Diary" itself; the alternate pathos and satire of the book keep our attention ever on the alert. That it failed to win the suffrages of the public was certainly due to no demerit in the work. Many causes may have conspired against it. The public taste had long been debauched by novels of that nightmare school in which Mrs Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis were the leaders. Moreover, in the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... make a settlement with conscience and arrange the terms upon which that monitor will consent to the performance of the rest of the dance. For the dance proper—or improper—is now about to begin. If the first part seemed somewhat tropical, comparison with what follows will acquit it of that demerit. The combinations of the dance are infinitely varied, and so long as willing witnesses remain—which, in simple justice to manly fortitude it should be added, is a good while—so long will the "Chon Nookee" present ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet |
