personal merit Quotes

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.

Ancestry is most important to those who have done nothing themselves.

For titles do not reflect honor on men, but rather men on their titles.

No man is nobler born than another, unless he is born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition. They who make such a parade with their family pictures and pedigrees, are, properly speaking, rather to be called noted or notorious than noble persons. I thought it right to say this much, in order to repel the insolence of men who depend entirely upon chance and accidental circumstances for distinction, and not at all on public services and personal merit.

Each man is good in His sight. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.

It is important that the Church of London, which has now lost its ruler, should receive for its new bishop a man whose personal merit, attainments in learning, and prudence in managing public business shall not be unworthy of the dignity of that see.

I believe in me, in my view of the world. I believe in my responsibility for my own destiny, guilt for my own sins, merit for my own good deeds, determination of my own life. I don't believe in miracles, I believe in hard work.

I believe I deserve to be respected as an athlete because I'm a pioneer in this sport.

We have our own agency; we should be judged by our own work.

I think Hillary Clinton has made great strides in doing so, even though there are people who want to bring us back to the '50s and still define a woman by her husband and her husband's legacy. But she has proven herself to be a force on her own and is an example to us of how women should and can be judged on their own merits.

I know my value. I don't have to look at lap times.

Fortune is for all, judgment is theirs who have won it for themselves.

I can't keep somebody from being a star, and I can't make somebody a star, and nobody can.

I have never lived off my family name.

Nobility of birth does not always insure a corresponding unity of mind; if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions; but it sometimes acts as a clog rather than a spur.

For example, for me, my brother helped me get a manager, which I don't take for granted. It's tough getting a manager, let alone one that actually cares about you and is smart. But from there, no one's going to cast me just because I'm James Franco's little brother.

Do not worry about not holding high position; worry rather about playing your proper role. Worry not that no one knows of you; seek to be worth knowing.

I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.

He that boasts of his ancestors confesses that he has no virtue of his own. No person ever lived for our honor; nor ought that to be reputed ours, which was long before we had a being; for what advantage can it be to a blind man to know that his parents had good eyes? Does he see one whit the better?

If thou takest virtue for the rule of life, and valuest thyself upon acting in all things comfortably thereto, thou wilt have no cause to envy lords and princes; for blood is inherited, but virtue is common property, and may be acquired by all; it has, moreover, an intrinsic worth, which blood has not.

That man is truly humble who neither claims any personal merit in the sight of God, nor proudly despises brethren, or aims at being thought superior to them, but reckons it enough that he is one of the members of Christ, and desires nothing more than that the Head alone should be exalted.

I want to be judged on my own merits.

Away with the cant of “Measures, not men!”—the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

I ask people to not attribute what I've done - my success and how hard I've worked - to not reduce that or attribute that to someone else.

I want to be respected based on how I play.