merited QUOTES

1 " I’d loved women who were old and who were young; those extra kilos and large rumps, and others so thin there was barely even skin to pinch, and every time I held them, I worried I would snap them in two. But for all of these: where they had merited my love was in their delicious smell. Scent is such a powerful tool of attraction, that if a woman has this tool perfectly tuned, she needs no other. I will forgive her a large nose, a cleft lip, even crossed-eyes; and I’ll bathe in the jouissance of her intoxicating odour. "

― Roman Payne

2 " Thomas Merton wrote, “there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.

I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you. "

― Annie Dillard , Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

3 " I added, that whoever the woman was that had an estate, and would give it up to be the slave of a great man, that woman was a fool, and must be fit for nothing but a beggar; that it was my opinion a woman was as fit to govern and enjoy her own estate without a man as a man was without a woman; and that, if she had a mind to gratify herself as to sexes, she might entertain a man as a man does a mistress; that while she was thus single she was her own, and if she gave away that power she merited to be as miserable as it was possible that any creature could be. "

4 " The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame. "

― George Eliot , Middlemarch

5 " One of the recent arguments from design, that based on the so-called fine-tuning life of some fundamental physical constants, founders on the following objections: an extremely small prior probability merited by the God of theism in light – if that is the right word – of the Problem of Evil; the fact that it is not unreasonable to place a substantial probability on the hypothesis that a future theory will fix those values; and the sheer incoherence of computations of the ‘chances’ of fine-tuning were there no fine-tuner. "

― , Objecting to God

6 " The service [Jesus] gave to humanity was given even when we least merited that sacrifice. There is a joy in service that transcends emotional temporariness. "

― Ravi Zacharias , I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love

7 " ...no matter how avid they themselves may be for praise and appreciation, people are often niggardly in giving it to others, however merited it is. "

― Eleanor Roosevelt , You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

8 " Some people's money is merited and other people's is inherited. "

9 " I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. "

10 " In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters. "

11 " I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship. "

12 " In masks outrageous and austere, The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile. "