"Demerit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... 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
... like to see much done with little effort, as soon as the eye has recovered from the examination of laboured work.—How many works of great merit that we should wish to mention! and perhaps we ought to notice some of demerit; but we must forbear; the bad and the good must repose together—if there can be repose in an exhibition room. Why has not Mr Uwins painted another "Fioretta," worth all the crude, blue, red and yellow processions he ever painted? And why—but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... brother a cadet, and all were so proud and hopeful when he left them for the Point. He was the image of Uncle Barney, who was killed leading his splendid brigade in one of the earliest battles in Virginia, and, like Uncle Barney, brother was high-spirited and impatient. Mathematics and demerit set him back in '70 and dropped him out entirely in '71, when father was weeks away across the deserts of Arizona, and they were in lodgings at San Francisco, and poor mother was nearly distraught with ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... 23d M. de La Vrilliere went to 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, "and it was as a sage too that he fell." "The important ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "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 ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... difficulties, or rather the impossibilities, with which we are beset whenever we attempt to take to ourselves the functions of the Eternal Judge (except in reference to ourselves where judgment is committed to us), and to form any accurate idea of relative merit and demerit, good and evil, in actions. The shades of the rainbow are not so nice, and the sands of the sea-shore are not such a multitude, as are all the subtle, shifting, blending forms of thought and of circumstances that go to ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... only shews the brighter and goodlier for the presence of one that is not so wise, but may even derive pleasure and diversion therefrom. Wherefore as you, my ladies, are one and all most discreet and judicious, I, who know myself to be somewhat scant of sense, should, for that by my demerit I make your merit shew the more glorious, be more dear to you, than if by my greater merit I eclipsed yours, and by consequence should have more ample license to reveal myself to you as I am; and ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... affect, accede *Ante before antediluvian, anteroom *Bi two biped, bicycle *Circum around circumambient, circumference *Cum, com, with, together combine, consort, coadjutor con, co *Contra against contradict, contrast *De from, negative deplete, decry, demerit, declaim down, intensive *Di, dis asunder, away from, divert, disbelief negative *E, ex from, out of evict, excavate *Extra beyond extraordinary, extravagant *In in, into, not innate, instil, insignificant *Inter among, between intercollegiate, interchange *Intro, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... 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
... a 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 you ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... answered: "The only person in this country that owns anything is the King; in the service of his people he afflicts himself with that burden. All property, of whatsoever kind, is his, to do with as he will. He divides it among his subjects in the ratio of their demerit, as determined by the waguks—local officers—whose duty it is to know personally every one in their jurisdiction. To the most desperate and irreclaimable criminals is allotted the greatest wealth, which is taken from them, little by little, as they ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 state of dreaming, 'There are no chariots in that state, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... 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 ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... is only imperfect duties that are duties of virtue. The fulfilment of them is merit (meritum) a; but their transgression is not necessarily demerit (demeritum) - a, but only moral unworth o, unless the agent made it a principle not to conform to those duties. The strength of purpose in the former case is alone properly called virtue [Tugend] (virtus); the weakness in the latter case is not vice (vitium), ...
— The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics • Immanuel Kant
... 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 ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... principles of self-reliance and perfectibility, Buddhism has incorporated to a certain extent the doctrine of fate or "necessity," under which it demonstrates that adverse events are the general results of akusala or moral demerit in some previous stage of existence. This belief, which lies at the very foundation of their religion, the Buddhists have so adapted to the rest of the structure as to avoid the inconsistency of making this directing power inherent in any Supreme ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... "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 ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... battle to the strong, to justify men in striving after strength and swiftness, as well for the guerdon which they bring as for the jubilant consciousness which they impart. And this, at least, is sure: though merit may, by some rare mischance, be overlooked, demerit has no opportunity whatever to gain distinction. Sleight of hand cannot long pass muster for skill of hand. Unswerving integrity, unimpeachable sincerity, is the lesson constantly taught by the lives of these renowned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... creed, his political connexions, his easy circumstances, his popularity with the upper classes, as well as his testy temper and malicious disposition, all tended to rouse against him, while he lived, a personal as well as public hostility, altogether irrespective of the mere merit or demerit of his poetry. "We cannot bear a Papist to be our principal bard," said one class. "No Tory for our translator of Homer," cried the zealous Whigs, "Poets should be poor, and Pope is independent," growled Grub Street. The ancients could not endure ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... with divine justice." Much less common 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 ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... and Compilers there are almost infinite degrees of merit and demerit: echoes of echoes reverberating echoes in endless succession; compilations of all degrees of worth and worthlessness. But, as will be shown hereafter, even in this lower sphere the worth of the work is strictly proportional ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... 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 ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... that, 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 ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... 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 ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... of Eternal Justice must be fulfilled: in earthly instruments, concerned with fulfilling them, there may be all degrees of demerit and also of merit,—from that of a world-ruffian Attila the Scourge of God, conscious of his own ferocities and cupidities alone, to that of a heroic Cromwell, sacredly aware that he is, at his soul's peril, doing God's Judgments on the enemies of God, in Tredah and other ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... remain 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, "I do not know them," the King would reply haughtily. Those ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... The chief demerit of Lamia is that it is obviously influenced by the music of Wagner, and has but little of MacDowell's customary individual expression. Apart from this defect, however, it is undoubtedly effective, strongly and well ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... model, if not in grace and sweetness, yet in taste or tact of expression, in continuity and equality of style. Vigour is not the principal note of his manner, but compared with the soft effusive ebullience of his master's we may fairly call it vigorous and condensed. But all this merit or demerit is matter of mere language only. The poet—a very pretty poet in his way, and doubtless capable of gracious work enough in the idyllic or elegiac line of business—shows about as much capacity to ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... man is willingly evil;" viz., that no man deliberately chooses evil as evil. And Plato is, at the same time, careful to guard the doctrine from misconception. He readily grants that acts of wrong are distinguished as voluntary and involuntary, without which there could be neither merit nor demerit, reward nor punishment.[670] But still he insists that no man chooses evil in and by itself. He may choose it voluntarily as a means, but he does not choose it as an end. Every volition, by its essential ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... 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
... 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 ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... 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
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... 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
... days, his head was 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 ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 of our capacities, there is one vital objection to this doctrine, which Edwards ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... value, and the actual arrangement of the state as of no estimation, they are at best indifferent about it. They see no merit in the good, and no fault in the vicious management of public affairs; they rather rejoice in the latter, as more propitious to revolution. They see no merit or demerit in any man, or any action, or any political principle, any further than as they may forward or retard their design of change: they therefore take up, one day, the most violent and stretched prerogative, and another time ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... come to the dormitory at this hour." It was Mademoiselle Duroc that spoke. "Report for a demerit this evening. But what is ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... he writes, some time after settling at Ellisland, to Mrs. Dunlop, showing how fresh was still the wound within. "When I skulk into a corner lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim, 'What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some previous state of existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the keys of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?... Often ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... historian has only this to say on this subject: "Of the relative merit or demerit of the action of the United States and territorial authorities concerned in the Morrisite affair the historian does not presume to touch, further than to present the record itself and its significance."—Tullidge, "History of Salt Lake City," ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... respecting the exact nature and value of Harvey's contributions to the elucidation of the fundamental problem of the physiology of the higher animals; from those which deny him any merit at all—indeed, roundly charge him with the demerit of plagiarism—to those which enthrone him in a position of supreme honor among great discoverers in science. Nor has there been less controversy as to the method by which Harvey obtained the results which have made his name ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... 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 and punishments ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... actions, still the Just Judge alone can and must make allowance for the innate inclinings of heredity and the outward influences of circumstance, and He only can hold the balance between the guilt and innocence, the merit or demerit, of ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... that might be either a bathing-towel or a light great-coat. Each of them is in an oratorical attitude, which has all the disadvantage of being affected without even any of the advantages of being theatrical. Let no one suppose that such abortions arise merely from technical demerit. In every line of those leaden dolls is expressed the fact that they were not set up with any heat of natural enthusiasm for beauty or dignity. They were set up mechanically, because it would seem indecorous or stingy if they were not set up. They were even set up sulkily, in a utilitarian age ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... 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
... 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, ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... memory when he said to the howling blasphemers at Antioch in Pisidia, 'Seeing ye ... judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us.' 'They which were bidden were not worthy,' and their unworthiness consisted not in any other moral demerit, but solely in this, that they had refused the proffered blessings. That is the only thing which makes any of us unworthy. And that will make the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... what it deserves, that rich and poor, young and old, all regarded me with derision. Torella came not near me. No wonder that my second father should expect a son's deference from me in waiting first on him. But, galled and stung by a sense of my follies and demerit, I strove to throw the blame on others. We kept nightly orgies in Palazzo Carega. To sleepless, riotous nights, followed listless, supine mornings. At the Ave Maria we showed our dainty persons in the streets, scoffing at the sober citizens, casting insolent glances on ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 industrial order. We cannot now be of two minus as to the righteousness ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... wherein he borrowed, only to befoul, the name of that spotless woman, knowing all the while that his representation was contrary to the recorded facts of history. To say so much only of this book would be not to attribute to it a positive merit, but only to acquit it of damning demerit. But what we affirm is that Mr. Alger has fairly looked his facts in the face, and come to some understanding with himself about them. When he speaks, therefore, it is about facts, about realities, not merely about words; and what he offers is the result ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... 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 ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... has no part in what is done, we do nothing, another acts through us; 'tis not ours, but the deed of another. An instrument or tool used in the accomplishment of a purpose possesses the same negative merit or demerit, whether it be a thing without a will or an unwilling human being. If we are not free, have no choice in the matter, must consent, we differ in nothing from all brutish and inanimate nature that follows necessarily, fatally, the bent of its instinctive inclinations and ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... 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
... doctrine is not reconcilable with the belief that the Eternal Other is also the Eternal Father. The Divine Autocrat of Calvinism, who pre-ordained some of His creatures to eternal damnation—not for any demerit of theirs, but "just choosing so"—is not unthinkable; what is unthinkable is that we could love such a One—a God who had predestined all human sin and woe, who had fore-ordered things in such a manner that unnumbered hapless souls were doomed evermore to stumble and to suffer. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Brute 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, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... 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, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... changeless Brahman; It is the radiant white Light of lights, known to the knowers of the Self."[35] "When the seer sees the golden-coloured Creator, the Lord, the Spirit, whose womb is Brahman, then, having thrown away merit and demerit, stainless, the wise one reaches the ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... is born; that these are not to 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 resist. He is responsible, not for the hideous thing itself, but for the ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... 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, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... 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 ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... But, however necessary it may be, we must 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 ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... condition, which was in almost every case deplorable. By-and-by, in the library we came upon a modern portrait of a rosy-faced boy in a blue suit, who held (strange combination!) a large ribstone pippin in one hand and a cricket bat in the other—a picture altogether of such glaring demerit that I wondered for a moment why it hung so conspicuously over the fireplace, while worthier paintings were elbowed into obscure corners. Then with a sudden inkling I glanced at ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 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; ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... class at engineering drill. In this latter capacity he also had committed the offense of not reporting some of the class for indulging in unauthorized sport. The offense was not so grave as mine, and, besides, his military record was very much better. So he was let off with a large demerit mark and a sort of honorable retirement to the office of quartermaster of the battalion. I still think, as I did then, that McPherson's punishment was the more appropriate. Livingston was one of those charming, amiable fellows ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... 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
... present self by consciousness, it 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 CREATED miserable? And therefore, conformable to this, the apostle tells us, that, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... 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
... you are addicted, let us say, in the quieter hours of winter, to writing of any kind—and for your joy, I pray that this be so, whether this writing be in massive volumes, or obscure and unpublished beyond its demerit—if such has been your addiction, you have found, doubtless, that your case lies much like the fat woman's; that it is the show you give before the door that must determine what numbers go within—that, to be plain with you, much thought must be given to the taking of your title. It must ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... no right whatever exists to punish bad ones, or even to he angry with those who commit them: that nothing ought to be imputed to them; that the laws would he unjust if they should decree punishment for necessary actions; in short, that under this system man could neither have merit nor demerit. In reply, it may he argued, that, to impute an action to any one, is to attribute that action to him; to acknowledge him for the author: thus, when even an action was supposed to be the effect of an agent, and that agent necessity, the imputation would lie: the merit or demerit, that is ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Tiberius 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 have been with ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... feel so heavy a Weight of your Displeasure, without being conscious of the least Demerit towards so good and generous a Patron, as I have ever found you: For my own Part, ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... is true that 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 wall between ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... For, after all, my dear, Mr. Lovelace is not wise in all his ways. And should we not endeavour, as much as is possible, (where we are not attached by natural ties,) to like and dislike as reason bids us, and according to the merit or demerit of the object? If love, as it is called, is allowed to be an excuse for our most unreasonable follies, and to lay level all the fences that a careful education has surrounded us by, what is meant ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... night is too glorious to waste in talking politics, so you young people get out of my hearing and thresh out your candidate's merit and demerit and leave me to think," I said, for politics were in the air and they were touching upon them. They obeyed me, and soon were lost to view in the dark of the osage and quince hedges grown as breakwinds on the west of Grosvenor's ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... It would seem that Christ could not merit in the first instant of His conception. For the free-will bears the same relation to merit as to demerit. But the devil could not sin in the first instant of his creation, as was shown in the First Part, Q. 63, A. 5. Therefore neither could Christ's soul merit in the first instant of its creation—that is, in the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... that he must 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 honor ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... of two equally authoritative rules, let us proceed to consider what dangerous latitude of interpretation is allowed to the followers of either of them. Those who believe that the merit or demerit of each separate action depends on that action's separate consequences, need seldom be at a loss for a pretext for committing the most heinous of crimes. A husband who, hating his wife, had his hate returned, and loving another woman, had his love returned, might plausibly reason thus ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... attention is his due. In this respect we must study the institution from the beginning. The 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 kingdom, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... both educational and charitable, or at least ought to be, using these words in their ordinary application. It is not a question of merit or demerit on the part of the unfortunates or their families. It is not a question whether they are entitled to an education as much as normal children. So far as there is any real issue, it is one of classification for purposes of administration. The question seems to be ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... managed that the effect of distance, light, and shade are lost. Thus a man will so insist upon the use of difficult words by George Elliot that a person unacquainted with her writings would think that the whole merit or demerit of that author lay in her vocabulary. A man will so exalt the pathos of Dickens or Thackeray that he will throw their wit and humour into the background. Some person's only remark on seeing Turner's Modern Italy will be that the colours are cracked, or, upon reading Sterne, that he always wrote ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... with 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 better. No war department, no army ever has ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... 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 ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... 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 ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... searching for and apprehending all such 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 ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... 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 into ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of merit and demerit, of praise and blame, and more especially (but this will shock Mr. Wells) of salvation and damnation—and nothing can be easier than to pay to the works of the Veiled Being the meed of an illimitable wonder. When we think of the ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... 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: ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... won 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
... published before the discovery. [3] The well 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 'impossibilification' of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... 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 of official laws and governmental regulations ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... 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 and promote them as we desire. May God preserve ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... 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 ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... matter, eh? Think just because you're a vice president it's all right to mosey in here whenever you feel like it." He glowered. "Well, this is three times this month you've been late, Towne. That's a demerit for each time, and ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse
... unless one is very careful this consideration for the "poor" one, is paid for by the "good." In writing for a very worthy servant therefore, it is of the utmost importance in fairness to her (or him) to put in every merit that you can think of, remembering that omission implies demerit in each trait of character not mentioned. All good references should include honesty, sobriety, capability, and a reason, other than their unsatisfactoriness, for their leaving. The recommendation for a nurse can not be ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... 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 ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... movement of world-historical importance, in which they participated. It was their fortune to find forces in the world which they partially understood; it was their merit to know how to manipulate those forces; it was their misfortune and their demerit that they proved themselves incapable of diverting those forces to any wholesome end. In Italy a succession of worldly Popes, Paul III., Julius III., Pius IV., and Gregory XIII., heaped favors and showered ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... went on until the famous occasion when Mr. Naseby, becoming engrossed in securing the election of a sound party candidate to Parliament, wrote a flaming letter to the papers. The letter had about every demerit of party letters in general: it was expressed with the energy of a believer; it was personal; it was a little more than half unfair, and about a quarter untrue. The old man did not mean to say what was untrue, you may be sure; but he had rashly picked up gossip, as his prejudice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Maryland," was another travesty, of about the same literary merit, or rather demerit, as "The Bonnie Blue Flag." Its air was that of the well-known and popular negro minstrel song, "Billy Patterson." For all that, it sounded very martial and stirring when played ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... as ever—those who express wonderment at the survival of all the delightful features of the European raree-show—have not realised the power of the Spirit of Antiquity, and the power of the sentiment about him—that sentiment which gives birth to the great human dream about hereditary merit and demerit upon which society—royalist or republican—is built. What is the use of telling us that even in Grecian annals there is no kind of heroism recorded which you cannot match in the histories of the United ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... 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 first parents, which is transmitted to ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... 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, but only ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... obes—according to which the more aristocratic offices appear to have been elected. There were also recognised in the Spartan constitution two distinct classes—the Equals and the Inferiors. Though these were hereditary divisions, merit might promote a member of the last—demerit degrade a member of the first. The Inferiors, though not boasting the nobility of the Equals, often possessed men equally honoured and powerful: as among the commoners of England are sometimes found persons of higher birth and more important station ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and prepare for death and eternity. At last he came out; but by no means could they prevail with him to pray. Upon which they all drew their swords, and then his courage failed him. The commander struck him, which was redoubled by the rest, until he was killed. And so he received the just demerit of his sorceries, villanies, murders, perfidy, perjury and apostacy. Then Phinehas rose and executed justice.—Vid. ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... 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 ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... of the universe could suffer of physical pain and anguish; God did not make Him to be sin and treat Him as the blackest and most repulsive thing in existence; He did not lay upon Him the weight and demerit of a world's guilt that He might suffer in His innocence, His purity and innate sinlessness on behalf of the vilest outcast this side of Gehenna, the lake of fire, just that He might keep us from lying, cheating, swearing, getting drunk, giving ourselves ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... 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 that ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and form 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 he insisting ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... and theology in Maimonides's day. Job has the Aristotelian view that God cares nothing for man. Eliphaz represents the correct Jewish view that everything is reward or punishment for merit and demerit. Bildad maintains the Mu'tazilite opinion that many misfortunes are for the purpose of increasing reward in the world to come. Zophar stands for the view of the Ashariya that all is to be explained by reference ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... 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 of flannel-work ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 afflictions ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... think that none but professional artists are capable of judging of the actual merit or demerit of a painting?—Non-professional persons may offer a very strong opinion upon the subject, which may happen to be ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sufferings and death in the Atonement was asserted. It may be admitted at once that when the term substitute is interpreted without reference to this basis of fact it lends itself very easily to misconstruction. It falls in with, if it does not suggest, the idea of a transference of merit and demerit, the sin of the world being carried over to Christ's account, and the merit of Christ to the world's account, as if the reconciliation of God and man, or the forgiveness of sins and the regeneration of ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... Committee conceive, in a great measure arisen from dark cabals, and secret suggestions to persons in power, without a regular public inquiry into the good or evil tendency of any measure, or into the merit or demerit of any person ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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
... order of demerit and impossibility comes the chimney-pot hat, which is not lacking in character, but is ugly and ridiculous. Its one redeeming feature is the difficulty it presents to the draughtsman. It is mathematical, geometrical, with every ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... greater than that of purchasing 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 ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... 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 King, their ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... 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, and by repeated transmigrations, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... 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 ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... equally impossible to 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. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... 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 furniture is sent ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... 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
... own person that they were not hurt, who had never committed the sin of killing a mosquito or a fly; he, with his own hands, had taken the life of the guardian cobra of the shrine! "Urray-ray! Bap-ray!" he cried, "for what demerit of mine has this ill-luck befallen me in my old age? What ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton) |
