Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

Fondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.

Immediately after 11 September, the U.S. closed down the Somali charitable network Al-Barakaat on grounds that it was financing terror. This achievement was hailed one of the great successes of the ‚war on terror.‘ In contrast, Washington’s withdrawal of its charges as without merit a year later aroused little notice.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.

It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.

If there should prove to be one real, living Free State Democrat in Kansas, I suggest that it might be well to catch him and stuff and preserve his skin as an interesting specimen of that soon-to-be-extinct variety of the genus Democrat.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I’m sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.

A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children and, if necessary, bone by bone.

John Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

Plagiarism is always the biggest thing in Hollywood.

Behold, at this hour our moral history is being preserved for eternity. Processes are at work which will perpetuate our every act and word and thought.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

Economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved.

If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness.

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

I started really noticing, more and more, how men will plagiarize and take credit for women’s work… I’ve noticed that it just happens a lot.

I understand a ship to be made for the carrying and preservation of the cargo, and so long as the ship can be saved, with the cargo, it should never be abandoned. This Union likewise should never be abandoned unless it fails and the possibility of its preservation shall cease to exist, without throwing passengers and cargo overboard.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Nature abhors annihilation.

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

When digital technology started becoming the norm, you’ve got 50, 60, 70 years of recordings on tapes that are just deteriorating. Like, a two-inch reel of recording tape won’t last forever. It dissolves. It will disappear.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.

Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.