Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding. - W. Somerset Maugham
Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious. - Saint Thomas Aquinas
Government is a gang, but not merely as meritorious as a private gang because it claims legal legitimacy. It pillages and uses violence but under the cover of law, and seeks legitimacy not through competition but through the myth of the social contract. - Jeffrey Tucker
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. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Oppose vigorously any tendency to sadness ... You must persevere. By means of sorrow the enemy tries to make us weary of good works, but if he sees that we don't give them up and that being done in spite of his opposition they have become very meritorious, he will stop troubling us. - Francis de Sales
Little deeds that proceed from charity please God and have their place among meritorious acts. - Francis de Sales
Homicide is not a sin. It is sometimes a necessary violence on resistant and ossified forms of existence which have ceased to be amusing. In the interests of an important and fascinating experiment, it can even become meritorious. Here is the starting point of a new apologia for sadism. - Bruno Schulz
Moral ideas about what constitutes a meritorious or meaningful use of one’s life and opportunities produce specific attitudes towards drug use and intoxication. - Daniel Waterman