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Meritorious   Listen
adjective
Meritorious  adj.  Possessing merit; deserving of reward or honor; worthy of recompense; valuable. "And meritorious shall that hand be called, Canonized, and worshiped as a saint."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Meritorious" Quotes from Famous Books



... work done in stone; and yet the building has an air of princely splendor which partly atones for its details. Besides this palace, Dresden possesses in the domical Marienkirche (Fig. 194) avery meritorious example of late design. The proportions are good, and the detail, if not interesting, is at least inoffensive, while the whole is adignified and rational piece of work. At Vienna are a number of palaces of the third period, more interesting for their beautiful grounds ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... may turn from his sins in a meritorious penitence, he must meet God by contrition, free conversion, and a sincere intention to serve God for ever, and to sin no more. Then, at this meeting, he receives from the mercy of God the assured hope of eternal ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... gave us the first practicable form of expansion gear in 1841; GEORGE H. CORLISS gave a new type of engine of marvelous perfection and economy in 1849; Noble T. Green, Wm. Wright and many less well known but no less meritorious inventors have since done their part in the transformation of the old engine of Watt into the modern wonder of concentrated and economical power, and marvel of accurate and beautiful design and workmanship. The "trip cut-off," ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... of temper, patient endurance, and forgetfulness of herself in her labors for others, gradually overcame the scruples and hard feelings of her neighbors. They began to question whether, after all, it was meritorious in them to treat one like her as a sinner beyond forgiveness. Elder Staples and Deacon Warner were her fast friends. The Deacon's daughters—the tall, blue-eyed, brown-locked girls you noticed in meeting the other day—set the example among the young people ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... article before our readers, our own personal feelings, as well as a just sense of gratitude to a meritorious officer, prompts us to add that we have known Winfield Scott long and have known him intimately, and that the conduct here attributed to him is precisely such as we should have expected, from his ardent patriotism, his humane disposition, and his ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... owned, and this gave a pretty color of romance to their acquaintance. But, for the most part, March was satisfied to read. He was proud of reading critically, and he kept in the current of literary interests and controversies. It all seemed to him, and to his wife at second-hand, very meritorious; he could not help contrasting his life and its inner elegance with that of other men who had no such resources. He thought that he was not arrogant about it, because he did full justice to the good qualities of those other people; he congratulated himself upon the democratic ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... general director; Mr. W.H. Bishop, precentor; J. Hopkins Johns (who has a very pleasing voice); Mr. J. Taylor (a fine basso, who has been a member of a meritorious concert-troupe); Mr. C.A. Johnson, organist; and Mr. George Barrett, tenor. Mr. Johnson has on several occasions been the director of excellent public concerts in Baltimore and its vicinity, and is deserving of much praise for his activity ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... fire began, there, or as near as may be to that place, must the pillar be erected (if ever there be any such). If we commemorate the places where our miseries began, surely the causes whence they sprang (the meritorious causes, or sins, are those I now intend) should be thought of much more. If such a Lane burnt London, sin first burnt that Lane; causa, causa est causa causatio; affliction springs not out of the dust; not but that it may spring thence immediately (as if the dust of the earth should be turned into ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... shuddered at the establishment of a dictatorial democracy which placed unlimited power in the hands of men of no experience, with only the lantern of advanced Liberalism to guide them. He, who had tried to make the Italian cause look respectable, as well as meritorious, asked himself what these improvised statesmen would do next? The Garibaldian dictatorship has not lacked defenders, and two of its administrators lived to be prime ministers of Italy, but it was inevitable that Cavour should judge it ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... Do you reproach me? You, you upbraid me? Have I been false to her, through strict fidelity to you, and sacrificed my friendship to keep my love inviolate? And have you the baseness to charge me with the guilt, unmindful of the merit? To you it should be meritorious that I have been vicious. And do you reflect that guilt upon me which should ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... are we indebted to our cooks! those perspiring professors of gastronomy and their valuable assistants—the industrious scullery-maids. Let not the Melbourne opposition to this meritorious class, be supported by the nation at large; for England would soon cease to occupy her present proud pre-eminence, did her rulers, her patriots, and her heroes, sit down to cold mutton, or the villanously dressed "joints ready from 12 to 5." Justice is said ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various

... been a very bad fellow. Certainly the author has carefully kept him from participation in the grosser acts of lawlessness of which his revengeful old partner Ben Marston, the more typical bushranger, is guilty. Cattle-stealing and highway robbery as supervised by Starlight are allowable, and even meritorious, in so far as they afford him opportunities to practise some facetious deception on the police. Such raids are not ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... and Peter Leroux came back with his head upon his shoulders, to testify to the weakness of M. Desalleux's eloquence. Let us not be too severe upon the deputy of the public prosecutor: if he was not absolutely convinced, it was his duty to appear so, and only the more meritorious to utter such eloquent denunciations as for a century past had not been heard at the bar of the criminal court of Orleans. Oh, if you had been there to see how they were moved, those poor gentlemen of the jury!—moved ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... proposed is of extremely doubtful expediency in any save very exceptional cases, and I am thoroughly convinced by the facts now before me that the discipline and efficiency of our Army, as well as justice to its meritorious members, do not permit my approval on any ground of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... Francis is only the more brilliant and meritorious; with him gospel simplicity reappeared upon the earth.[16] Like the lark with which he so much loved to compare himself,[17] he was at his ease only in the open sky. He remained thus until his death. The epistle to all Christians ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... legislature is necessary. Our claims rest on the expressed words of the constitution—the opposite on implication; and if the latter be just, I cannot forbear to say that the framers of the constitution would but ill deserve what I have heretofore thought a just tribute to their meritorious services. If they really designed to produce the effect contended for, instead of so declaring by a positive provision, they have used a language which, to my mind, operates conclusively against it. Under what clause of the constitution is the right to exercise this power set up? The reply is, the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... utility of a Religion, which nobody can comprehend, which continually torments those who are weak enough to meddle with it, which is incapable of rendering men better, and which often makes them consider it meritorious to be unjust and wicked? Is there a folly more deplorable, and more justly to be combated, than that, which far from doing any service to the human race, only makes them blind, delirious, and miserable, by depriving them of Truth, the sole ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... joined to a good Action, gives it its proper Force and Efficacy; joined to an Evil Action, extenuates its Malignity, and in some Cases may take it wholly away; and joined to an indifferent Action turns it to a Virtue, and makes it meritorious as far as human Actions can ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... was unexpected; and in John and Samuel Brown they found able leaders. Both were members of the Colonial Council, and they had been favourites of the Corporation in England; and one of them, an experienced and meritorious lawyer, had been a member of the Board of Assistants in London. They declared their dissent from the Church of Higginson; and at every risk of union and tranquillity, they insisted upon the use of the English Liturgy." "Finding it to be a vain ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... stated by Caesar to the following effect:—"That he could not waive the business, and that neither his nor the Roman people's practice would suffer him to abandon most meritorious allies; nor did he deem that Gaul belonged to Ariovistus rather than to the Roman people; that the Arverni[116] and the Ruteni[117] had been subdued in war by Quintus Fabius Maximus, and that the Roman people had pardoned them and had ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... here, this as the first in a long series of attempts which Jason Newcome has practised, in order to transfer the fee-simple of the mill-lot at Ravensnest, from the ownership of those in whom it is vested by law, to that of his own humble, but meritorious person. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... Col. J. Bankhead Magruder by his Baltimore friends as a token of their appreciation of his Meritorious Services in the Mexican War, ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor

... at a certain serai, but we have lost our way, and are fearful of being apprehended by the officers of police. Let your kindness then induce you to open the door, and afford us shelter for the remainder of the night: it will be a meritorious act in the eye of heaven." The mother overhearing what was said, ordered the door to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... who sit still, by adding unto them a great reward; by degrees of honour conferred upon them from him, and by granting them forgiveness and mercy." (Sale's Koran, c. iv. p. 73.) Again; "Do ye reckon the giving drink to the pilgrims, and the visiting of the holy temple, to be actions as meritorious as those performed by him who believeth in God and the last day, and fighteth for the religion of God? They shall not be held equal with God.—They who have believed and fled their country, and employed their substance and their persons in the defence ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... ago I had a political friend introduce a bill during a meeting of the state legislature, which made it mandatory for the road overseer to plant nut trees along the right of way all over the state; but like many meritorious bills, it was pigeon-holed until the next meeting of the legislature. It seemed an impossibility to resurrect this and an exceptionally ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... cliffs on the right bank of this stream near the projected village of Broke (named by me in honour of that meritorious officer, Sir Charles Broke Vere, Bart.) but the left bank is overlooked by other rocky extremities falling from the ranges on the west, until it reaches the main stream. The most conspicuous of these headlands, as they ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... wise sayings of the philosophers, according unto the books made in French which I had often before read; but certainly I had seen none in English until that time. And so afterward I came unto my said Lord, and told him how I had read and seen his book, and that he had done a meritorious deed in the labour of the translation thereof into our English tongue, wherein he had deserved a singular laud and thanks, &c. Then my said Lord desired me to oversee it, and where I should find fault to correct ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... so I brort away this mug to show vor et," he answered, producing the goblet. With such undeniable evidence his story could not be any longer doubted. Stealing from a natural enemy like the King of France was probably rather meritorious than otherwise; and the goblet remained in the boy's family for generations, though unfortunately it is no longer forthcoming for the satisfaction of those ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... begins with the first voyage of Columbus and brings us down to the principal events of 1893; she is sparing of details, and has merely skeletonized her theme, adding sufficient of incident, to avoid dryness. It seems a meritorious and well-prepared work, and a chronological table adds to its ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 19, March 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... cultivated the minor as well as the greater virtues. Wherever his presence could give aid and countenance to what was useful and honorable to man, there he was. In the exercises of the school and of the college—in the meritorious meetings of the agricultural, mechanical, and commercial societies—in attendance upon Divine worship—he gave the punctual attendance rarely seen but in those who are free from the ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... of history in the modern world was owing to its immense complexity. Materials also were wanting. They gradually emerged out of manuscript all over Europe, during what may be called the great pedant age (1550-1650), under the direction of meritorious antiquaries, Camden, Savile, Duchesne, Gale, and others. Still official documents and state papers were wanting, and had they been at hand would hardly have been used with competence. The national and religious ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... that they never had been Christians." [301:2] Multitudes now withdrew into deserts or mountains, and there perished with cold and hunger. The prisons were everywhere crowded with Christians; and the magistrates were occupied with the odious task of oppressing and destroying the most meritorious of their fellow-citizens. The disciples were sent to labour in the mines, branded on the forehead, subjected to mutilation, and reduced to the lowest depth of misery. In this persecution the pastors were treated with marked severity, and during its continuance many ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... the drawing-room in such a composed, happy, cheerful frame of mind. The general more remarkably so. He felt more self-satisfaction than the others; because the course of proceeding was so new to him that he imagined it to be very particularly meritorious. A bit of a pharisee you will think—but not the least of that, I assure you. Only people, at their first trying of such paths, do often find them most peculiarly paths of pleasantness and ways of peace; and, this sort ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... sitting-room; neither is his expense heavy, as regards wax- lights, fire, or "bif-steck." But still, even a skeleton is chargeable; and, if any dispute should arise about his maintenance, the parish will do nothing. Mr. White's skeleton, therefore, being costly, was presumably meritorious, before we had seen him or heard a word in his behalf. It was, in fact, the skeleton of an eminent robber, or perhaps of a murderer. But I, for my part, reserved a faint right of suspense. And as to the profession of robber in those days exercised ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... which smoulder beneath the surface of "comfortable circumstances." The plot is, in short, one that in the hands of any other than a thorough man of the world, would fail hopelessly, which makes Mr. Turner's complete and undoubted success all the more meritorious. ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... her to the coach-office with a packet of five hundred francs addressed to his mother. He could not trust himself; he wanted to sent the money at once; later he might not be able to do it. Both Lucien and Coralie looked upon this restitution as a meritorious action. Coralie put her arms about her lover and kissed him, and thought him a model son and brother; she could not make enough of him, for generosity is a trait of character which delights these kindly creatures, who always carry their ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... fatal devastation, every sacred edifice throughout England, whether of confined or extended dimensions, teemed with a full and resplendent show of painted glass, all equally excellent, all equally meritorious” (Remarks on York Minster, Winkle’s “Cathedrals,” vol. i., p. 54, n. 30). In confirmation of this I take two instances: Four miles away we have the fine Church of Coningsby, and we have in these pages (pp. 222–226) a detailed description of the splendid series of coloured windows which formerly adorned ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... to asperse, or calumniate, or slander, Democritus Junior, who possibly does not think ill of you, lest you may hear from some discreet friend, the same remark the people of Abdera did from Hippocrates, of their meritorious and popular fellow-citizen, whom they had looked on as a madman; "It is not that you, Democritus, that art wise, but that the people of Abdera are fools and madmen." "You have yourself an Abderitian soul;" ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... did was the more meritorious, it seems to me, in that I was not at the time my father's son, nor under any obligation to undertake the case; I was independent of him, a mere stranger; the natural bond had been snapped. Yet I was not indifferent; I came as a volunteer, uninvited, at my own instance. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... the name of Panther, and when the boy was fourteen years of age he could lift thirty hundred weight with ease. Yet he was rough by nature and fond of fighting. The general of Annam, astonished at his bravery, appointed him a colonel, and in putting down a revolt his services were so meritorious that he was already a general of the second ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... pardoned: even for them, Hard though it be, thy toils and pains have gained A place in heaven." Thus mighty Indra spoke. Replied the king: "Indra! I will not leave My kinsmen. By his kinsmen's help a king His kingdom rules; by them he offers up The kingly sacrifice, and for himself Lays up a store of meritorious deeds. So have my kinsmen too enabled me To work whate'er I may of righteousness. My actions virtuous, my granted prayers, Truly I owe to them, for by their aid Have these been possible. May the reward Thou ...
— Mrkandeya Purna, Books VII., VIII. • Rev. B. Hale Wortham

... election.' So I told him again about their having, on account of their admiration for him as a reformer, turned from the Republican party and voted the Democratic ticket. Then the governor said: 'Well, I think you have a most meritorious case, and so I will ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... passions, and lost the popularity which he really had succeeded in gaining. He disgusted the Russians by appointing numerous Poles, who had swelled his train, to the highest posts in the empire, to the exclusion of meritorious officers, who not only deserved well of their country, but also had claims upon himself for services which they had rendered. These Polish officers misconducted themselves sadly, and the people murmured sore. The czar, too, made no secret of his attachment to the Catholic ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... sanctuary, even from the tops of the roofs, he beheld laurel branches and kerchiefs waving and tossing, and wreaths flung on the ground before him. If this picture was correct, the whole city was greeting him, headed by the men whom he honoured as great and meritorious, and in front of them all Daphne, with drooping head, full of feminine ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... at not having received a formal resignation. Bismarck's reply was that it would require some days to prepare such a document, as it was the last official statement of a "Minister who had played a meritorious part in the history of Prussia and Germany, and history should know why he had been dismissed." Three days later, on March 20th, an hour or two after the formal resignation reached the palace, the Emperor's ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... of; depraves Italian character Madonna della Neve, chapel Madonna di Tranquillo, wayside shrine Malaria Mandela Marbles Mathew, Rev. Maudsley, H. Maupassant Mazzella, S. Megara Mentone, recent transformation of; landscape; vegetation; produces dull schoolboys; prehistoric man of Merle blanc, a meritorious establishment Metaphysicians, atrophied poets Meyer, C. F. Meysenbug, Malwida von Michael Angelo; gets into trouble Migration of labourers, annual Mill, J. S. Militarism, the modern infame Milvain Bridge Mineralogy Momio, village Monogamous habits, bad for songsters Mons ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... They were strangers to me so I have reluctantly omitted their names. They were excellent musicians. During the eight months' service there occurred a number of pretentious musical undertakings which were meritorious ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... Scarabaeus, which contents itself with idle wandering, or even with the meritorious Sisyphus, does it not seem that the Minotaur moves ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... flowed on, fortune did not desert him, for he was saved first through the precaution of a young and resolute friend, and then through the attention of the French conquerors, who honored in him both the meritorious author, famed throughout the world, and a member of their ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... says De Maistre, is the basis and essence of virtue, so those virtues are the most meritorious that have cost the ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.

... of the society very generally noticed a few weeks since in the daily papers of the Twin Cities and elsewhere an announcement that "certificates of award for special meritorious services in the advancement of agriculture" would be made by the Minnesota State University to Mr. O. C. Gregg, Hon. W. G. LeDuc, Mr. Chas. G. Patten and Mr. A. ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... framed the Covenant of the League tried to do, under more difficult, but not dissimilar, conditions, what the framers of the American Constitution did in 1787. In both cases the aim was high, the great purpose meritorious. Those Americans who, for the reasons stated, are not in sympathy with the structural form and political objectives of the League, are not lacking in sympathy for its admirable administrative work in co-ordinating the activities of civilized ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... with the calm dignity and respectable reserve of the official religion, and excited the minds of the people to a dangerous degree. The emasculated Galli were the objects of contempt and disgust and what in their own eyes was a meritorious act was made a crime punishable by law, at least under the empire.[8] The authorities hesitated between the respect due to the powerful goddess that had delivered Rome from the Carthaginians and the reverence for the mos maiorum. They solved the difficulty by completely isolating ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... Esmond's name was still known and respected in England. With her ladyship's permission, General Braddock would have the honour of waiting upon her at Castlewood, and paying his respects to the daughter of so meritorious an officer. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the text to memory. If memory should fail them in a crisis, they would be extremely liable to have their ears pulled by the priest, or to be made to kneel upon the floor with outstretched arms, thus making the recitation somewhat of a tragedy; but there are also prizes for the meritorious. One book includes the whole curriculum—religion, table manners, grammar, "numbers," and geography—arranged in catechisms of convenient length. The boys are separated from the girls in school and church, and I have ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... in the "Philosophical Transactions." Cook was not long in receiving a due reward for so much, and such successful labour, and for his patient studies, the more meritorious, as he had had few opportunities, and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... trophies the young men were not likely to find favour in the eyes of women. The Indian's notions of morality were those that belong to that state of society in which the tribe is the largest well-established political aggregate. Murder without the tribe was meritorious unless it entailed risk of war at an obvious disadvantage; murder within the tribe was either revenged by blood-feud or compounded by a present given to the victim's kinsmen. Such rudimentary wergild was often ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... volunteer force shall be allowed from the date of their enrolment active service pay in accordance with the regulations of the Japanese army. After the occupation of a place, the two parties will settle the mode of rewarding the meritorious and compensating the family of the killed, adopting the most generous practice in vogue in China and Japan. In the case of the killed, compensation for each soldier shall, at the least, be more ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... in faith; how he dare never grow idle, because his very idling must be the exercise and work of faith. In brief, nothing can be in or about us and nothing can happen to us but that it must be good and meritorious, if we believe (as we ought) that all things please God. So says St. Paul: "Dear brethren, all that ye do, whether ye eat or drink, do all in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord." Now it cannot be done in this Name except it be done in this faith. Likewise, ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... are proud to see this spontaneous, earnest, upward movement of our red brethren. It is not to be stigmatized as turbulent, but applauded as meritorious. It is sedition, it is true; but only the sedition of freedom against oppression; of justice against fraud; of humanity against cruelty. It is the intellect opposed to darkness; the soul opposed to degradation. It is an earnest of better things to come, provided the struggling spirit ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes

... called Miss Crawley; and there, I am sorry to say, his younger brother Rawdon used to lick him violently. But though his parts were not brilliant, he made up for his lack of talent by meritorious industry, and was never known, during eight years at school, to be subject to that punishment which it is generally thought none ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... "is an evasion, manifestly, of the question concerning my opera, on which you have thought proper to cast a slur. The phrase, 'transparent to any but asses,' may not be absolutely objectionable, for transparency is, as the critics rightly insist, meritorious in a composition. And, according to the other view, if we desire our clever opponents to see nothing in something, it is notably skilful to let them see through it. You perceive, my Carlo. Transparency, then, deserves favourable comment. So, I do not complain of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in assigning Battalion Chief Thomas J. Ahearn to command the Fourteenth Battalion, in the newly annexed district, the Board deems it proper to express the sense of obligation felt by the Board and all good citizens for the brilliant and meritorious services of Chief Ahearn in the discharge of duty which will always serve as an example and an inspiration to our uniformed force, and to express the hope that his future years of service at a less arduous post ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... with the master of my wife, Mr. Smith, already spoken of, for the latter to take my money[A] and buy of her my freedom, as I could not legally purchase it, and as the laws forbid emancipation except for "meritorious services." This done, Mr. Smith endeavored to emancipate me formally, and to get my manumission recorded; I tried also; but the court judged that I had done nothing "meritorious," and so I remained, nominally only, the slave of ...
— The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. • Lunsford Lane

... are all I crave. To be candid, I expected nothing less from you. Now for the arduous question; hear me! The disposition in which I find you to day is charming, but not meritorious. You have not been moulded to it by virtue, but frightened into it by vice. You are irritable, you are weak, you are ambitious. A time may come, when neither your father, nor the woman you love will be able to influence you, as they ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland

... speaking terms now with his brother the clergyman, as well as with all the rest of the family. The complete isolation of Reverend Finch followed. Regularly every year did the second Mrs. Finch afford opportunities of shaking hands, not only over one cradle, but sometimes over two. Vain and meritorious fertility! Nothing came of it, but a kind of compromise. Lucilla, quite overlooked among the rector's rapidly-increasing second family, was allowed to visit her maternal uncle and aunt at stated periods in every ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... have just been dreading in the sudden awakening from sleep: from ghosts or spirits of the dead; thieves, that is to say, worthy fellows very much alive, and having, undoubtedly, inasmuch as they are Japanese thieves, faces of the most meritorious oddity. I am not in the least frightened, now that I know precisely what to expect, and we will immediately set to work to ascertain the truth, for something is certainly moving on Madame Prune's roof; some one ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... the money he bought another team of horses, which grandfather selected for him. Marek was strong, and Ambrosch worked him hard; but he could never teach him to cultivate corn, I remember. The one idea that had ever got through poor Marek's thick head was that all exertion was meritorious. He always bore down on the handles of the cultivator and drove the blades so deep into the earth that the ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... might have been presented. He would have felt that such a feature was as utterly out of place in the Constitution of the United States as would be a statute regulating the height of houses or the length of women's skirts. It might be as meritorious as you please in itself, but it didn't belong in the Constitution. If the Constitution is to command the kind of respect which shall make it the steadfast bulwark of our institutions, the guaranty ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin

... you to what I should myself consider a well-deserved chastisement" (for he was getting angry, and so was I); "but the Queen was so inquisitive, and wanted so much to see you, that she petitioned the King and made him give you his pardon, and assign you a pension in consideration of your meritorious complexion. It is lucky for you that he has not heard what you have been saying now, or he would ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... him. On the other hand, it was apparent that if the claim of the individual were pressed by a railroad commission, even though such a body had but limited powers, it would, under ordinary circumstances, be honored, provided it was meritorious; and if the commission was compelled to enforce a demand through the courts, it would have the support of the State to poise the wealth and power ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... I said, "a year ago, when Sir Arthur became a member of the South African Chartered Incorporated Co-operative Stores Society Limited Ten per cents at Par (Men only). He wasn't exactly a real member, having been elected under Rule Two for meritorious performances, Rule One being that this club shall be called what I said just now; but for nearly a year he enjoyed all the privileges of membership, including those of paying a large entrance fee and a still larger subscription. At the ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... who vaunt their mission of peace and love? Can it be more meritorious to sprinkle a child's head with water than to wake, in the darkened conscience of a criminal, that spark lighted by God in every soul to guide it in the search for truth? Can it be more humane to accompany ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... have also been eleven years old, but Sara's birthdays are rather different from other little girls' birthdays. When she is older she will be heiress to a large fortune, which it will be her duty to spend in a meritorious manner." ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... sort of brevet," replied Barbara. "For gallant and meritorious services. It will be, 'Our friend Mrs. Hobart; a near neighbor of ours; she was with us all that terrible night of the fire, you know.' It will be a great honor; but it ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... penury. I dearly like to think my own thoughts; I had great pleasure in reading a few books, but not many: preferring always those on whose style or sentiment the writer's individual nature was plainly stamped; flagging inevitably over characterless books, however clever and meritorious: perceiving well that, as far as my own mind was concerned, God had limited its powers and, its action—thankful, I trust, for the gift bestowed, but unambitious of higher endowments, not restlessly ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... Caislean, a remarkable distinction, when we remember that the Irish were, up to this time, wholly unskilled in besieging such strongholds as the Norman engineers knew so well how to construct. His only rival in Meath in such meritorious works of destruction was Conor, son of Donnell, and O'Melaghlin of East-Meath, or Bregia, whose death is recorded at the year 1277, "as one of the three men in Ireland" whom the midland ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... are frightfully dangerous,' he said, 'for the Brahmins or priests connected with the temples have been known to follow them up for years, and in nine cases out of ten they get possession of them again. Murder in such a case is meritorious, and I would not have them in the house here, were they ten times the value they are. I know that my clothes, my drawers, and everything belonging to me have been gone through at night a score of times. Nothing has been stolen, but, being a methodical ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... that is meritorious but virtue and friendship, and indeed, friendship itself is but a ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward

... to be discussed the matter of our author's work. The manner and the style are but the natural wrappings in which the goods have been prepared for the market. Of these goods it is no doubt true that unless the wrappings be in some degree meritorious the article will not be accepted at all; but it is the kernel which we seek, which, if it be not of itself sweet and digestible, cannot be made serviceable by any shell however pretty or easy to be cracked. I have said previously that it is the business of a novel to instruct in morals and to amuse. ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... as to the choice of his words. For, as to a purity of style, though this is certainly (as before observed) a very commendable quality, it is not so much so for its intrinsic consequence, as because it is too generally neglected. In short, it is not so meritorious to speak our native tongue correctly, as it is scandalous to speak it otherwise; nor is it so much the property of a good Orator, as of a well-bred Citizen. But in the choice of his words (in which he had more regard to ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... skill there displayed in saving from capture the army of General Sullivan, he received the rank of brigadier-general, August 6, 1776. He claimed to have pointed out the Quaker road to Washington on the night before the battle of Princeton. On account of his meritorious services in that battle, he was made a major-general, February 19, 1777. On the advance of General Burgoyne, who now threatened the great avenue from the north, General St. Clair was placed in command of Ticonderoga. Discovering that he could not ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... these mountain springs are invaluable, it must be admitted that they are done ample justice to, for never surely were so many public fountains to be found in a town of the same size. A charming monograph might be devoted to the public fountains of Franche-Comte, and those of Salins are especially meritorious as works of art. How many there are, I cannot say, but at least half-a-dozen are interesting as monuments, notably the charming life-size bronze figure of a Vintager, by the gifted Salinois sculptor, Max Claudel, ornamenting one, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... belongs the credit of having written the first meritorious essay on criticism in the English language, The Apologie for Poetrie. This defends the poetic art, and shows how necessary such exercise of the imagination is to take us away from the cold, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... secure for women citizens of the United States the full rights of citizenship; to build a clubhouse for women; and to collect funds for appropriate memorials to the memory of women who have performed meritorious work for the enfranchisement of women ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... stupefying Madame du Bousquier, who found it easier and also more dignified to concentrate her intelligence on her own thoughts and resign herself to lead a life that was purely animal. She then adopted the submission of a slave, and regarded it as a meritorious deed to accept the degradation in which her husband placed her. The fulfilment of his will never once caused her to murmur. The timid sheep went henceforth in the way the shepherd led her; she gave herself up to the severest religious practices, and thought no more of Satan and ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... in the sanguinary reign of the present emperor, was Germanicus, the son of Drusus, Tiberius's own brother, and who had been adopted by his uncle himself. Under any sovereign, of a temper different from that of Tiberius, this amiable and meritorious prince would have been held in the highest esteem. At the death of his grandfather Augustus, he was employed in a war in Germany, where he greatly distinguished himself by his military achievements; and as soon as intelligence of that event arrived, the soldiers, by whom he was extremely ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... not a party to her own downfall. But if it were as they assert Eunoia would not be the expiating courtesan, the victim covered with stains of all sorts, the bread steeped in the wine of our shame, the pleasant offering, the meritorious sacrifice, the holocaust, the smoke of which rises to God. If they were not voluntary, there would be no ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... other days, chiefly connected with the sea and shipwrecks. Old Coleman had had considerable experience in rough, coast life, and was well able to speak on such subjects. The records of the Lifeboat Institution show that about one-third of the medals and rewards granted for meritorious services are awarded to men of the coastguard. Old Coleman was one of those who had taken his full share of the dangerous work of saving life. He was also gifted with that rare quality—the power ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... Christ." Precisely. If we are priests, we must perform the functions of a priest, and one of these functions is the offering of sacrifice. What, then, are the sacrifices which are to be offered by the Christian Priest? Certainly, not any expiatory or meritorious sacrifices. These are, forever, precluded by the fact that Christ hath offered one sacrifice for sins forever. Nothing can be added to, and nothing can be subtracted from, that infinite and ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark

... relish for this sonnet, and I do think it very fresh and wholesomely relishing myself. It is an awful fact that sun, moon, or candlelight once looked down on the human portent of Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Hannah More convened in solemn conclave above the outspread sonnets of Milton, with a meritorious and considerate resolve of finding out for him "why they were so bad." This is so stupendous a warning, that perhaps it may even incline one to find some of them better ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... to look upon art as a pastime, literature as an occupation useless at best, while he willingly relegated love to the performance of a function, and suspected the motives of the most meritorious actions. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... difficulty. No officer quite like Lieutenant Ferrers had ever been turned out at West Point, and surely such a man had never risen from the ranks. Now, when all the West Point graduates have been commissioned into the Army, and all meritorious enlisted men have been promoted to second lieutenancies, then, if there be any vacancies left, the President fills these vacancies in the rank of second lieutenant, by appointing young ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... a new country are a most meritorious class. They brave the dangers of savage warfare, suffer the privations of a frontier life, and with the hand of toil bring the wilderness into cultivation. The "old settlers," as they are everywhere called, are public benefactors. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson

... substitutions could be made without violating truth and leaving out some of the things contained in the original conception. The idea of a base is a real necessity for strategy, and to have conceived it is meritorious; but to make such a use of it as we have depicted is completely inadmissible, and could not but lead to partial conclusions which have forced these theorists into a direction opposed to common sense, namely, to a belief in the decisive effect of the ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... considerable significance. Its first bishop was the beloved Dr. Benson, his memory perpetuated in the Benson Transept, with its graceful rose-window. One thing is impressed upon us by this new minster—that present-day architecture, when meritorious, is an imitation. The closer it keeps to old models, the better is the result. Did church-building really say its ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... connoisseurs, the really great players, settle themselves down comfortably to watch Scaife field. That, to them, is the great attraction, apart from the contest between the rival schools. Some of these Olympians have been heard to say that Scaife's innings against weak bowling was no very meritorious performance, although the two "swipes," they admit, were parlous knocks. Still, Public School cricket is kindergarten cricket, and if you've not been at Eton or Harrow, and if you loathe a fashionable crowd, and if you think first-class fielding is worth coming to Lord's ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... 1652, the militia law of Massachusetts required negroes, Scotchmen and Indians,—the indentured slaves of Cromwell, who encountered his army at the battle of Dunbar,—to train in the militia. Nor was it an uncommon occurrence for them to be manumitted for meritorious and courageous action in defending their masters' families, often in the absence of the master, when attacked by the red men of the woods. It was not infrequent to find the negro as a sentinel at the meeting-house ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... office in the nation, a United States Senatorship, openly bought for a few stolen dollars by a man who up to the very day of its purchase was a watch repairer in a small country town, and who had never done a single meritorious deed or been possessed of worldly goods to the extent of $5,000. One sees a wily adventuress secure from the banks, which exist only to safeguard the people's deposited savings, hundreds of thousands of dollars on her bare story that she was ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... the Father and the Holy Spirit, to all ages. Amen!"—Immediately after this confession and prayer, his soul winged its flight from his body, and was borne by angels to Paradise, where he reigns in transcendent glory, united by his meritorious deeds to the blessed ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... that when that moment arrives in which the best consolation that shall be left will be looking back on some past actions, more virtuous and more meritorious than the rest, I shall then with happiness remember, among other things, I have written the RIGHTS OF MAN.—-As to what proclamations, or prosecutions, or place-men, and place-expectants,—those who possess, or those who ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... most likely—of an encounter between the General and Camors. Every one knows the disdainful intrepidity of women in the matter of duels. She had no scruple, therefore, in engaging Vautrot in the meritorious work she meditated. She secured him by some immediate advantages and by promises; she made him believe the General would recompense him largely. Vautrot, smarting still from the cut of Camors's whip on his shoulder, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... herself; all these poor wretches cling desperately to her, and she has nothing with which to stay herself. No one holds out a hand to her. And sometimes she is stoned.... You knew, Christophe, the splendid woman who gave herself to the humblest and most meritorious charitable work; she took pity on the street prostitutes who had just been brought to child-bed, the wretched women with whom the Public Aid would have nothing to do, or who were afraid of the Public Aid; she tried to cure them physically and morally, to look after them ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... It is meritorious to insist on forms; Religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the formed world is the only habitable one. The naked formlessness of Puritanism is not the thing I praise in the Puritans; it is the thing I pity—praising only the spirit which had rendered that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... first Exhortation, before the words 'meritorious Cross and Passion,' I should propose to insert 'his assumption of ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... and security of our ships. It is believed that any change which proposes permanently to dispense with this mode of punishment should be preceded by a system of enlistment which shall supply the Navy with seamen of the most meritorious class, whose good deportment and pride of character may preclude all occasion for a resort to penalties of a harsh or degrading nature. The safety of a ship and her crew is often dependent upon immediate obedience to a command, and the authority to enforce ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore

... good, thus continuing to play the part which he had been fulfilling all his life. However, he made the poultry dealer promise that he would not speak of the matter to anyone; and as Gavard also felt a vague fear of Lisa, he kept the secret, which was really very meritorious in him. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... mendicant orders. The mendicant orders responded to the deepest popular faiths and highest standards of the thirteenth century. Francis of Assisi ([Symbol: cross] 1226) took up the notion that it was wrong to own property, or at least meritorious to renounce it, and affirmed that Christ and his apostles repudiated all property and lived on alms. The Timotheists of the fifth century had held this notion, but were rated as heretics.[447] Poverty, for ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... morning, and say Mass in the afternoon. It is an irregular proceeding, though winked at by the ecclesiastical authorities. Still to attend it is rather discreditable; it is a middle term between the highly meritorious practice of going to early Mass, and the scandalous one of never ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... cousin's, the Earl of Eiran's, hunting-lodge near Melrose. He intends the gem which you are vainly seeking among my haberdashery to be the adornment of his promised bride in the ensuing June. I confess to no overwhelming admiration as concerns this raucous if meritorious young person; and will even concede that the thought of her becoming my kinswoman rouses in me an inevitable distaste, no less attributable to the discord of her features than to the source of her eligibility ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... Drummond, having lost an arm at the battle of Torgau, has resigned his commission; which has been accepted with great regret by the king, the services of Colonel Drummond having been, in the highest degree, meritorious and distinguished." ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... house, and thinking, for the first time, that the poor-laws really were too hard on people; and that men who ran away from their wives, leaving them chargeable to the parish, ought, in justice to be visited with no punishment at all, but rather rewarded as meritorious individuals who had suffered much; Mr. Bumble came to a room where some of the female paupers were usually employed in washing the parish linen: when the sound of voices in ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... throwing themselves into the mountains of Nablous, would greatly annoy our rear and right-flank, and deal out death to us, as a recompense for the life we had given them. There could be no doubt of this. What is a Christian dog to a Turk? It would even have been a religious and meritorious act in the eye ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... redound to the credit of the designer. We have before noticed the great ability exhibited by Mr. Darley for the mode of illustration he adopts, which we may add is that rendered famous by Retzsh. The series we are now noticing are quite as meritorious as that designed by the same artist to Rip Van Winkle; but the subject matter is not equally capable of such broad contrasts in drollery as that legend presents. Nevertheless, Mr. Darley has executed his task in the truest appreciation of ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... perfectly alive with wild-fowl. Near it is a very beautiful spot, which commands a view of both woods and water; a situation either for a house or a temple. Mr. Dawson is adding to the plantations, an employment of all others the most meritorious in Ireland. Another work, scarcely less so, was the erecting a large handsome inn, wherein the same gentleman intends establishing a person who shall be able to supply travellers post with either ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young

... a gamy flavor, in those days, about Southern men, which was very pleasing to the people of the North. Reason teaches us that the barn-yard fowl is a more meritorious bird than the game-cock; but the imagination does not assent to the proposition. Clay was at once game-cock and domestic fowl. His gestures called to mind the magnificently branching trees of his Kentucky forests, and his handwriting had ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... lead an army into Palestine against the infidels, and he took on him the cross, in hopes that he should receive from the Church that protection which she tendered to everyone that had entered into this sacred and meritorious engagement. And he sent to Rome his agent, William de Mauclerc, in order to appeal to the Pope against the violence of his barons, and procure him a favorable sentence from that powerful tribunal. The barons, also, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... you cannot dissect the Covenant from the Treaty without destroying the whole vital structure." This scheme was denounced by Mr. Wilson's opponents as a trick, but the historian will remember it as a maneuver, which, however blameless or meritorious its motive, was fraught with lamentable consequences for all the peoples for whose interests the President was sincerely solicitous. To take but one example. The misgivings generated by the Covenant delayed the ratification of the Peace Treaty by the United ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... gradually come to be looked upon as a substitute for the latter. Sacrifices in temples, the saying of masses, the founding of chapels, the planting of crosses by the roadside, soon come to be the most meritorious works, so that even great crimes are expiated by them, as also by penance, subjection to priestly authority, confessions, pilgrimages, donations to the temples and the clergy, the building of monasteries and the like. The consequence ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... Malays are good Mohammedans, and look upon the slaying of a Christian as a most meritorious act, but at the same time they were too cautious to endanger their plot or their own ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... lead the way to the restoration of his sister; each so known a lover of the other, that the world is more ready to attribute her malady to his misfortune and danger, than to any other cause! But how early days are these, on which my love and my compassion for persons so meritorious, embolden me ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... falsehood is so inveterate among Persians of this class—and I may even say of all classes—that when they happen by chance to keep their word they never fail to claim a reward as though they had performed a most rare and meritorious act. Having examined all the rare but rather heterogeneous articles which compose the royal treasury, we went to see the king's second son (the eldest was at Tauris), to whom Count Simonitsch had ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... This invention was designed to facilitate the use of the machine gun by making its advance with the skirmish line possible on the offensive, and was recommended by the whole staff of the Infantry and Cavalry School as a meritorious device, worthy of trial. The discussion filed with the invention pointed out, for the first time, the correct tactical employment of the weapon, and staked the military reputation and ability of the author and inventor on the correctness ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... words) 'the doing good to mankind in obedience to the will of God and for the sake of everlasting happiness' (so that if God were to will murder and adultery, those practices would forthwith become meritorious), then undoubtedly it would be better to teach Morality without Religion than with it. But that is a caricature of the true teaching of Christ or of any considerable Christian theologian. Undoubtedly we must assert what is called the 'independence' of the moral ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall

... marred a preconcerted movement of the Duke's, and the officer in command of them was immediately brought to a court-martial, and would have lost his commission but for the universal interest made in his favour by the general officers in consideration of his former meritorious conduct and distinguished gallantry, and under the peculiar circumstances of the case. They did not break him, but he was suspended, and Lord Wellington sent him home to England. Almost every general officer in the ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover



Words linked to "Meritorious" :   meritable, merit, worthy, meritoriousness



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