Merit and good works is the end of man's motion, and conscience of the same is the accomplishment of man's rest.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.11,'Of Great Place'.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for theyare impediments to great enterprises, eitherof virtue or mischief.Certainly thebest works, and ofgreatest meritfor thepublic, haveproceededfromthe unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.8,'Of Marriage and the Single Life'.

The man that hails youTom or Jack, And proves by thumps upon your back How he esteems your merit, Is such a friend, that one had need Be very much his friend indeed To pardon or to bear it.

-Cowper,William
  Poems,'Friendship', l.169^74.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

-Emerson, RalphWaldo
  Representative Men,'Plato'.

Une belle femme qui a les qualite¤  s d'un honne"  te homme est ce qu'il y a au monde d'un commerce plus de¤  licieux: l'on trouve en elle tout le me¤  rite des deux sexes. A beautiful woman who has the qualities of a gentleman is the most pleasing person in all the world: one finds in her all the merit of both sexes.

-La Bruye'  re,Jean de
  Les Caracte'  res ou les m½urs de ce sie'  cle,'Des femmes', no.13.

We ourselves esteem not of that obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force: God therefore let him free, set before him a provoking object, ever almost in his eyes; herein consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of his abstinence.

-Milton,John
  Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

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

-Pope, Alexander
  The Rape of the Lock, canto 5, l.33^4.

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attachtoomuch importancetothenegative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

-Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl
  In Praise of Idleness,'Education and Discipline'.

These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities and eminent services; of instructing princes to know their true interest by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people: of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive, and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

-Swift,Jonathan
  Gulliver'sTravels,'A Voyage to Laputa, etc.'ch.6.

Meanwhile, you will write an essay on'self-indulgence'. There will be a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit.

-Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn
  Decline and Fall, pt.1, ch.5.

People confuse longevity with merit. Look at Cliff Richard.

-Wogan,Terry
  In the Observer, 28 Mar.