Quotessence
Home / Quotes / M Quotes

M Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with M. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All M Quotes

“Merida wondered at how splendid the castle looked in this light, old DunBroch, a castle made new. The rising sun caught each of the panes of glass and lit them like spring fire. The ivy was green and lush. The berries in the Christmas boughs were bright as battle. It was a grand and welcoming and beautiful sight, vibrant and alive. Yes, there was smoking fire in the background and walls had newly been knocked down, but it was impossible not to see that beneath that, the castle had a live and beating heart. It had changed. It had earned its freedom from Feradach's destruction. It had become something new. Or rather, it was still DunBroch, but it was DunBroch, grown, changing, moving onward, and Merida was fiercely proud.”

“Merit is a work for the sake of which Christ gives rewards. But no such work is to be found, for Christ gives by promise. Just as if a prince should say to me, "Come to me in my castle, and I will give you a hundred florins." I do a work, certainly, in going to the castle, but the gift is not given me as the reward of my work in going, but because the prince promised it to me.”

“Meritocracy is a false and not very salutary belief. As with any ideology, part of its draw is that it justifies the status quo, explaining why people belong where they happen to be in the social order. It is a well-established psychological principle that people prefer to believe that the world is just. However, in addition to legitimation, meritocracy also offers flattery. Where success is determined by merit, each win can be viewed as a reflection of one’s own virtue and worth. Meritocracy is the most self-congratulatory of distribution principles. Its ideological alchemy transmutes property into praise, material inequality into personal superiority. It licenses the rich and powerful to view themselves as productive geniuses. While this effect is most spectacular among the elite, nearly any accomplishment can be viewed through meritocratic eyes. Graduating from high school, artistic success or simply having money can all be seen as evidence of talent and effort. By the same token, worldly failures becomes signs of personal defects, providing a reason why those at the bottom of the social hierarchy deserve to remain there. ("A Belief in Meritocracy Is Not Only False: It’s Bad for You", Aeon)”

“Meritocracy is based on the absolute destruction of the rigged race of life, via the introduction of 100% inheritance tax, i.e. an overwhelming advantage can no longer be passed on by rich parents to their children. All children, no matter the wealth of their parents, must begin at the same starting line as everyone else. No parent can rig the race. The 1% can no longer dictate the outcome of the race”

“Meritocracy is not a pass/fail system, but rather a system that allows each person to find their own highest attainment. There is no shame in being less than first in a particular field or endeavor – it is simply that the other person had more skills suited for that particular event. Meritocracy gives everyone the best possible chance. It doesn’t promise victory for everyone. Only the very best will win.”

“Merkel is a flagship of the EU. Not everything depends on her, but much does. I have been shocked in a positive way by how Merkel is defending international law so openly and strongly. She wants to have peace and stability in the EU, and she knows that Russia is a problem in terms of security. It seems to me that many Germans are led by a certain fear of Russia. So you hear things like, "Let's avoid conflicts with Moscow, let's appease the Kremlin."”

“Merleau-Ponty's painting inhabits the same rhetoric as early cinema: it makes the invisible visible, or rather it makes visibility visible; it forms from the thresholds of the visible and invisible world, an order, mode, or aesthetic of visuality. Not only of the small or fast, but of visibility as such. The visuality of the visible and the invisible is found in the mixture of the body and its world, of your body and your world, all your worlds, all your bodies in this world and all those others. Painting is the process by which the visuality of the visible and invisible is made manifest: "Painting mixes up all our categories in laying out its oneiric universe of carnal essences, of effective likenesses, of mute meanings." Each painting is a universal archive, a picture of the universe, a universal image—and like a dream.”

“Merlin stood up. For once, late as it was, he was pleased to see the Assistant Commissioner because he had been trying unsuccessfully to get hold of him all day. “May I introduce Detective Bernard Goldberg of the New York Police Department.” Merlin held out a hand to the stocky young man now standing on the AC’s right. Detective Goldberg was an inch or two shorter than Merlin, with a closely cropped head of dark-brown hair and the crumpled face of a man who might have walked into a wall.”

“Mermaid queens didn't often have a reason to move quickly. There were no wars to direct, no assassination attempts to evade, no crowds of clamoring admirers to avoid among the merfolk. In fact, slowness and calm were expected of royalty. So Ariel found herself thoroughly enjoying the exercise as she beat her tail against the water- even as it winded her a little. She missed dashing through shipwrecks with Flounder, fleeing sharks, trying to scoot back home before curfew. She loved the feel of her powerful muscles, the way the current cut around her when she twisted her shoulders to go faster. She hadn't been this far up in years and gulped as the pressure of the deep faded. She clicked her ears, readying them for the change of environment. Colors faded and transformed around her from the dark, heady slate of the ocean bottom to the soothing azure of the middle depths and finally lightening to the electric, magical periwinkle that heralded the burst into daylight. She hadn't planned to break through the surface triumphantly. She wouldn't give it that power. Her plan was to take it slow and rise like a whale. Casually, unperturbed, like Ooh, here I am. But somehow her tail kicked in twice as hard the last few feet, and she exploded into the warm sunlit air like she had been drowning. She gulped again and tasted the breeze- dry in her mouth; salt and pine and far-distant fires and a thousand alien scents.”

“Mermaids weren't mammalian. They couldn't be. Too many sightings focused on their 'slender backs' and 'narrow waists'--features that seemed reasonable to modern readers with modern beauty standards, but which made no sense for an Italian fisherman during the plague years, or a Puerto Rican swimmer in the 1920s. If the mermaid had been an idealized projection of a human woman onto a marine mammal, she would have looked different every time, fat during some eras, thin during others, not consistently slim to the point of freezing in oceanic waters. The people who described mermaids were describing a real creature, something that wasn't mammalian, but looked mammalian enough to make a tempting lure. And why would anything lure sailors, if not as a form of sustenance?”

“Mermon's tiny black dot eyes managed to widen into larger black dots. "No, no, no, Sir. I was just... curious." "Curiosity is a good thing, like onion soup. But too much onion soup makes you breath smell terrible. and too much curiosity can make your whole body smell terrible, if it causes you to be dead." Veenie nodded carefully; it was a strange threat, but a threat nonetheless.”

“Merrick swilled down the rest of his ale. A strange heat traveled from his belly to loins to his head. ’Twas like his blood came alive.… …Since Clio was the bride, they toasted her lips, and her hips. They drank to her eyes, and her thighs. Her luscious meal fare and her glorious hair. Her small nose and her bare toes. But even Merrick was surprised when he himself stood and bellowed, “Here’s to Lady Clio with her mouth full of sass.” … He grinned, then raised his cup high. “And her small, tight ass.”