meritless

Updated: May 19, 2025

His aristocracy does not sit in a corner, deedless and meritless, brooding over a transmitted name and sucking the orange of empty self-conceit: it is the aristocracy of achievement and of nature the solid superiority of having done the brightest and best deeds that could be done in his time and of being the greatest man of his generation.

William Winter - Shadows of the Stage

For if they say the 'I' is perishable, the fruit they strive for, too, will perish; and at some time there will be no hereafter: this is indeed a meritless deliverance. But if they say the 'I' is not to perish, then in the midst of all this life and death there is but one identity as space, which is not born and does not die.

- Sacred Books of the East