Famous quotes containing the words french and/or merits:
“The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Since I know nothing of the merits of poetry, I am not able to pass any opinion upon this, but I can see that “reap” and “deep,” “prayers” and “bears,” “ark” and “dark,” “true” and “grew” do rhyme, and so I suppose it is a splendid effort, but if you had written it in plain prose, I could have understood it a great deal better and read it a great deal more easily.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)