First deserve and then desire. [ Scotch Proverb ]

To give happiness is to deserve happiness. [ J. J. Rousseau ]

Let none admire
That riches grow in hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane. [ Milton ]

He does not deserve wine who drinks it as water. [ Bodenstedt ]

We rarely confess that we deserve what we suffer. [ Quesnel ]

Believing hear, what you deserve to hear.
Your birthday as my own to me is dear.
Blest and distinguish'd days! which we should prize
The first, the kindest bounty of the skies.
But yours gives most; for mine did only lend,
Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend. [ Martial ]

Wilful faults have no excuse, and deserve no pardon. [ Proverb ]

Men bestow compliments only on women who deserve none. [ Mme. Bachi ]

No man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it. [ Johnson ]

The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it. [ Moliere ]

It is a worthier thing to deserve honour than to possess it. [ Proverb ]

Kindness which is not inexhaustible does not deserve the name. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]

Who despises fame will soon renounce the virtues that deserve it. [ Mallet ]

In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty. [ St. Augustine ]

To be happy is not the purpose of our being, but to deserve happiness. [ Fichte ]

Many dream not to find, neither deserve, and yet are steeped in favors. [ Shakespeare ]

It is the duty of every one to strive to gain and deserve a good reputation. [ Atterbury ]

Who thinks a woman hath no merit, but her money, deserve , to be made a cuckold. [ Proverb ]

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve happiness. [ Fichte ]

Parents deserve reproof when they refuse to benefit their children by severe discipline. [ Petronius Arbiter ]

They that do an act that does deserve requital pay first themselves the stock of such content. [ Sir Robert Howard ]

Nations and men are only the best when they are the gladdest, and deserve heaven when they enjoy it. [ Richter ]

Although strength should fail, the effort will deserve praise. In great enterprises the attempt is enough. [ Propertius ]

Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. [ Colton ]

None deserve the name of good who have not spirit enough to be bad. Goodness, for the most part, is but indolence, or impotence. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

These evils I deserve, yet despair not of His final pardon whose ear is ever open and his eye gracious to readmit the supplicant. [ Milton ]

Necessity is a bad recommendation to favors of any kind, which as seldom fall to those who really want them, as to those who really deserve them. [ Fielding ]

Those who, from the desire of our perfection, have the keenest eye for our faults generally compensate for it by taking a higher view of our merits than we deserve. [ J. F. Boyes ]

Glory is sometimes a low courtesan who on the road entices many who did not think of her. They are astonished to obtain favors without having done anything to deserve them. [ Prince de Ligne ]

We may deserve grief; but why should women be unhappy? - except that we know heaven chastens those whom it loves best, being pleased by repeated trials to make these pure spirits more pure. [ Thackeray ]

Among the writers of all ages, some deserve fame, and have it; others neither have nor deserve it; some have it, not deserving it; others, though deserving it, yet totally miss it,, or have it not equal to their deserts. [ Milton ]

Those who despise fame seldom deserve it. We are apt to undervalue the purchase we cannot reach, to conceal our poverty the better. It is a spark which kindles upon the best fuel, and burns brightest in the bravest breast. [ Jeremy Collier ]

It has been shrewdly said, that when men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve; and still more rare to despise praise which we do. [ Colton ]

Frivolous curiosity about trifles, and laborious attentions to little objects which neither require nor deserve a moment's thought, lower a man, who from thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of greater matters. Cardinal de Retz very sagaciously marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from the moment he told him that he had wrote three years with the same pen, and that it was an excellent good one still. [ Chesterfield ]