Excellence in art is to be attained only by active effort, and not by passive impressions; by the manly overcoming of difficulties, by patient struggle against adverse circumstance, by the thrifty use of moderate opportunities. The great artists were not rocked and dandled into eminence, but they attained to it by that course of labor and discipline which no man need go to Rome or Paris or London to enter upon.

There are pictures by Titian so steeped in golden splendors, that they look as if they would light up a dark room like a solar lamp.

Nothing is more binding than the friendship of companions-in-arms.

Misfortunes have their dignity and their redeeming power.

There are no eyes so sharp as the eyes of hatred.

A statesman makes the occasion, but the occasion makes the politician.

Many persons feel art, some understand it; but few both feel and understand it.