Wealth brings noble opportunities, and competence is a proper object of pursuit; but wealth, and even competence, may be bought at too high a price. Wealth itself has no moral attribute. It is not money, but the love of money, which is the root of all evil. It is the relation between wealth and the mind and the character of its possessor which is the essential thing.

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

If liberty with law is fire on the hearth, liberty without law is fire on the floor.

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.

Man is an animal that cannot long be left in safety without occupation; the growth of his fallow nature is apt to run into weeds.

Ambition is not a weakness unless it be disproportioned to the capacity. To have more ambition than ability is to be at once weak and unhappy.

It may be too much to expect that nations should be governed in their relations towards each other by the precepts of Christian morality, but surely it is not too much to ask that they should conform to the code of courtesy and good breeding recognized among gentlemen in the intercourse of social life.