Artists will sometimes speak of Rome with disparagement or indifference while it is before them; but no artist ewer lived in Rome and then left it, without sighing to return.

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.

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.

The ruin of most men dates from some idle moment.

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.

The malignity that never forgets or forgives is found only in base and ignoble natures, whose aims are selfish, and whose means are indirect, cowardly, and treacherous.

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.