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.

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.

Strategy is the most important department of the art of war, and strategical skill is the highest and rarest function of military genius.

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

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

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

One might feel indignant at the injustice which deals out what is called fame with so unequal a hand, were it not for the reflection that men who are competent to add to the intellectual wealth of the world, and enlarge the domain of knowledge, have learned to take popular applause at its true value, and to find in the faithful discharge of honorable duty a satisfaction which is its own reward.