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.

A great man is a gift, in some measure a revelation of God. A great man, living for high ends, is the divinest thing that can be seen on earth. The value and interest of history are derived chiefly from the lives and services of the eminent men whom it commemorates. Indeed, without these, there would be no such thing as history, and the progress of a nation would be little worth recording, as the march of a trading caravan across a desert.

The shadow of human life is traced upon a golden ground of immortal hope.

The ruin of most men dates from some idle moment.

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

A sluggish, dawdling, and dilatory man may have spasms of activity, but he never acts continuously and consecutively with energetic quickness.

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