The ruin of most men dates from some idle moment.

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

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

Great men are among the best gifts which God bestows upon a people.

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.

The ruin of most men dates from some idle moment.

The instinctive and universal taste of mankind selects flowers for the expression of its finest sympathies, their beauty and their fleetingness serving to make them the most fitting symbols of those delicate sentiments for which language itself seems almost too gross a medium.