The ruin of most men dates from some idle moment.

The force of selfishness is as inevitable and as calculable as the force of gravitation.

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

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.

A vacant mind invites dangerous inmates, as a deserted mansion tempts wandering outcasts to enter and take up their abode in its desolate apartments.

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.

The ruin of most men dates from some idle moment.