Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made great man.

Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

Every noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven forever in the work of the world.

The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.

But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between being captains or governors of work, and taking the profits of it. It does not follow, because you are general of an army, that you are to take all the treasure, or land, it wins; (if it fight for treasure or land); neither, because you are king of a nation, that you are to consume all the profits of the nation's work.

Men are more evanescent than pictures, yet one sorrows for lost friends, and pictures are my friends. I have none others. I am never long enough with men to attach myself to them; and whatever feelings of attachment I have are to material things.

Life is a magic vase filled to the brim, so made that you cannot dip from it nor draw from it; but it overflows into the hand that drops treasures into it. Drop in malice and it overflows hate; drop in charity and it overflows love.