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

Men of genius are more apt to feel art than to understand it; and they sometimes mistake that emotion which a work of art calls forth for essential characteristics of the work itself.

Sooner or later the world comes round to see the truth and do the right.

Anger is a fierce and sudden flame, which may be kindled in the noblest breasts; but in these the slow droppings of an unforgiving temper never take the shape and consistency of enduring hatred.

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.

No man can be a great officer who is not infinitely patient of details, for an army is an aggregation of details, a defect in any one of which may destroy or impair the whole. It is a chain of innumerable links, but the whole chain is no …

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 in-tellectual wealth of the world, and enlarge the domain of …