It may be too much to expect that nations should be governed in their relations towards each other by the precepts of Christian morality, but surely it is not too much to ask that they should conform to the code of courtesy and good breeding recognized among gentlemen in the intercourse of social life.

George Stillman Hillard

Categorized in : Christian Too Much Gentleman

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.

George Stillman Hillard

flower taste expression

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

George Stillman Hillard

temptation mind art

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

George Stillman Hillard

inevitable selfish force

Sunsets in themselves are generally superior to sunrises; but with the sunset we appreciate images drawn from departed peace and faded glory.

George Stillman Hillard

departed sunset appreciate

The malignity that never forgets or forgives is found only in base and ignoble natures, whose aims are selfish, and whose means are indirect, cowardly, and treacherous.

George Stillman Hillard

selfish forgiving mean

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 intellectual wealth of the world, and enlarge the domain of knowledge, have learned to take popular applause at its true value, and to find in the faithful discharge of honorable duty a satisfaction which is its own reward.

George Stillman Hillard

reflection men hands

There are no eyes so sharp as the eyes of hatred.

George Stillman Hillard

eye hatred

Misfortunes have their dignity and their redeeming power.

George Stillman Hillard

redeeming misfortunes dignity

Strategy is the most important department of the art of war, and strategical skill is the highest and rarest function of military genius.

George Stillman Hillard

military war art

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.

George Stillman Hillard

weakness unhappy ambition

The ruin of most men dates from some idle moment.

George Stillman Hillard

ruins moments men

If liberty with law is fire on the hearth, liberty without law is fire on the floor.

George Stillman Hillard

fire law heart

Occupation is the armor of the soul.

George Stillman Hillard

armor occupation soul

Wealth brings noble opportunities, and competence is a proper object of pursuit; but wealth, and even competence, may be bought at too high a price. Wealth itself has no moral attribute. It is not money, but the love of money, which is the root of all evil. It is the relation between wealth and the mind and the character of its possessor which is the essential thing.

George Stillman Hillard

roots opportunity character

Artists will sometimes speak of Rome with disparagement or indifference while it is before them; but no artist ewer lived in Rome and then left it, without sighing to return.

George Stillman Hillard

rome return art

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

George Stillman Hillard

binding companion arms

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

George Stillman Hillard

sloth may men

A statesman makes the occasion, but the occasion makes the politician.

George Stillman Hillard

statesmen politician politics

Excellence in art is to be attained only by active effort, and not by passive impressions; by the manly overcoming of difficulties, by patient struggle against adverse circumstance, by the thrifty use of moderate opportunities. The great artists were not rocked and dandled into eminence, but they attained to it by that course of labor and discipline which no man need go to Rome or Paris or London to enter upon.

George Stillman Hillard

struggle men art

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

George Stillman Hillard

greatness men people