Flowers are esteemed by us, not so much on account of their extrinsic beauty - their glowing hues and genial fragrance - as because they have long been regarded as emblems of mortality - because they are associated in our minds with the ideas of mutation and decay. [ Bovee ]

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending, by casual extrinsic splendour, the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. [ Carlyle ]