Unfortunately for many, these visions burst like bubbles and soon pass away.

Artists and sculptors look forward to an hour when, by a touch here and a touch there, the statue shall be perfected and the portrait completed; so Christ pointed forward to an hour when, having been wrought upon by darkness and by light, by defeat and by victory, by sorrow and by joy, at last wisdom shall be made perfect, judgment know no error, love have full disclosure and the soul enter into unhindered perfection.
Great are the achievements of the chisel upon the block of marble, marvelous the skill with which a master turns a dead canvas into lustrous life and beauty.

Matchless the power that turns a clod into a rosy apple, a seed into a sheaf of wheat, a babe into a sage; yet neither nature nor art knows any transformation like unto that wonder of time when, by slow processes, God develops man out of rude and low conditions of life unto those high and spiritual moods when selfishness gives place to self-sacrifice, coarseness to sweetness, hardness to gentleness and love, and perfection dwells in man as ripeness dwells in fruit, as maturity dwells in harvests.
The mainspring of all progress, individual and social, is the desire to fulfill in character all one has planned in thought.

Man's life is one long pursuit of the visions of possible excellence which disquiet, rebuke and tempt him upward.

"As to other points," said John Milton, "what God may have determined for me I know not, but this I know--that if he ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of any man, he has instilled it into mine.