Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes & Sayings

If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The worth of a book is a matter of expressed juices. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The very cunning conceal their cunning; the indifferently shrewd boast of it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion. — Christian Nestell Bovee

There would not be so much harm in the giddy following the fashions, if somehow the wise could always set them. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Hope is the best part of our riches. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The beauty seen is partly in him who sees it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Something of a person's character may be observed by how they smile. Some never smile they only grin. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The busiest of living agents are certain dead men's thoughts. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words. — Christian Nestell Bovee

As many suffer from too much as too little. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Weakness ineffectually seeks to disguise itself,
like a drunken man trying to show how sober he is. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all. — Christian Nestell Bovee

He has but one great fear that fears to do wrong. — Christian Nestell Bovee

There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Every war involves a greater or less relapse into barbarism. War, indeed, in its details, is the essence of inhumanity. It dehumanizes. It may save the state, but it destroys the citizen. — Christian Nestell Bovee

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none. — Christian Nestell Bovee

It is of very little use in trying to be dignified, if dignity is no part of your character. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses. — Christian Nestell Bovee

In ambition, as in love, the successful can afford to be indulgent toward their rivals. The prize our own, it is graceful to recognize the merit that vainly aspired to it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven's dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Very handsome women have usually far less sensibility to compliments than their less beautiful sisters. — Christian Nestell Bovee

To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity. — Christian Nestell Bovee

It is seldom that we find out how great are our resources until we are thrown upon them. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Pleasure and pain spring not so much from the nature of things, as from our manner of considering them in particular, what we compare them to. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The less the difference, the greater the quarrel over it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Fame - a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Wit is better as a seasoning than as a whole dish by itself. — Christian Nestell Bovee

A good thought is indeed a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked; next he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us. Whoever adopts and circulates a just thought, participates in the merit that originated it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy. — Christian Nestell Bovee

An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching. — Christian Nestell Bovee

We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful. — Christian Nestell Bovee

What we call conscience in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of the law. — Christian Nestell Bovee

None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Few minds wear out; more rust out. — Christian Nestell Bovee

What is taken from the fortune, also, may haply be so much lifted from the soul. The greatness of a loss, as the proverb suggests, is determinable, not so much by what we have lost, as by what we have left. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Care, admitted as guest, quickly turns to be master. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The method of the critic is to balance praises with censure, and thus to do justice to the subject and
his own discrimination. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Activity and sadness are incompatible. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The questions most furiously discussed are those which have in them a basis of truth, and yet a large admixture of errors. We inconsiderately take hold of, and mistakingly support or oppose them, as either wholly true or wholly false. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Age, that acquaints us with infirmities in ourselves, should make us tender in our reprehension of weakness elsewhere. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The natural wants are few, and easily gratified: it is only those which are artificial that perplex us by their multiplicity. — Christian Nestell Bovee

They are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Next to faith in God, is faith in labor. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Complaint is. more contemptible than pitiful. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The selection of a subject is to the author what choice of position is to the general,
once skilfully determined, the battle is already half won. Of a few writers it may be said that they are popular in despite of their subjects
but of a great many more it may be observed that they are popular because of them. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Many an honest man practices upon himself an amount of deceit sufficient, if practised upon another, and in a little different way, to send him to the state prison. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Character is very much a matter of health. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The worst deluded are the self-deluded. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Out of politics comes more uproar than progress. It is indeed surprising how little, comparatively, this noisy department of human affairs contributes to the world's prosperity. Political commotions upon the grandest scale, political events of astounding suddenness, political characters of the greatest ability, abound, but still, permanent results are rare, and we look in vain for a measure of public good corresponding in extent to the hideous rout which ushers it in. Progress but turns upon its pillow, and goes to sleep again. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire. — Christian Nestell Bovee

He that shrinks from the grave with too great a dread, has an invisible fear behind him pushing him into it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

God, we are told, looked upon the world after he had created it and pronounced it good; but ascetic pietists, in their wisdom, cast their eyes over it, and substantially pronounce it a dead failure, a miserable production, a poor concern. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Passion doesn't look beyond the moment of its existence. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Better freedom with a crust, than slavery with every luxury. — Christian Nestell Bovee

When all is lost, the future still remains. — Christian Nestell Bovee

There are none so low but they have their triumphs. Small successes suffice for small souls. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Nature has provided for the exigency of privation, by putting the measure of our necessities far below the measure of our wants. Our necessities are to our wants as Falstaff's pennyworth of bread to his any quantity of sack. — Christian Nestell Bovee

There is nothing," says a correspondent of the New York Times, "which the business world discards as unpractical and useless so much as the quiet, thinking scholar. But this is the man who makes revolutions. Politicians are mere puppets in the hands of men of thought. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Perhaps the heroic element in our natures is exhibited to the best advantage, not in going from success to success, and so on through a series of triumphs, but in gathering, on the very field of defeat itself, the materials for renewed efforts, and in proceeding, with no abatement of heart or energy, to form fresh designs upon the very ruins and ashes of blasted hopes. Yes, it is this indomitable persistence in a purpose, continued alike through defeat and success, that makes, more than aught else, the hero. — Christian Nestell Bovee

In the assurance of strength there is strength; and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Nothing is so fragile as thought in its infancy; an interruption breaks it: nothing is so powerful, even to overturning empires, when it reaches its maturity. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly — Christian Nestell Bovee

Every trait of beauty may be referred to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, or heroism. St. Pierre To cultivate the sense of the beautiful, is one of the most effectual ways of cultivating an appreciation of the divine goodness. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Tis but a short journey across the isthmus of Now. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Honesty is not only the first step toward greatness, it is greatness itself. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Resentments, carried too far, expose us to a fate analogous to that of the fish-hawk, when he strikes his talons too deep into a fish beyond his capacity to lift, and is carried under and drowned by it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

A mother is the best friend God ever gave. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Give me the character and I will forecast the event. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Wit must be without effort. Wit is play, not work; a nimbleness of the fancy, not a laborious effort of the will; a license, a holiday, a carnival of thought and feeling, not a trifling with speech, a constraint upon language, a duress upon words. — Christian Nestell Bovee

A man cannot paint portraits till he has seen faces. — Christian Nestell Bovee

A peculiar work in any art must not be too hastily judged. New styles have to create new tastes. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it
to realize it to the full
to be a profound and inscrutable mystery. — Christian Nestell Bovee

No single character is ever so great that a nation can afford to form itself upon it. Imitation belittles. This appears in the instance of the Chinese. The Chinese are so many Confucii; in miniature. And so with the Jews. Moses, the lawgiver, is poorly represented by Moses, the old clothesman ; or even by Dives, the hanker. — Christian Nestell Bovee

A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

It may almost be held that the hope of commercial gain has done nearly as much for the cause of truth as even the love of truth. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised. — Christian Nestell Bovee

In general, inquiry ceases when we adopt a theory. After that, we overlook whatever makes against it, and see and think, and talk and write, only in its favor. Indeed, when we have a snug, comfortable theory, to which we are much attached, they appear to us as a very mean set of facts that will not square with it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

I once asked a distinguished artist what place he gave to labor in art. "Labor," he in effect said, "is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art." Turning then to another
"And you," I inquired, "what do you consider as the great force in art?" "Love," he replied. In their two answers I found but one truth. — Christian Nestell Bovee

We should round every day of stirring action with an evening of thought. We learn nothing of our experience except we muse upon it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Luminous quotations, also, atone, by their interest, for the dulness of an inferior book, and add to the value of a superior work by the variety which they lend to its style and treatment. — Christian Nestell Bovee

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The loss of a beloved connection awakens an interest in Heaven before unfelt. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Ideas are like matter, infinitely divisible. It is not given to us to get down so to speak to their final atoms, but to their molecular groupings-the way is never ending and the progress infinitely delightful and profitable ... — Christian Nestell Bovee

There is a German proverb which says that Take-it-Easy and Live-Long are brothers. — Christian Nestell Bovee