Christian Nestell Bovee famous quotes

Our first and last love is self-love.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#First Love #Love Is #Self

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Running

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

#Life #Fear #Ignorance

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Love #Passion #Kissing

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

#Life #Lost #Stills

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Music #Clothes #Shelter

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Art #Artist #Slave

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Inspirational #Happiness #Reality

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

#Tombstone #Few Words #Fame

We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Perseverance #Past #Men

It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Alaska #Unseen #Literature

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

#Humanity #Rope #Degradation

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Friendship #Sunshine #Bad Friend

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Grief #Losing A Loved One #Cry

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Inspirational #Fear #Anxiety

Heaven lent you a soul, Earth will lend a grave.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Heaven #Soul #Literature

We take life too seriously: the office of wit is to correct this tendency.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Office #Tendencies #Wit

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

#Men #Savages #Littles

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

#Silence #Needs #Said

In secluding himself too much from society, an author is in danger of losing that intimate acquaintance with life which is the only sure foundation of power in a writer.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Foundation #Too Much #Losing

The reveries of the dreamer advance his hopes, but not their realization. One good hour of earnest work is worth them all.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Work #Dreamer #Realization

A strong will deals with the hard facts of life as a sculptor with his marbles, making them facile and yielding to his purposes, and conquering their stubbornness by a greater stubbornness in himself.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Strong #Purpose #Facts

Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Imagination #Worry #Anxiety

Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Nature #Eye #Tears

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

#Beautiful #Women #Handsome

Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Independent #Sometimes #Reason

The beauty of a woman transcends all other forms of beauty, as well in the sweetness of its suggestions, as in the fervor of the admiration it awakens. The beauty of a lovely woman is an inspiration, a sweet delirium, a gentle madness. Her looks are love-potions. Heaven itself is never so clearly revealed to us as in the face of a beautiful woman.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Beautiful #Sweet #Women

Wit never appears to greater advantage than when it is successfully exerted to relieve from a dilemma, palliate a deficiency, or cover a retreat.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Retreat #Advantage #Wit

The finest compliment that can be paid to a woman of sense is to address her as such.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Women #Addresses #Compliment

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

#Dishes #Wit

It is indeed a misfortune for a woman to be without beauty, as with men the eye is the chief arbiter of qualities in the sex. Her beauty is her capital--her worth in the market matrimonial depends upon it. With her the Virtues are less reverenced when unaccompanied by the Graces. The sex understand this very well; and hence they seek mainly to make captive the eye, knowing the mind and heart will follow as a matter of course.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Sex #Women #Heart

To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Country #Home #World

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

#Art #Two #Answers

Vanity in an old man is charming. It is a proof of an open, nature. Eighty winters have not frozen him up, or taught him concealments. In a young person it is simply allowable; we do not expect him to be above it.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Winter #Men #Vanity

Hunting is a relic of the barbarism that once thirsted for human blood, but is now content with the blood of animals.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Animal #Hunting #Blood

A better principle than this, that "the majority shall rule," is this other, that justice shall rule. "Justice," says the code of Justinian, "is the constant and perpetual desire to render every man his due.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Men #Justice #Desire

Patience is only one faculty; earnestness the devotion of all the faculties. Earnestness is the cause of patience; it gives endurance, overcomes pain, strengthens weakness, braves dangers, sustains hope, makes light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Pain #Light #Giving

The great obstacle to progress is prejudice
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Progress #Prejudice #Obstacles

The scope of an intellect is not to be measured with a tape-string, or a character deciphered from the shape or length of a nose.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Character #Tape #Noses

There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Men #Beast #Communicate

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

#New York #Men #Thinking

Melancholy sees the worst of things, things as they may be, and not as they are. It looks upon a beautiful face, and sees but a grinning skull.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Beautiful #Skulls #Looks

Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection, these are love's pretty ingredients for a kiss.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Sweet #Kissing #Two

The first step toward greatness is to be honest, says the proverb; but the proverb fails to state the case strong enough. Honesty is not only "the first step toward greatness," it is greatness itself.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Strong #Honesty #Greatness

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

#Fear

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

#Soul #Triumph #Lows

Sorrow is never more sorrowful than when it jests at its own misery.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Sorrow #Misery #Sorrowful

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

#Powerful #Maturity #Empires

Constant companionship is not enjoyable, any more than constant eating. We sit too long at the table of friendship, when we outsit our appetites for each other's thoughts.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Long #Tables #Companionship

The use we make of our fortune determines its sufficiency. A little is enough if used wisely, and too much if expended foolishly.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Use #Littles #Too Much

Our opinions partake, more or less, of the prejudices of our class, party, or sect. We are all largely pledged, through interest, affection, or passion, to particular classes of opinion, and the strength of efforts to get released from these pledges, is the measure of our advancement.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Party #Passion #Class

Youth is the season of receptivity, and should be devoted to acquirement; and manhood of power--that demands an earnest application. Old age is for revision.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Age #Demand #Revision

One must have been, at some time or other, in a situation where a small sum was as necessary almost as life itself, with no more ability to raise it than to raise the dead, before he can fully appreciate the value of money.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Money #Appreciate #Ability

Men were created for something better than merely to make money. A close application to business, until a competence is gained, is one of the chief virtues; but to continue in trade long after this result is obtained, is one of the signs, not to be mistaken, of a sordid and ignoble nature.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Money #Men #Long

Successful minds work like a gimlet--to a single point.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Success #Mind #Gimlets

Love makes a few weeks so rich that all the rest of our lives seems poor in comparison.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Love #Rich #Week

We cannot reason ourselves into love, nor can we reason ourselves out of it, which suggests that love and reason have little to do with each other.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Love #Littles #Reason

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

#Love #Heart #Eye

Logic invents as many fallacies as it detects; it is a good weapon, but as liable to be used in a bad as in a good cause.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Weapons #Causes #Logic

Life being full of harsh realities, we seek relief from them in a variety of pleasing delusions.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Life #Reality #Relief

Life is indeed either a rich possession or a poor, according as it is made subservient to noble aims or ignoble pleasures.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Life #Noble #Rich

Within the sacred walls of libraries we find the best thoughts, the purest feelings, and the most exalted imaginings of our race.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Wall #Race #Feelings

Who aspires to remain leader must keep in advance of his column. His fear must not play traitor to his occasions. The instant he falls into line with his followers, a bolder spirit may throw himself at the head of the movement initiated, and in that moment his leadership is gone.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Leadership #Fall #Play

The cause of laziness is physiological; it is an infirmity of the constitution, and its victim is as much to be pitied as a sufferer from any other constitutional infirmity. It is even worse than many other diseases; from them the patient may recover, while this is incurable.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Laziness #May #Disease

The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Character #Men #Expression

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

#Men #Portraits #Faces

There are seaons when our passions have slept so long that we know not whether they still exist in us. So does flax forget that it is combustible when the fire is away from it.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Passion #Fire #Long

In a contest with a weaker party it is more honorable to yield than to force concession. Magnanimity becomes the strong.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Strong #Party #Yield

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

#War #Essence #Details

It is curious to what a degree one may become attached to a fine tree, especially when it is placed where trees are rare.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Tree #Degrees #May

New situations inspire new thoughts. Here is the benefit of travelling, much more than in mere sight-seeing. We lose ourselves in the streets of our own city, and go abroad to find ourselves.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Travel #Sight #Cities

All power is indeed weak compared with that of the thinker. He sits upon the throne of his Empire of Thought, mightier far than they who wield material sceptres.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Thinking #Thrones #Empires

When we get tired of enjoying all the pleasures within our reach, we have still a resource in thinking of others that are not.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Tired #Thinking #Pleasure

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

#Writing #Mean #Thinking

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

#Luxury #Slavery

Satire is an abuse of wit. It corrects few evils.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Evil #Abuse #Satire

It is so natural for us to consider our presence as indispensable in the world, so long as we have much to do in it, that the wisdom of retiring wholly from employments in advanced life may be questioned. Certainly, he who does so is in danger of finding, before long, that he has only given up the occupation to which he has been accustomed, for the new business of calculating the period of his decease.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Retirement #Long #Doe

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

#Fate #Hawks #Resentment

However much of time, labor, or other means it takes to establish a reputation, it frequently happens that it requires nearly as much to maintain it. One who has written a good book, is expected on all occasions to "talk like a book." Or, if one has achieved an act of heroism, he is expected to perform acts of heroism for the edification of all who approach him. There are people who can never believe they see a lion unless they hear him roar.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Believe #Book #Mean

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

#Errors #Support #Bases

We repose too much upon the actual, when we should be seeking to develop the possibilities of our being. It is true of nearly all of us, that what we have done is little compared with what we might have accomplished, or may hereafter effect.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Done #May #Littles

It is difficult to say which is the greatest evil--to have too violent passions, or to be wholly devoid of them. Controlled with firmness, guided by discretion, and hallowed by the imagination, the passions are the vivifiers and quickeners of our being. Without passion there can be no energy of character. Indeed, the passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways, and dangerous only in one--through their excess.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Passion #Character #Fire

An illusion dissipated is an experience gained.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Illusion

There are some kinds of men who cannot pass their time alone; they are the flails of occupied people.(Bonald, M.} There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Men #People #Kind

Whether one talks well depends very much upon whom he has to talk to.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Talking #Wells

The next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to be able to quote another's wit.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Witty #Self #Able

Qualities not regulated run into their opposites. Economy before competence is meanness after it. Therefore economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Running #Opposites #Quality

Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Life #Sugar #Fancy

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

#Exercise #Mind #Overcoming

Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Oysters #Contentment #Elements

It is our relation to circumstances that determines their influence upon us.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Influence #Relation #Circumstances

It is with charity as with money--the more we stand in need of it, the less we have to give away.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Giving #Needs #Charity

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

#Character #Matter

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

#Care #Guests #Masters

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

#Book #Juice #Matter

Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Book #Development #Want

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

#Beauty #Beautiful #Giving

Mortal beauty stings while it delights.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Beauty #Delight

Troubles forereckoned are doubly suffered.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Anticipation #Trouble

Neither love nor ambition, as it has often been shown, can brook a division of its empire in the heart.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

#Heart #Ambition #Division