Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes

The light in the world comes principally from two sources,-the sun, and the student's lamp.

All good writing leaves something unexpressed.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Woman's power is over the affections. A beautiful dominion is hers; but she risks its forfeiture when she seeks to extend it.

Dishonesty is a forsaking of permanent for temporary advantages.

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

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.

There are ceremonious bows that repel one like a cudgel.

Common sense, alas in spite of our educational institutions, is a rare commodity.

The busiest of living agents are certain dead men's thoughts.

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

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.

The trouble with men of sense is that they are so dreadfully in earnest all the while.

To death we owe our life; the passing of one generation opens a way for another.

Care, admitted as guest, quickly turns to be master.

Tis but a short journey across the isthmus of Now.

Character is very much a matter of health.

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.

Whether one talks well depends very much upon whom he has to talk to.

Books are embalmed minds.

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.

As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.

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

Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt (called by Galileo the father of invention), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins?

Hard workers are usually honest; industry lifts them above temptation.

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly.

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

The extent of poverty in the world is much exaggerated. Our sensitiveness makes half our poverty; our fears--anxieties for ills that never happen--a greater part of the other half.

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

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime

To cultivate a garden is. . . to go hand in hand with Nature in some of her most beautiful processes, to learn something of her choicest secrets, and to have a more intelligent interest awakened in the beautiful order of her works elsewhere.

The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.

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

The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. The roads leading to distinction in separate pursuits diverge, and the nearer we approach the one, the farther we recede from the other.

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

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

A genuine passion is like a mountain stream; it admits of no impediment; it cannot go backward; it must go forward.

The loss of a beloved connection awakens an interest in Heaven before unfelt.

It is with a company as it is with a punch, everything depends upon the ingredients of which it in composed.

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

Marriage, by making us more contented, causes us often to be less enterprising.

Pure motives do not insure perfect results.

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

Hope is the best part of our riches. What sufficeth it that we have the wealth of the Indies in our pockets, if we have not the hope of heaven in our souls?

Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.