Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes

Rejecting the miracles of Christ, we still have the miracle of Christ Himself.

At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. You pink your adversary, and he is forthwith dead; and then you deserve to be hung for it.

Heaven lent you a soul, Earth will lend a grave.

Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great.

Honesty is not only "the first step toward greatness," - it is greatness itself.

Some one called Sir Richard Steele the "vilest of mankind," and he retorted with proud humility, "It would be a glorious world if I were.

To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.

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.

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.

Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues.

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.

Next to faith in God, is faith in labor.

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

The beauty seen is partly in him who sees it. [a predisposition to notice the beautiful, in everything.]

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.

The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.

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.

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

In one important respect a man is fortunate in being poor. His responsibility to God is so much the less

Dignity of position adds to dignity of character, as well as to dignity of carriage. Give us a proud position, and we are impelled to act up to it.

Dishonest people conceal their faults from themselves as well as others, honest people know and confess them.

Passion doesn't look beyond the moment of its existence.

Alas, the transports beauty can inspire!

Melancholy sees the worst of things...[rather than the best]

The knowledge beyond all other knowledge is the knowledge how to excuse.

Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war.

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important 2. Promote a vision 3. Follow the golden rule 4. Admit mistakes 5. Criticize others only in private 6. Stay close to the action Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

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

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.

Next to being witty, the best thing is being able to quote another's wit.

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.

It is our relation to circumstances that determines their influence upon us.

Truth comes to us from the past, as gold is washed down from the mountains of Sierra Nevada, in minute but precious particles, and intermixed with infinite alloy, the debris of the centuries.

The cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards. Cheerfulness is the off-shoot of goodness.

Loss of sincerity is loss of vital power.

It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.

God has created too few unmixed evils to warrant the belief that death is one of them. In all things else in nature, goodness so abounds that we are authorized to infer that it does not stop even at the grave. It is only that her footprints have become invisible.

Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

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

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.

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

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.

The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect may safely be left to that final neglect from which no amount of present undeserved popularity can rescue it.

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.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.