Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes

A mother is the best friend God ever gave.

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.

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

Adhesion to one idea is monomania; to few, slavery.

It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another off shore.

Pleasure and pain spring not so much from the nature of things, as from our manner of considering them. Pleasure, especially, is never an invariable effect of particular circumstances.

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

The language of the heart--the language which "comes from the heart" and "goes to the heart"--is always simple, always graceful, and always full of power, but no art of rhetoric can teach it. It is at once the easiest and most difficult language--difficult, since it needs a heart to speak it; easy, because its periods though rounded and full of harmony, are still unstudied.

The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. Thought finds its way into action.

Our first and last love is self-love.

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

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

Love delights in paradoxes. Saddest when it has most reason to be gay, sighs are the signs of its deepest joy, and silence is the expression of its yearning tenderness.

Good men have the fewest fears. He has but one great fear who fears to do wrong; he has a thousand who has overcome it.

The worth of a book is a matter of expressed juices.

Example has far more followers than reason.

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

A profusion of fancies and quotations is out of place in a love-letter. True feeling is always direct, and never deviates into by-ways to cull flowers of rhetoric.

Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.

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

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

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself. The judicious quoter, too, helps on what is much needed in the world, a freer circulation of good thoughts, pure feelings, and pleasant fancies.

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.

Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.

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

Justice, not the majority, should rule.

Intellectually, as politically, the direction of all true progress is towards greater freedom, and along an endless succession of ideas.

Passion looks not beyond the moment of its existence. Better, it says, the kisses of love to day, than the felicities of heaven afar off.

Living with a saint is more grueling than being one.

Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.

It is some compensation for great evils, that they enforce great lessons.

In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.

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.

As many suffer from too much as too little.

The best evidence of merit is a cordial recognition of it whenever and wherever it may be found.

Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud.

It is safer to quote what is written than what is spoken. What a man writes it is fair to presume he believes as a matter of general conviction, but it is not so with what he utters in the freedom of conversation. In that he may only express the feeling of the moment, and not his settled judgment, or matured opinion.

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

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

He half retrieves a defeat who yields to it gracefully.

Pride is like the beautiful acacia, that lifts its head proudly above its neighbor plants-forgetting that it too, like them, has its roots in the dirt.

How like a railway tunnel is the poor man's life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!

Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys.

Repose without stagnation is the state most favorable to happiness. "The great felicity of life," says Seneca, "is to be without perturbations.

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

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.