Christian Nestell Bovee quotes
Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904): American writer. The library holds 109 quotes by Christian Nestell Bovee. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: life, happiness, time, faith, nature, love
The best-known Christian Nestell Bovee quotes
-
False friends are like our shadow, close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection,—these are love’s pretty ingredients for a kiss.
-
Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was business; but now when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war.
-
Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.
-
The busiest of living agents are certain dead men’s thoughts.
-
Dignity of position adds to dignity of character, as well as dignity of carriage.
-
For cowards the road of desertion should be left open; they will carry over to the enemy nothing but their fears.
-
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
-
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 ourselves.
-
There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.
-
The use we make of our fortune determines its sufficiency. A little is enough if used wisely, and too much if expended foolishly.
-
It is some compensation for great evils that they enforce great lessons.
-
Shakespeare must have seemed a dull man at times, he was so flashingly brilliant at others.
-
Rejecting the miracles of Christ, we still have the miracle of Christ himself.
-
Dishonest men conceal their faults from themselves as well as others; honest men know and confess them.
-
We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime.
-
What we call conscience, in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of the constable.
-
The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.
-
Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time.
-
Successful love takes a load off our hearts and puts it on our shoulders.
-
Love delights in paradoxes. Saddest when it has most reason to be gay, sighs are the signs of its deepest joy, and silence the expression of its yearning tenderness.
-
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.
-
The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.
-
Partial culture runs to the ornate; extreme culture to simplicity.
-
Love’s sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances.
-
That is a treacherous friend against whom you must always be on your guard. Such a friend is wine.
-
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.
-
Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.
-
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.
-
Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.
-
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.
-
Repose without stagnation is the state most favourable to happiness. “The great felicity of life,” says Seneca, “is to be without perturbation.”
-
The light in the world comes principally from two sources,—the sun, and the student’s lamp.
-
The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.
-
We should round every day of stirring action with an evening of thought. We learn nothing of our experience except we muse upon it.
-
Give me the character and I will forecast the event. Character, it has in substance been said, is “victory organized.”
-
One who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do. He has lain down to die. The grass is already growing over him.
-
Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favourable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty. Life culminates at sixty.
-
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.
-
Genuine religion is matter of feeling rather than matter of opinion.
-
Something of a person’s character may be discovered by observing when and how he smiles. Some people never smile. They only grin.
-
Tranquil pleasures last the longest. We are not fitted to bear long 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.”
-
It is not the number of facts he knows, but how much of a fact he is himself, that proves the man.
-
Marriage, by making us more contented, causes us often to be less enterprising.
-
Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. In the assurance of strength there is strength, and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers.
-
The highest virtue of the tropics is chastity; of colder regions, temperance.
-
Love’s sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words.
-
Beauty can afford to laugh at distinctions; it is itself the greatest distinction.
-
Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar, of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it.
-
The only thing certain about litigation is it’s uncertainty.
-
Great designs are not accomplished without enthusiasm of some sort. It is the inspiration of everything great. Without it, no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.
-
Hard workers are usually honest. Industry lifts them above temptation.
-
Music is our fourth great material want—first food, then raiment, then shelter, then music.
-
Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion.
-
Dishonesty is the forsaking of permanent for temporary advantages.
-
Examples are few of men ruined by giving. Men are heroes in spending, very cravens in what they give.
-
Kindred weaknesses induce friendship as often as kindred virtues.