Christian Nestell Bovee quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Christian Nestell Bovee

Christian Nestell Bovee Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Christian Nestell Bovee on Wise Famous Quotes.

Genuine religion is matter of feeling rather than matter of opinion.

There would not be so much harm in the giddy following the fashions, if somehow the wise could always set them.

By his provocations to good-natured merriment, a humorist of the first water contributes as much to the sum of happiness as the gravest philosopher.

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

The very cunning conceal their cunning; the indifferently shrewd boast of it.

It is the life of democracy to favor equality.

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

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

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

Poverty is only contemptible when it is felt to be so. Doubtless the best way to make our poverty respectable is to seem never to feel it as an evil.

Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.

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.

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

An ambition to excel in petty things obstructs the progress to nobler aims.

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

Loss of sincerity is loss of vital power.

To cultivate a garden is ... to go hand in hand with Nature in some of her most beautiful processes ...

He half retrieves a defeat who yields to it gracefully.

We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.

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

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

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

Even when we fancy we have grown wiser, it is only, it may be, that new prejudices have displaced old ones.

Talk less about the years to come,
Live, love labor more today.

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

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

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

When all is lost, the future still remains.

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.

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

A woman's love, like lichens upon a rock, will still grow where even charity can find no soil to nurture itself.

Bad taste is a species of bad morals.

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

Weakness ineffectually seeks to disguise itself,
like a drunken man trying to show how sober he is.

Beauty can afford to laugh at distinctions: it is itself the greatest distinction.

Earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties.

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

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

The less the difference, the greater the quarrel over it.

Our first and last love is self-love.

Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues.

It is not the number of facts he knows, but how much of a fact he is himself, that proves the man.

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.

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

Hope is the best part of our riches.

Few minds wear out; more rust out.

The Breath becomes a stone; the stone, a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.

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.

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

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

All good writing leaves something unexpressed.

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly

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.

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

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

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

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

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

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

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

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.

No work deserves to be criticized that has not much in it that deserves to be applauded.

A peculiar work in any art must not be too hastily judged. New styles have to create new tastes.

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

Elements of the heroic exist in almost every individual: it is only the felicitous development of them all in one that is rare.

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

The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it
to realize it to the full
to be a profound and inscrutable mystery.

Books are embalmed minds.

A man cannot paint portraits till he has seen faces.

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

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.

The heart contracts as the pocket expands.

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

We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful.

Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.

Give me the character and I will forecast the event.

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

Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.

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

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

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

It is of very little use in trying to be dignified, if dignity is no part of your character.

The beauty seen is partly in him who sees it.

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

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

The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor.

Alas, the transports beauty can inspire!

The past is the sepulchre of our dead emotions.

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

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

An illusion dissipated is an experience gained.

We absolve a friend from gratitude when we remind him of a favor.

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

Living with a saint is more grueling than being one.

It is one of the arts of a great beauty to heighten the effect of her charms by affecting to be sweetly unconscious of them.

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

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

Excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness.

The greatest happiness comes from the greatest activity.

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