Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes
A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.
A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.
False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.
Emphatic always, forcible never.
In art and enterprise, it is the steady, silent work that does the work.
Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys.
If a thing is difficult, that in itself is a temptation to undertake it. Great difficulties, when not succumbed to, bring out great virtues.
It is hard to compare two things and be unjust to neither.
Minds, like engines, work differently: some smoothly, and without jar; others racklingly.
All men are alike in their lower natures: it is in their higher characters that they differ.
The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity, and to execute with vigor.
Weave all beautiful things into thy thoughts.
Follies are great instructors. We should be thankful for what we learn from them. In good part, even, our past follies are the measure of our present wisdom.
When we have the means to pay for what we desire, what we get is not so much what is best, as what is costliest. Instead of this, one should endeavor, as far as possible, to have everything the best of its kind; to read the best books, to make choice of the most genial companions, to hear the ablest speakers, to see the finest pictures, to attend the best plays, to hear the sweetest music, to grow the finest fruit, and to cultivate the most beautiful and fragrant flowers. To compass these higher pleasures requires not so much an enlarged expenditure of time, money, or troubl, as a purpose never to put up with an inferior gratification when an enjoyment of a higher strain is equally within the reach.
Fear magnifies the proportions of objects. Perhaps it is upon this principle well-attested accounts of sea-serpents, and other like stories, are to be explained. An acquaintance once asked a noted duellist what the muzzle of a pistol, when pointed at him, looked like. "Why," said he, "It looks as big as the head of a flour-barrel."
Who talk much of their plans, also, rarely accomplish them. The enthusiasm necessary to carry them forward flows off and disappears at the end of their tongues.
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.
Heaven itself is never so clearly revealed to us as in the face of a beautiful woman.
It is the privilege of a friend to say of us with propriety what we cannot with delicacy say of ourselves.
Nature has not conferred upon us a responsible existence, without giving us, at the same time, the strength, rightly exerted, to perform its obligations.
Nothing that is not lovable is worth portraying.
To become the master of his circumstance - to override them, as the stately ship overrides the waves, stormy or smooth, as her obedient element - not overwhelmed and lost in them. This is the aim and effort of every noble nature.
Three things principally determine the quality of a man: the leading object he proposes to himself in life; the manner in which he sets about accomplishing it; and the effect which success or failure has upon him.
The essentials of friendship are mutualities of good-will and kind offices. A partial friendship may spring from benefits conferred or received, but a perfect friendship can only arise out of both. The most perfect friendship I can conceive of, is that which may be supposed to exist between a blind beggar and his dog. They are little to the rest of the world, but everything to each other.
Evils are to be traced to their sources, and struck at there.
No man is greatly competent to serve the cause of truth, till he has made audacity a part of his mental constitution.
A book should be luminous, not voluminous; it should be sweet-tempered: it should reflect its author: it should be a cast from his thoughts; a mirror of his feelings; a picture in miniature of his life. It should resemble a tranquil lake, in whose glassy surface the varied wonders of the earth and sky are faithfully imaged.
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.
A character should be judged by its best performance. It is in this that it attains to its clearest expression; and to this, and beyond this, its aspiration tends.
The words of a man indicates his character.
It matters not so much that the outer world in which we live is disturbed and agitated, and rocked with contentions, provided only that we can stand, in the midst of its whirl and confusion of events, inwardly composed.
A community of wisdom and the virtues must precede a community of goods. When these are held in common, lands and chattels will be.
Much of the sweetness of being beloved comes from the feeling that we are appreciated.
The next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to quote another's wit.
We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.
Chiefly the good is worth knowing, but only the beautiful is worth studying.
It is a waste of sweetness for a woman to kiss a woman. Kisses should be sacred to lovers. 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.
Higher individuality can only be maintained through superior habits. He who lives like other men, will become like other men.
When a poor friend comes to me as a man, to talk to me as a man, he is cordially welcome, and our intercourse proceeds at once on the basis of our common manhood; but when he comes to me in his character of poor friend, to talk up to me as his superior, what wonder if I assume airs, and talk down to him as an inferior. He degrades me in degrading himself.
In the deeper recesses of every heart is a store of hoarded secrets - the cherished accumulations of years... Perfect confidence demands perfect sympathy, and understanding, as well with our past as with out present experience.
Cheerfullness is an offshoot of goodness and of wisdom. We look into a man's face, and see how cheerful it is, and then we know how wise and good he is.
Increase of knowledge is the death of innocence, but it favors the growth of virtue.
It is much, indeed, if we can drop even one bad habit a year; but this is more than most of us do in a lifetime.
Without imagination a man is but a poor creature. His life is like a night without a moon to gild it.
Life is so various that the most active mind cannot hope to become acquainted with more than a few of its particulars.
The great artist is a slave to his ideals.
Hatreds are the chimneys of the mind, serving to carry off the smoke of its pestilent humors.
Living is battling. Nor would an earnest man have it otherwise.
Our happiness depends chiefly upon the estimate we form of life, and the efforts we make to bring ourselves into harmony with its laws.
It is not so much in the strength to succeed that we are usually deficient, but in the art of bringing the strength we have to bear where it is most needed, and keeping it there. Successful minds work like a gimplet - to single point.
We fear to perish utterly at death, and seek a continuance of life beyond it in the thoughts of men.
Family relations are natural relations; the social relations are artifical.
By thinking too much of the other worlds, we become unfit to live in this.
Home never appears to us so beautiful as when we are remote from it. Chilled by the indifference of the rest of the world - annoyed by the discomforts that attend us among strangers - we long to be once more within the charmed circle where they are unknown.
The pleasantest world to live in is the world of ideas. This is the scholar's, the wit's, the poet's, the artist's, the philosopher's world.
We become familiar with the outsides of men, as with the outsides of houses, and think we know them, while we are ignorant of so much that is within them.
They are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers.
Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.
Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.
Dull men are to be closely studied. Their qualities, like pearls, lie out of sight, and must be dived for.
There is a great beauty in going through life fearlessly. Half our fears are baseless - the other half discreditable.
To confide too much is to put your lemon into another man's squeezer.
Happiness and unhappiness, again, are more qualities of mind, than incidents of place or position. "Were I in search of the most miserable and the most happy of men," said Dr. Warton, "I would look for them in a cloister."
Much of the pleasures of life comes from its illusions. As by one these depart, Time kindly puts new ones in their places.
The first step towards greatness is to honest, says a proverb. But the proverb fails to state the case strongly enough. Honesty is not only "the first step towards greatness" - it is greatness itself.
The thing which an active mind most needs is a purpose and a direction worthy of its activity.
A generous estimate of a friend's nobler qualities should prevent us from giving particular attention to the little foibles that sometimes obscure them.
He speaks and acts best who speaks and acts up to the highest possibilites of his distinctive character. We do not expect the inferior orders of animals to transcend the limits of their natures: no more should we ask any man of a peculiarly formed character to talk or act like other who is unlike him.
The less of nobleness in its surroundings, the more necessity for an elevated nature to remain loyal to its higher affinities. Thus, purity, in times of corruption, has the double force of protest and example. The darker the night, the more resplendent and cheering the light that shines through it.
Few minds wear out; more rust out.
One should not think himself dead until he is so.
Without passion there can be no energy of character. Indeed, the passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways, and dangerous only in one - through their excess.
The most perfect friendship I can conceive of, is that which may be supposed to exist between a blind beggar and his dog. They are little to the rest of the world, but everything to each other.
Tomorrow thinks not of the cares of today.
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.
As far as possible, our habits should be in accordance with, and subordinate to, some plan of life. We have plans for business, and plans of pleasure; plans for tomorrow, and plans for the year; plans indeed for almost everything. Why not, then, a plan for life?
Courage ennobles manhood; cowardice degrades it.
Courage, again, enlarges, cowardice diminishes, resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.
Weakness in the leader is demoralization in the army.
Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar, of life: the one preserves, the other sweetens it.
Perhaps no man is happy without a delusion of some kind.Delusions, it may be said, are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
A thorough scoundrel values the confidence you repose in him only so far as it enables him to abuse it.
Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire.
Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.