Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes

The great obstacle to progress is prejudice

Successful minds work like a gimlet--to a single point.

Every war involves a greater or less relapse into barbarism. War, indeed, in its details, is the essence of inhumanity. It dehumanizes. It may save the state, but it destroys the citizen.

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

Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion.

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

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

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

The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.

The worst deluded are the self-deluded.

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

Winter is the night of vegetation.

Troubles forereckoned are doubly suffered.

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

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.

Complaint is. more contemptible than pitiful.

A genuine passion is like a mountain stream; it admits of no impediment; it cannot go backward; it must go forward.

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.

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

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

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

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

Give me the character and I will forecast the event.

Pure motives do not insure perfect results.

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

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.

There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.

Mortal beauty stings while it delights.

Economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it.

What we call conscience in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of the law.

The heart contracts as the pocket expands.

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

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!

Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.

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

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

Cheerfulness is an offshoot of goodness and of wisdom.

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

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

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.

All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.

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

The use we make of our fortune determines its sufficiency. A little is enough if used wisely, and too much if expended foolishly.

Neither love nor ambition, as it has often been shown, can brook a division of its empire in the heart.

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

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

He has but one great fear that fears to do wrong.

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

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

Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her.