Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes

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

In a contest with a weaker party it is more honorable to yield than to force concession. Magnanimity becomes the strong.

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.

Earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All good writing leaves something unexpressed.

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

Many an honest man practices upon himself an amount of deceit sufficient, if practised upon another, and in a little different way, to send him to the state prison.

It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.

In ambition, as in love, the successful can afford to be indulgent toward their rivals. The prize our own, it is graceful to recognize the merit that vainly aspired to it.

Qualities not regulated run into their opposites. Economy before competence is meanness after it. Therefore economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it.

To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.

As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.

At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. You pink your adversary, and he is forthwith dead; and then you deserve to be hung for it.

Passion doesn't look beyond the moment of its existence.

We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real.

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

There are ceremonious bows that repel one like a cudgel.

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

Loss of sincerity is loss of vital power.

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

The extent of poverty in the world is much exaggerated. Our sensitiveness makes half our poverty; our fears--anxieties for ills that never happen--a greater part of the other half.

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.

Justice, not the majority, should rule.

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

Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt (called by Galileo the father of invention), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins?

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.

Bad taste is a species of bad morals.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders.

Example has far more followers than reason.

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.

The greatest happiness comes from the greatest activity.

Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues.

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

To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred.

Melancholy sees the worst of things...[rather than the best]

The knowledge beyond all other knowledge is the knowledge how to excuse.

Hope is the best part of our riches.

Wine is a treacherous friend who you must always be on guard for.

The next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to be able to quote another's wit.

Next to being witty, the best thing is being able to quote another's wit.

To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound.

Truth comes to us from the past, as gold is washed down from the mountains of Sierra Nevada, in minute but precious particles, and intermixed with infinite alloy, the debris of the centuries.