Christian Nestell Bovee quotes:

Our first and last love is self-love.

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.

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.

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

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

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.

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

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

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

Very handsome women have usually far less sensibility to compliments than their less beautiful sisters.

Living with a saint is more grueling than being one.

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven's dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds.

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.

I once asked a distinguished artist what place he gave to labor in art. "Labor," he in effect said, "is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art." Turning then to another--"And you," I inquired, "what do you consider as the great force in art?" "Love," he replied. In their two answers I found but one truth.

The body of the sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.

The finest compliment that can be paid to a woman of sense is to address her as such.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

They are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers.

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

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.

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

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

Patience is only one faculty; earnestness the devotion of all the faculties. 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.

Earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties.

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

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 our selves.

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

Nature has provided for the exigency of privation, by putting the measure of our necessities far below the measure of our wants. Our necessities are to our wants as Falstaff's pennyworth of bread to his any quantity of sack.

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.

There are seaons when our passions have slept so long that we know not whether they still exist in us. So does flax forget that it is combustible when the fire is away from it.

None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances.

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

To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity.

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

Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important 2. Promote a vision 3. Follow the golden rule 4. Admit mistakes 5. Criticize others only in private 6. Stay close to the action Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.

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

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

A better principle than this, that "the majority shall rule," is this other, that justice shall rule. "Justice," says the code of Justinian, "is the constant and perpetual desire to render every man his due.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

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

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly.

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

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.

The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy.

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

Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do.

Pure motives do not insure perfect results.

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.

New situations inspire new thoughts. Here is the benefit of travelling, much more than in mere sight-seeing. We lose ourselves in the streets of our own city, and go abroad to find ourselves.

It is difficult to say which is the greatest evil--to have too violent passions, or to be wholly devoid of them. Controlled with firmness, guided by discretion, and hallowed by the imagination, the passions are the vivifiers and quickeners of our being. 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.

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

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.

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

Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.

The heart contracts as the pocket expands.

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.

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

There is no sense of weariness like that which closes in a day of eager and unintermittent pursuit of pleasure. The apple is eaten, but "the core sticks in the throat." Expectation has then given way to ennui, appetite to satiety.

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

Examples are few of men ruined by giving.

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

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

One must have been, at some time or other, in a situation where a small sum was as necessary almost as life itself, with no more ability to raise it than to raise the dead, before he can fully appreciate the value of money.

The beauty of a woman transcends all other forms of beauty, as well in the sweetness of its suggestions, as in the fervor of the admiration it awakens. The beauty of a lovely woman is an inspiration, a sweet delirium, a gentle madness. Her looks are love-potions. Heaven itself is never so clearly revealed to us as in the face of a beautiful woman.

There will always be romance in the world so long as there are young hearts in it.

The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.

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

It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon.

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.

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

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

The great obstacle to progress is prejudice

Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection, these are love's pretty ingredients for a kiss.

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

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

Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself. The judicious quoter, too, helps on what is much needed in the world, a freer circulation of good thoughts, pure feelings, and pleasant fancies.

The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.

The worst deluded are the self-deluded.

All good writing leaves something unexpressed.

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.

Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues.

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.

There are some weaknesses that are peculiar and distinctive to generous characters, as freckles are to a fair skin.

A mother's love is indeed the golden link that binds youth to age; and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek, or silvered his brow, who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion, or the gentle chidings, of the best friend that God gives us.

Dreamers are half-way men of thought, and men of thought are half-way men of action.

It is invidious to distinguish particular men as adventurers: we are all such.

Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time.

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

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.

Hope is the best part of our riches. What sufficeth it that we have the wealth of the Indies in our pockets, if we have not the hope of heaven in our souls?

It is safer to quote what is written than what is spoken. What a man writes it is fair to presume he believes as a matter of general conviction, but it is not so with what he utters in the freedom of conversation. In that he may only express the feeling of the moment, and not his settled judgment, or matured opinion.

A good thought is indeed a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked; next he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us. Whoever adopts and circulates a just thought, participates in the merit that originated it.

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.

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

It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another off shore.

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

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

The loss of a beloved connection awakens an interest in Heaven before unfelt.

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

As many suffer from too much as too little.

The selection of a subject is to the author what choice of position is to the general,--once skilfully determined, the battle is already half won. Of a few writers it may be said that they are popular in despite of their subjects--but of a great many more it may be observed that they are popular because of them.

Age, that acquaints us with infirmities in ourselves, should make us tender in our reprehension of weakness elsewhere.

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.

A great destiny needs a generous diet.... What can be expected of a people that live on macaroni!

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