Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes

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.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

Our first and last love is self-love.

The language of the heart--the language which "comes from the heart" and "goes to the heart"--is always simple, always graceful, and always full of power, but no art of rhetoric can teach it. It is at once the easiest and most difficult language--difficult, since it needs a heart to speak it; easy, because its periods though rounded and full of harmony, are still unstudied.

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.

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.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

A mother is the best friend God ever gave.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.

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 great artist is a slave to his ideals.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world - they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

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

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.

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

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly.

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

Few minds wear out; more rust out.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Vanity in an old man is charming. It is a proof of an open, nature. Eighty winters have not frozen him up, or taught him concealments. In a young person it is simply allowable; we do not expect him to be above it.

Galileo called doubt the father of invention; it is certainly the pioneer.

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.

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

The worth of a book is a matter of expressed juices.

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.

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

Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great.

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

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

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.