American author (1820-1904)
Our happiness depends chiefly upon the estimate we form of life, and the efforts we make to bring ourselves into harmony with its laws.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Love of children is the homage of the heart to unsullied purity. Indeed, children are the bright side of life. From our sins and sorrows, how refreshing is it to turn to their artless ways and purer joys! Would that they could all be so educated, as not, in their after-years, to darken life by their offenses!
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Life being full of harsh realities, we seek relief from them in a variety of pleasing delusions.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It requires a great genius to flatter successfully a great personage. The common arts of adulation are thrown away upon the exalted. They are so accustomed to these that they take little notice.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives it its sweetness: it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It is not meet that the strong, free limbs of manhood should be fettered by the silken threads of ceremony.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Genius makes its observations in short hand; talent writes them out at length.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Fame: A few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Besides the five senses, there is a sixth sense, of equal importance--the sense of duty.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
An illusion dissipated is an experience gained.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
A peculiar work in any art must not be too hastily judged. New styles have to create new tastes.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The gayest young men make the gravest old men.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Next to living with honor is to die with honor.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Courage and timidity are the accompaniments of opposite tendencies of thought. The brave think only of the blows they will strike; the timid of those they may receive.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, Doubt (called "the father of inventions" by Galileo), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins?
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
As well might a flower complain of the bee which its sweetness attracts, as a pretty girl of being gazed at when she goes abroad. But the complaint is seldom made in earnest.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought