American author (1820-1904)
We serve the devil in our youth, God in our old age--thinking if we journey towards hell while our limbs are sound, we can turn when they fail us, and get to heaven on crutches.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Books are embalmed minds. They make the great of other days our present teachers.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Ambition, in one respect, is like a singer's voice; pitched at too high a key, it breaks and comes to nothing.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
What we call conscience, in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of the constable.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The method of the critic is to balance praises with censure, and thus to do justice to the subject and--his own discrimination.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
We are far more the creatures of our ideas than of our circumstances.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
If one could only tear down his character, as old buildings are torn down, and build it up anew, as these are rebuilt! And so, in effect, it can be. A noble property of character is, that it is susceptible of improvement.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
For cowards the rode of desertion should be left open. They will carry over to the enemy nothing but their fears.
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
A perfect work destroys the critic's art.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.
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
God has created too few unmixed evils to warrant the belief that death is one of them. In all things else in nature, goodness so abounds that we are authorized to infer that it does not stop even at the grave. It is only that her footprints have become invisible.
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
We have two lessons to teach an enemy who despises us--to value himself less highly, and us more worthily.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The rules of etiquette were established mostly by women, are chiefly for the benefit of women, and are mainly suited only to the nature of women; and a too punctilious observance of them by a man, goes to show that over-refinement has nearly unsexed him.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
He must put his whole life into his work, who would do it well, and make it potential to influence other lives.
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