Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes

95 Sourced Quotes

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.

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

Christian Nestell Bovee
At all events, the next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to quote another's wit.

Christian Nestell Bovee
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.

Christian Nestell Bovee
Repose without stagnation is the state most favorable to happiness. "The great felicity of life," says Seneca, "is to be without perturbations.

Christian Nestell Bovee
Life is indeed either a rich possession or a poor, according as it is made subservient to noble aims or ignoble pleasures.

Christian Nestell Bovee
A peculiar work in any art must not be too hastily judged. New styles have to create new tastes.

Christian Nestell Bovee
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.

Christian Nestell Bovee
The natural wants are few, and easily gratified: it is only those which are artificial that perplex us by their multiplicity.

Christian Nestell Bovee
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.

Christian Nestell Bovee
Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.

Christian Nestell Bovee
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.

Christian Nestell Bovee
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.

Christian Nestell Bovee
Sorrow is never more sorrowful than when it jests at its own misery.

Christian Nestell Bovee
In general, inquiry ceases when we adopt a theory. After that, we overlook whatever makes against it, and see and think, and talk and write, only in its favor. Indeed, when we have a snug, comfortable theory, to which we are much attached, they appear to us as a very mean set of facts that will not square with it.

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

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

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

Christian Nestell Bovee
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.

Christian Nestell Bovee
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.

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

Christian Nestell Bovee
In secluding himself too much from society, an author is in danger of losing that intimate acquaintance with life which is the only sure foundation of power in a writer.

Christian Nestell Bovee
Love delights in paradoxes. Saddest when it has most reason to be gay, sighs are the signs of its deepest joy, and silence is the expression of its yearning tenderness.

Christian Nestell Bovee
It is curious to what a degree one may become attached to a fine tree, especially when it is placed where trees are rare.

Christian Nestell Bovee
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.

Christian Nestell Bovee