Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) was an American writer and aphorist. Bovee is the author of Thoughts, Feelings, and Fancies (1857) and Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862)—epigrams from these books are widely cited in contemporary anthologies of passages.
Born in New York City, Bovee received early instruction at private schools. After getting a law degree, he was admitted to the bar, and practiced law for many years with success.
Bovee was part of an intellectual circle that comprised of such luminaries as Washington Irving, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. at the Saturday Evening Club of Boston. He also co-founded The Athenaeum Club of New York and served as a regent of the Long Island College Hospital.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Christian Nestell Bovee
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.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Love
There is no sense of weariness like that which closes a day of eager and unintermitted pursuit of pleasure.—The apple is eaten and the core sticks in the throat.—Expectation has given way to ennui, and appetite to satiety.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
The more gross the fraud, the more glibly will it go down and the more greedily will it be swallowed, since folly will always find faith wherever impostors will find impudence.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Hunting is a relic of the barbarous spirit that thirsted formerly for human blood, but is now content with the blood of birds and animals.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Hunting
We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Persistence, Boldness, Perseverance
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.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Poverty
And still again: a character is to be judged by its best performance. It is in this that it attains to its clearest expression; and to this, and beyond this, its aspiration tends.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Suffering
The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye, and half with the fancy.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Face, Beauty
All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Character
Half our fears are baseless, the other half discreditable.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Simplicity, Culture
Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Unemployment, Mind, Work
Examples are few of men ruined by giving.—Men are heroes in spending—cravens in what they give.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Gifts
An actor who cannot forget his audience will never enchant it. And so of authors. A book that is not written in forgetfulness of the public, is not likely to be worthy of it. The first condition of a writer’s success is, to keep his mind free from a too anxious hope or fear about it. He must abandon himself to his genius, or be abandoned by it. Perfect success is only to be achieved through perfect liberty.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
They lose the world who buy it, with much care.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
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.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Life, Living, Youth
Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Silence
Example has more followers than reason.—We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.—A generous habit of thought and action carries with it an incalculable influence.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Follow, Example, Role models, Reason
The reveries of the dreamer advance his hopes, but not their realization. One good hour of earnest work is worth them all.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity, and execute with vigor; to sketch out a map of possibilities, and then to treat them as probabilities.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
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 ever gives us.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Mother
Melancholy sees the worst of things—things as they might be, and not as they are.—It looks upon a beautiful face, and sees but a grinning skull.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Success, Failures, Mistakes, Failure
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
Topics: Affection, Kissing, Passion, Kisses
Next to being witty yourself, the best thing is being able to quote another’s wit.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Quotations
Between the man of talent and much information, and the man of genius, there is much the same difference as between a full tank and an unfailing fountain. The mind of the first is a receptacle of valuable facts, and possibly of rich and generous ideas, susceptible, however, of being exhausted; that of the latter is an original source of wisdom, which suffers no diminution by what it imparts.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Fame—a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Fame
There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Fear
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