The perfection of dress is in the union of three requisites—in its being comfortable, cheap, and tasteful.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Dress
Address makes opportunities; the want of it gives them.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Doubt, Assurance, Self-reliance, Uncertainty, Confidence
No one was probably ever injured by having his good qualities made the subject of judicious praise. The virtues, like plants, reward the attention bestowed upon them by growing more and more thrifty. A lad who is often told that he is a good boy will in time grow ashamed to exhibit the qualities of a bad one. 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.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Praise
Fame—a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Fame
Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Business
One who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do.—He has lain down to die, and the grass is already growing over him.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Contentment
The beauty seen, is partly in him who sees it.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Beauty
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
Topics: Business
Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear long the burden of great joys.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Joy, Excitement, Moderation, Peace, Happiness
We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Sorrow
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
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: Role models, Reason, Follow, Example
The great obstacle to progress is prejudice.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Difficulty, Prejudice, Obstacles
A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake, as by never repeating it.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Unhappiness
When all else is lost, the future still remains.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Tomorrow, Future, The Future
Intellectually, as well as politically, the direction of all true progress is toward greater freedom, and along an endless succession of ideas.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Progress
To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Flowers, Nature
Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven’s dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Earth
The love of some men for their wivess like that of Alfieri for his horse. “My attachment for him,” said he, “went so far as to destroy my peace every time that he had the least ailment; but my love for him did not prevent me from fretting and chafing him whenever he did not wish to go my way.”
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Marriage
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
Many an honest man practices on himself an amount of deceit, sufficient, if practiced on another, and in a little different way, to send him to the State prison.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Deceit
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
Topics: Quotations
The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. The roads leading to distinction in separate pursuits diverge, and the nearer we approach the one, the farther we recede from the other.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Occupation
An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Riches
Dignity of position adds to dignity of character, as well as to dignity of carriage. Give us a proud position, and we are impelled to act up to it.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Dignity
What is taken from the fortune, also, may haply be so much lifted from the soul. The greatness of a loss, as the proverb suggests, is determinable, not so much by what we have lost, as by what we have left.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Waste
Heaven lent you a soul Earth will lend a grave.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Earth, Heaven, Proverbs
What a man knows should find its expression in what he does; the value of superior knowledge is chiefly in that it leads to a performing manhood.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Knowledge, Action
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Cynthia Ozick American Novelist, Essayist
- Helen Gurley Brown American Publisher
- Harry Browne American Author, Economist
- E. L. Doctorow American Novelist
- Emma Lazarus American Poet, Writer
- Susan Sontag American Writer, Philosopher
- Margaret Truman American Author
- Erica Jong American Novelist, Poet
- Ashleigh Brilliant British Cartoonist
- Martial Ancient Roman Latin Poet
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