Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Christian Nestell Bovee (American Writer, Aphorist)

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

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, Reason, Example, Role models

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

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: Action, Knowledge

We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Persistence, Boldness, Perseverance

Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection—these are love’s pretty ingredients for a kiss.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Kisses

Bad taste is a species of bad morals.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Style, Taste

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Art, Arts, Artists

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Progress

We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Poverty

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

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

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

A book should be luminous not voluminous.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Writers, Writing, Authors & Writing

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

The language of the heart which comes from the heart and goes to the heart—is always simple, graceful, and full of power, but no art of rhetoric can teach it. It is at once the easiest and most difficult language,—difficult, since it needs a heart to speak it; easy, because its periods though rounded and full of harmony, are still unstudied.
Christian Nestell Bovee

Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Culture, Simplicity

A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake, as by never repeating it.
Christian Nestell Bovee

There is a German proverb which says that “Take it easy,” and “Live long,” are brothers.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Moderation

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

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

The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.
Christian Nestell Bovee

Even when we fancy we have grown wiser, it is only, it may be, that new prejudices have displaced old ones.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Prejudice

It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered. The Chinese say, “The glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time you fall.”
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Mistakes, Failures, Mistake, Change

A good thought is a great boon for which God is first to be thanked; next, he who is the first to utter it; and then in a lesser but still a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Quotations

A pleasant illusion is better than a harsh reality.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Illusion

Three things principally determine the quality of a man: the leading object he proposes to himself in life; the manner in which he sets about accomplishing it; and the effect which success or failure has upon him.
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
Topics: Passion, Kissing, Kisses, Affection

It may almost be held that the hope of commercial gain has done nearly as much for the cause of truth, as even the love of truth itself.
Christian Nestell Bovee

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Genius

Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Merit

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