Quotes from bovee christian nestell ix

The poet's is the highest type of character: other men dwell in the conventional--he chiefly abides in the universal.

There are seasons when our passions have slept so long that we know not whether they still exist in us. So does flax forget that it is combustible when the fire is away from it.

Who aspires to remain leader must keep in advance of his column. His fear must not play traitor to his occasions. The instant he falls into line with his followers, a bolder spirit may throw himself at the head of the movement initiated, and in that moment his leadership is gone.

Marriage, rightly concluded, is an incarnation of love--poetry expressed in action--a sweet embellishment of an otherwise prosaic existence.

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

At present society is composed, not so much of men and women, as of the raw material of men and women, which it will be the office of a higher civilization to work up into the forms of a truer manhood and womanhood.

Let a man restore order within himself, and chaos without ceases.

Our opinions partake, more or less, of the prejudices of our class, party, or sect. We are all largely pledged, through interest, affection, or passion, to particular classes of opinion, and the strength of efforts to get released from these pledges, is the measure of our advancement.

We repose too much upon the actual, when we should be seeking to develop the possibilities of our being. It is true of nearly all of us, that what we have done is little compared with what we might have accomplished, or may hereafter effect.

In every moment of conscious happiness there mingles an undertone of sadness. However full of enjoyment the present, the future is always uncertain, and it is the feeling of this--the feeling that we are of the class of ephemera--perpetually recurring in the rarest and sweetest moments of existence, that constitutes, more than any other, the "one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin."

Music lends grace and dignity to life; it softens care, alleviates regrets, refines and enlivens sensibility, links the ideal to the actual, and suggests a flow of life in unison with its harmonies.

Pride is like the beautiful acacia, that lifts its head proudly above its neighbor plants--forgetting that it too, like them, has its roots in the dirt.

In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.

To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity.

It is easier to die bravely than to live so.

Political aspirants make too much of the people before election, and, if successful, too much of themselves after it. They use the people when they want to rise, as we treat a spirited horse when we want to mount him;--for a time we pat the animal upon the neck, and speak him softly; but once in the saddle, then come the whip and spur.

Upon marrying, we need most to pray for one of two things in our partners--the love that blinds, or the good-nature that excuses.

Ah, my friends, Love, like a froward boy, with his hands full of sugar-plums, still cries for more.

Haste turns usually upon a matter of ten minutes too late, and may be avoided by a habit of being ten minutes too early.

The reason why there are so many narrow-minded people in the world is, because there is so little travelling in it.