Quotes from bovee christian nestell vi

A particular disappointment is seldom more than an excrescence upon the trunk of a general good--a shower that spoils the pleasure party, but refreshes and enriches the earth.

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

For every great evil, apparently irremediable, there is reserved, it is probable, somewhere in the design of Providence, an effectual remedy.

To death we owe our life; the passing of one generation opens a way for another.

One of the greatest bores in life is a too knowing fellow, who sees through all delusions, and will never let you enjoy any of them, not even your favorite ones, no matter how agreeable they may be, but must be always waking you out of some delicious dream, only to tell you, "My dear sir, you are dreaming;" as if it were not both proper and natural to dream. He forgets that many things are pleasant only while the delusions which make them so last.

The poor man finds happiness in economy; the rich man, misery.

Our happiness depends chiefly upon the estimate we form of life, and the efforts we make to bring ourselves into harmony with its laws.

Habits influence the character pretty much as undercurrents influence a vessel, and whether they speed us on the way of our wishes, or retard our progress, their influence is not the less important because imperceptible.

Hatreds are the chimneys of the mind, serving to carry off the smoke of its pestilent humors.

It requires a great genius to flatter successfully a great personage. The common arts of adulation are thrown away upon the exalted. They are so accustomed to these that they take little notice.

The perfection of dress lies in the union of three requisites: in its being comfortable, inexpensive, and in good taste. It should not be so far removed from the prevailing mode as to excite attention, nor yet so far within the fashion as to imply a weak submission to it.

Our ideas ... must first acquire a certain strength, before we can proceed efficiently to act upon them. They have their periods of immaturity and maturity. First comes the germ of the idea; then its growth; then an enlargement of that growth; then an expansion of that enlargement; until finally the idea takes its ultimate form as a picture, a book, or a revolution.

There would not be so much harm in the giddy following the fashions, if somehow the wise could always set them.

An illusion dissipated is an experience gained.

To no circumstance is the wide diffusion of error in the world more owing than to our habit of adopting conclusions from insufficiently established data. An indispensable preliminary, then, in every investigation, is to get at facts. Until these are arrived at, every opinion, theory, or system, however ingeniously framed, must necessarily rest upon an uncertain basis.

Truth comes to us from the past, as gold is washed down from the mountains of Sierra Nevada, in minute but precious particles, and intermixed with infinite alloy, the debris of the centuries.

Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her.

Genius makes its observations in short hand; talent writes them out at length.