Quotes from bovee christian nestell viii

Fortune, in the distribution of her gifts, resembles a good fellow throwing pennies into the air for children to scramble after. She does not cast to this and to that one according to their respective merits, but leaves chance and their own activity to determine who shall get the most of her bounty.

Home never appears to us so beautiful as when we are remote from it.

Love makes a few weeks so rich that all the rest of our lives seems poor in comparison.

Newspapers widen the sphere of our sympathies. They make their readers enter into the joys and sorrows of thousands of whom they would else know nothing, and for whom they would otherwise care nothing.

The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.

Few marry their first loves; fewer ought to. The love of the very young is like the love of children for sweetmeats: they usually outgrow it.

Life is indeed either a rich possession or a poor, according as it is made subservient to noble aims or ignoble pleasures.

The wise build their doctrines--theological and philosophical--upon a basis of probabilities, never upon the foundation of absolute certainty.

We cannot reason ourselves into love, nor can we reason ourselves out of it, which suggests that love and reason have little to do with each other.

None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances.

One must have been, at some time or other, in a situation where a small sum was as necessary almost as life itself, with no more ability to raise it than to raise the dead, before he can fully appreciate the value of money.

A peculiar work in any art must not be too hastily judged. New styles have to create new tastes.

It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.

Life, like some cities, is full of blind alleys, leading nowhere. The great art is to get and to keep out of them.

Genius speaks and acts for all men. In its triumphs all are interested. They enlarge our conceptions of the worth of humanity, and extend the limits of our capacities. In the grandeur and sweep of the poet's imagination, in the stern patience and searching analysis of the student of causes--compelling, as it were, reluctant Nature to a revelation of her secrets--we see ourselves, as in a magnifying mirror, enlarged and exalted.

In secluding himself too much from society, an author is in danger of losing that intimate acquaintance with life which is the only sure foundation of power in a writer.

It is difficult to say which is the greatest evil--to have too violent passions, or to be wholly devoid of them. Controlled with firmness, guided by discretion, and hallowed by the imagination, the passions are the vivifiers and quickeners of our being. Without passion there can be no energy of character. Indeed, the passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways, and dangerous only in one--through their excess.

Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.