Quotes from bovee christian nestell x

A strong will deals with the hard facts of life as a sculptor with his marbles, making them facile and yielding to his purposes, and conquering their stubbornness by a greater stubbornness in himself.

Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion.

The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.

Satire is an abuse of wit. It corrects few evils.

Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.

All power is indeed weak compared with that of the thinker. He sits upon the throne of his Empire of Thought, mightier far than they who wield material sceptres.

Wit is better as a seasoning than as a whole dish by itself.

Resentments, carried too far, expose us to a fate analogous to that of the fish-hawk, when he strikes his talons too deep into a fish beyond his capacity to lift, and is carried under and drowned by it.

Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.

Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.

In the assurance of strength there is strength, and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers.

We take life too seriously: the office of wit is to correct this tendency.

Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured, but, like the sun, only for a time.

To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred.

In general, inquiry ceases when we adopt a theory. After that, we overlook whatever makes against it, and see and think, and talk and write, only in its favor. Indeed, when we have a snug, comfortable theory, to which we are much attached, they appear to us as a very mean set of facts that will not square with it.

New situations inspire new thoughts. Here is the benefit of travelling, much more than in mere sight-seeing. We lose ourselves in the streets of our own city, and go abroad to find ourselves.

Better freedom with a crust, than slavery with every luxury.

All good writing leaves something unexpressed.

By his provocations to good-natured merriment, a humorist of the first water contributes as much to the sum of happiness as the gravest philosopher.

A mother's love is indeed the golden link that binds youth to age, and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek, or silvered his brow, who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion, or the gentle chidings, of the best friend that God ever gives us.