Quotes from Christian Nestell Bovee

Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.

Dreamers are half-way men of thought, and men of thought are half-way men of action.

The trouble with men of sense is that they are so dreadfully in earnest all the while.

The Breath becomes a stone; the stone, a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.

It is invidious to distinguish particular men as adventurers: we are all such.

It is not the number of facts he knows, but how much of a fact he is himself, that proves the man.

A man cannot paint portraits till he has seen faces.

The busiest of living agents are certain dead men's thoughts.

Women seldom forfeit their claims to respect to men whom they respect.

There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.

A mother is the best friend God ever gave.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.

To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.

Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt (called by Galileo the father of invention), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins?

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

Next to faith in God, is faith in labor.

All good writing leaves something unexpressed.

If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities..

Character is very much a matter of health.

Honesty is not only "the first step toward greatness," - it is greatness itself.