Quotes from Christian Nestell Bovee

Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.

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

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.

Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it.

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.

Wine is a treacherous friend who you must always be on guard for.

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

The greatest happiness comes from the greatest activity.

Life being full of harsh realities, we seek relief from them in a variety of pleasing delusions.

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

It is the life of democracy to favor equality.

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

Repose without stagnation is the state most favorable to happiness. "The great felicity of life," says Seneca, "is to be without perturbations.

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

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.

Heaven lent you a soul, Earth will lend a grave.

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.

Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven's dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds.

It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon.

Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection, - these are love's pretty ingredients for a kiss.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

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

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.