Quotes from Christian Nestell Bovee

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.

Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.

All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.

How like a railway tunnel is the poor man's life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!

Good men have the fewest fears. He has but one great fear who fears to do wrong; he has a thousand who has overcome it.

Examples are few of men ruined by giving.

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

Many an honest man practices upon himself an amount of deceit sufficient, if practised upon another, and in a little different way, to send him to the state prison.

Successful minds work like a gimlet--to a single point.

Age, that acquaints us with infirmities in ourselves, should make us tender in our reprehension of weakness elsewhere.

The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. Thought finds its way into action.

As many suffer from too much as too little. A fat body makes a lean mind.

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

Partial culture runs to the ornate; extreme culture to simplicity.

Hunting is a relic of the barbarous spirit that thirsted formerly for human blood, but is now content with the blood of birds and animals.

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

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

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.

In ambition, as in love, the successful can afford to be indulgent toward their rivals. The prize our own, it is graceful to recognize the merit that vainly aspired to it.

Poverty is only contemptible when it is felt to be so. Doubtless the best way to make our poverty respectable is to seem never to feel it as an evil.

Care, admitted as guest, quickly turns to be master.

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

This mind of ours, like the earth beneath our feet, teems with exhaustless riches. The conditions of development only are needed.

It is in vain that he seeks dominion abroad, who is not kingly at home.