Quotes from Christian Nestell Bovee

Large natures have usually large desires, and only the small are satisfied with the small.

The very cunning conceal their cunning; the indifferently shrewd boast of it.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world--they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

Practically all knowledge resolves itself into four forms: the knowledge of what to do, how to do, and when to do, and of what not to do.

It is some compensation for great evils that they enforce great lessons.

Beauty can afford to laugh at distinctions: it is itself the greatest distinction.

Ambitious princes value inherited kingdoms not so much as conquered provinces.

Beauty, when it first discloses the mellowing touches of age, affects us painfully. It is like the tints of sunset, or the beauty of autumn--a melancholy beauty--beauty in decline--upon which we cannot gaze without a feeling of sadness--of sadness that it is passing away.

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

It is so natural for us to consider our presence as indispensable in the world, so long as we have much to do in it, that the wisdom of retiring wholly from employments in advanced life may be questioned. Certainly, he who does so is in danger of finding, before long, that he has only given up the occupation to which he has been accustomed, for the new business of calculating the period of his decease.

Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.

Business is but a means. To forget this, and to live for it and in it, as an end, is a cardinal and pernicious mistake, to which much of the want of elevation in the mercantile character is to be ascribed.

The genial optimist who praises much scatters flowers in our way. Grant that he over-praises, or that he applauds where he might condemn, still he makes--no mean result--the world to appear better than it is. A pleasant illusion is better than a harsh reality.

A man cannot paint portraits till he has seen faces.

There are some things best contemplated in silence. Their proportions are so vast that speech cannot get around them.

The activity of the young is like that of railcars in motion--they tear along with noise and turmoil, and leave peace behind them. The quietest nooks, invaded by them, lose their quietude as they pass, and recover it only on their departure.

Beauty has the more ardent, but worth the more discriminating lovers.

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

Fame - a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.

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

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound.

They are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers.

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.