Quotes from Christian Nestell Bovee

Next to being witty, the best thing is being able to quote another's wit.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself. The judicious quoter, too, helps on what is much needed in the world, a freer circulation of good thoughts, pure feelings, and pleasant fancies.

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

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.

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

A good thought is indeed a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked; next he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us. Whoever adopts and circulates a just thought, participates in the merit that originated it.

A profusion of fancies and quotations is out of place in a love-letter. True feeling is always direct, and never deviates into by-ways to cull flowers of rhetoric.

Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

At all events, the next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to quote another's wit.

Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys.

Luminous quotations, also, atone, by their interest, for the dulness of an inferior book, and add to the value of a superior work by the variety which they lend to its style and treatment.

It is safer to quote what is written than what is spoken. What a man writes it is fair to presume he believes as a matter of general conviction, but it is not so with what he utters in the freedom of conversation. In that he may only express the feeling of the moment, and not his settled judgment, or matured opinion.

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.

For God's sake don't say yes until I've finished talking.

The next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to quote another's wit.

The reveries of the dreamer advance his hopes, but not their realization. One good hour of earnest work is worth them all.

No work deserves to be criticized that has not much in it that deserves to be applauded.

He must put his whole life into his work, who would do it well, and make it potential to influence other lives.

Luminous quotations, also, atone, by their interest, for the dulness of an inferior book, and add to the value of a superior work by the variety which they lend to its style and treatment.

A peculiar work in any art must not be too hastily judged. New styles have to create new tastes.

Hard workers are usually honest; industry lifts them above temptation.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

In art there are two principal schools between which each aspirant has to choose--one distinguished by its close adherence to nature, and the other by its strenuous efforts to get above it.