American author (1820-1904)
Pride is like the beautiful acacia, that lifts its head proudly above its neighbor plants--forgetting that it too, like them, has its roots in the dirt.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The gayest young men make the gravest old men.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
An illusion dissipated is an experience gained.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
To death we owe our life; the passing of one generation opens a way for another.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Great designs are not accomplished without enthusiasm of some sort. It is the inspiration of everything great.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar, of life: the one preserves, the other sweetens it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
He that shrinks from the grave with too great a dread, has an invisible fear behind him pushing him into it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, Doubt (called "the father of inventions" by Galileo), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins?
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Life being full of harsh realities, we seek relief from them in a variety of pleasing delusions.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Evils are to be traced to their sources, and struck at there. Like Barbary pirates, they are to be destroyed through the suppression of the state that sends them forth.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Very handsome women have usually far less sensibility to compliments than their less beautiful sisters.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The method of the critic is to balance praises with censure, and thus to do justice to the subject and--his own discrimination.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
To become the master of his circumstances--to override them, as the stately ship overrides the waves, stormy or smooth, as her obedient element--not 'whelmed and lost in them--this is the aim and effort of every loftier nature.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Ambition, in one respect, is like a singer's voice; pitched at too high a key, it breaks and comes to nothing.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It requires a great genius to flatter successfully a great personage. The common arts of adulation are thrown away upon the exalted. They are so accustomed to these that they take little notice.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
To no circumstance is the wide diffusion of error in the world more owing than to our habit of adopting conclusions from insufficiently established data. An indispensable preliminary, then, in every investigation, is to get at facts. Until these are arrived at, every opinion, theory, or system, however ingeniously framed, must necessarily rest upon an uncertain basis.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Habits influence the character pretty much as undercurrents influence a vessel, and whether they speed us on the way of our wishes, or retard our progress, their influence is not the less important because imperceptible.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake, as by never repeating it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The poor man finds happiness in economy; the rich man, misery.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
He must put his whole life into his work, who would do it well, and make it potential to influence other lives.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought