Christian Nestell Bovee
Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.Collection: Oysters
Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection, - these are love's pretty ingredients for a kiss.Collection: Sweet
It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.Collection: Nature
A book should be luminous not voluminous.Collection: Book
Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.Collection: Men
Hunting is a relic of the barbarism that once thirsted for human blood, but is now content with the blood of animals.Collection: Hunting
I once asked a distinguished artist what place he gave to labor in art. "Labor," he in effect said, "is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art." Turning then to another--"And you," I inquired, "what do you consider as the great force in art?" "Love," he replied. In their two answers I found but one truth.Collection: Art
There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.Collection: Men
"There is nothing," says a correspondent of the New York Times, "which the business world discards as unpractical and useless so much as the quiet, thinking scholar. But this is the man who makes revolutions. Politicians are mere puppets in the hands of men of thought.Collection: New York
Galileo called doubt the father of invention; it is certainly the pioneer.Collection: Father
Out of politics comes more uproar than progress. It is indeed surprising how little, comparatively, this noisy department of human affairs contributes to the world's prosperity. Political commotions upon the grandest scale, political events of astounding suddenness, political characters of the greatest ability, abound, but still, permanent results are rare, and we look in vain for a measure of public good corresponding in extent to the hideous rout which ushers it in. Progress but turns upon its pillow, and goes to sleep again.Collection: Character
Pleasure and pain spring not so much from the nature of things, as from our manner of considering them. Pleasure, especially, is never an invariable effect of particular circumstances.Collection: Gratitude
It is some compensation for great evils, that they enforce great lessons.Collection: Gratitude
There would not be so much harm in the giddy following the fashions, if somehow the wise could always set them.Collection: Wise
He has but one great fear that fears to do wrong.Collection: Fear
The first step toward greatness is to be honest, says the proverb; but the proverb fails to state the case strong enough. Honesty is not only "the first step toward greatness," - it is greatness itself.Collection: Strong
In the assurance of strength there is strength; and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers.Collection: Strength
Melancholy sees the worst of things, things as they may be, and not as they are. It looks upon a beautiful face, and sees but a grinning skull.Collection: Beautiful
The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect may safely be left to that final neglect from which no amount of present undeserved popularity can rescue it.Collection: Imperfection
It is the life of democracy to favor equality.Collection: Democracy
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.Collection: Tears
Constant companionship is not enjoyable, any more than constant eating. We sit too long at the table of friendship, when we outsit our appetites for each other's thoughts.Collection: Long
There are ceremonious bows that repel one like a cudgel.Collection: Bows
Adhesion to one idea is monomania; to few, slavery.Collection: Ideas
Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do.Collection: Men
Pure motives do not insure perfect results.Collection: Perfect
The language of the heart--the language which "comes from the heart" and "goes to the heart"--is always simple, always graceful, and always full of power, but no art of rhetoric can teach it. It is at once the easiest and most difficult language--difficult, since it needs a heart to speak it; easy, because its periods though rounded and full of harmony, are still unstudied.Collection: Art
The past is the sepulchre of our dead emotions.Collection: Past
The extent of poverty in the world is much exaggerated. Our sensitiveness makes half our poverty; our fears--anxieties for ills that never happen--a greater part of the other half.Collection: Anxiety
He half retrieves a defeat who yields to it gracefully.Collection: Yield
Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.Collection: Men
Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.Collection: Courage
To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred.Collection: Country
Ideas are like matter, infinitely divisible. It is not given to us to get down so to speak to their final atoms, but to their molecular groupings-the way is never ending and the progress infinitely delightful and profitable.Collection: Ideas
Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.Collection: Balls
Alas, the transports beauty can inspire!Collection: Flirting
A woman's love, like lichens upon a rock, will still grow where even charity can find no soil to nurture itself.Collection: Women
Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.Collection: Population
Excellence in art is largely the result of attention to minutiae, and--prayer.Collection: Art
Hope is the best part of our riches.Collection: Hope
Vanity in an old man is charming. It is a proof of an open, nature. Eighty winters have not frozen him up, or taught him concealments. In a young person it is simply allowable; we do not expect him to be above it.Collection: Winter
A mother is the best friend God ever gave.Collection: Mother
The questions most furiously discussed are those which have in them a basis of truth, and yet a large admixture of errors. We inconsiderately take hold of, and mistakingly support or oppose them, as either wholly true or wholly false.Collection: Errors
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.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Degrees
In general, inquiry ceases when we adopt a theory. After that, we overlook whatever makes against it, and see and think, and talk and write, only in its favor. Indeed, when we have a snug, comfortable theory, to which we are much attached, they appear to us as a very mean set of facts that will not square with it.Collection: Writing
All power is indeed weak compared with that of the thinker. He sits upon the throne of his Empire of Thought, mightier far than they who wield material sceptres.Collection: Thinking
We repose too much upon the actual, when we should be seeking to develop the possibilities of our being. It is true of nearly all of us, that what we have done is little compared with what we might have accomplished, or may hereafter effect.Collection: Done
It is in vain that he seeks dominion abroad, who is not kingly at home.Collection: Home