Christian Nestell Bovee

Heaven lent you a soul, Earth will lend a grave.

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.

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

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

Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven's dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds.

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

Genius makes its observations in short-hand, talent writes them out at length.

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

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

Many children many cares, no children no felicity.

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.

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

The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor.

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.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

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.

Living with a saint is more grueling than being one.

A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.

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

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us and approximate to the characters we most admire.

Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism, and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.

Panic is a sudden desertion of us and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.

When all else is lost the future still remains.

Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared and with it none despised.

Our first and last love is self-love.

Doubt whom you will but never yourself.

It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon.

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

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

As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff so does affliction purify virtue.

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly.

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.

We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

Partial culture runs to the ornate extreme culture to simplicity.

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

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

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

In politics merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised like a target to a position to be fired at.

Wine is a treacherous friend who you must always be on guard for.

The small courtesies sweeten life, the greater ennoble it.

The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.