American author (1820-1904)
Hatreds are the chimneys of the mind, serving to carry off the smoke of its pestilent humors.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Kindness: A language which the dumb can speak, and the deaf can understand.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
A particular disappointment is seldom more than an excrescence upon the trunk of a general good--a shower that spoils the pleasure party, but refreshes and enriches the earth.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
If necessity is the mother of invention, it is no less the mother of crime; eternal justice is one thing, eternal love of bread and butter and other good things another; where it is a necessity of our nature to have, it is a weakness of our being to get.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Love makes a few weeks so rich that all the rest of our lives seems poor in comparison.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Marriage, rightly concluded, is an incarnation of love--poetry expressed in action--a sweet embellishment of an otherwise prosaic existence.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Life is indeed either a rich possession or a poor, according as it is made subservient to noble aims or ignoble pleasures.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Upon marrying, we need most to pray for one of two things in our partners--the love that blinds, or the good-nature that excuses.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
For every great evil, apparently irremediable, there is reserved, it is probable, somewhere in the design of Providence, an effectual remedy.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Our ideas ... must first acquire a certain strength, before we can proceed efficiently to act upon them. They have their periods of immaturity and maturity. First comes the germ of the idea; then its growth; then an enlargement of that growth; then an expansion of that enlargement; until finally the idea takes its ultimate form as a picture, a book, or a revolution.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
A great destiny needs a generous diet.... What can be expected of a people that live on macaroni!
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Elements of the heroic exist in almost every individual: it is only the felicitous development of them all in one that is rare.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
A failure usually establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Perhaps the heroic element in our natures is exhibited to the best advantage, not in going from success to success, and so on through a series of triumphs, but in gathering, on the very field of defeat itself, the materials for renewed efforts, and in proceeding, with no abatement of heart or energy, to form fresh designs upon the very ruins and ashes of blasted hopes. Yes, it is this indomitable persistence in a purpose, continued alike through defeat and success, that makes, more than aught else, the hero.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Home never appears to us so beautiful as when we are remote from it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The use we make of our fortune determines its sufficiency. A little is enough if used wisely, and too much if expended foolishly.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Life, like some cities, is full of blind alleys, leading nowhere. The great art is to get and to keep out of them.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought