Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes - Page 10

Qualities not regulated run into their opposites. Economy before competence is meanness after it. Therefore economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it.

Earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties.

To cultivate a garden is. . . to go hand in hand with Nature in some of her most beautiful processes, to learn something of her choicest secrets, and to have a more intelligent interest awakened in the beautiful order of her works elsewhere.

Dishonesty is a forsaking of permanent for temporary advantages.

Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her.

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.

Bad taste is a species of bad morals.

It is with a company as it is with a punch, everything depends upon the ingredients of which it in composed.

Loss of sincerity is loss of vital power.

Mortal beauty stings while it delights.

We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime

Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability.

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.

The worth of a book is a matter of expressed juices.

Care, admitted as guest, quickly turns to be master.

Character is very much a matter of health.

To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.

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

We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real.

Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.

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

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

The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. The roads leading to distinction in separate pursuits diverge, and the nearer we approach the one, the farther we recede from the other.

Nature has provided for the exigency of privation, by putting the measure of our necessities far below the measure of our wants. Our necessities are to our wants as Falstaff's pennyworth of bread to his any quantity of sack.

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