Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes - Page 11

Living with a saint is more grueling than being one.

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

It is seldom that we find out how great are our resources until we are thrown upon them.

Love delights in paradoxes. Saddest when it has most reason to be gay, sighs are the signs of its deepest joy, and silence is the expression of its yearning tenderness.

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.

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

A genuine passion is like a mountain stream; it admits of no impediment; it cannot go backward; it must go forward.

Passion looks not beyond the moment of its existence. Better, it says, the kisses of love to day, than the felicities of heaven afar off.

Woman's power is over the affections. A beautiful dominion is hers; but she risks its forfeiture when she seeks to extend it.

At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. You pink your adversary, and he is forthwith dead; and then you deserve to be hung for it.

There is no sense of weariness like that which closes in a day of eager and unintermittent pursuit of pleasure. The apple is eaten, but "the core sticks in the throat." Expectation has then given way to ennui, appetite to satiety.

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

It is not the number of facts he knows, but how much of a fact he is himself, that proves the man.

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.

A better principle than this, that "the majority shall rule," is this other, that justice shall rule. "Justice," says the code of Justinian, "is the constant and perpetual desire to render every man his due.

Hunting is a relic of the barbarism that once thirsted for human blood, but is now content with the blood of animals.

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.

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.

There are ceremonious bows that repel one like a cudgel.

It is some compensation for great evils, that they enforce great lessons.

Rejecting the miracles of Christ, we still have the miracle of Christ Himself.

It may almost be held that the hope of commercial gain has done nearly as much for the cause of truth as even the love of truth.

In the assurance of strength there is strength; and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers.

Galileo called doubt the father of invention; it is certainly the pioneer.

The scope of an intellect is not to be measured with a tape-string, or a character deciphered from the shape or length of a nose.