Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes - Page 2

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

There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.

It is difficult to say which is the greatest evil--to have too violent passions, or to be wholly devoid of them. Controlled with firmness, guided by discretion, and hallowed by the imagination, the passions are the vivifiers and quickeners of our being. Without passion there can be no energy of character. Indeed, the passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways, and dangerous only in one--through their excess.

Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war.

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

The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it--to realize it to the full--to be a profound and inscrutable mystery.

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

The great obstacle to progress is prejudice

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

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.

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it.

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

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another off shore.

Winter is the night of vegetation.

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.

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

All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.

Cheerfulness is an offshoot of goodness and of wisdom.

Economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it.

Excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness.

Weakness ineffectually seeks to disguise itself,--like a drunken man trying to show how sober he is.

Dreamers are half-way men of thought, and men of thought are half-way men of action.

We should round every day of stirring action with an evening of thought. We learn nothing of our experience except we muse upon it.