110+ Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes On Christianity, Education And Inspirational

Christian Nestell Bovee was an American author, lawyer, and philosopher from the 19th century. He is best known for his works of aphorism and his essays on popular philosophy. His most famous works include Intuitions and Summaries of Thought, The Intellect, and The Emotions. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Christian Nestell Bovee on christianity, life, leadership.

Top 10 Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes

1. Our first and last love is self-love.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.
5. The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.
6. Excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness.
7. Dishonest people conceal their faults from themselves as well as others, honest people know and confess them.
8. Heaven lent you a soul, Earth will lend a grave.
9. There are some weaknesses that are peculiar and distinctive to generous characters, as freckles are to a fair skin.
10. A mother is the best friend God ever gave.

Christian Nestell Bovee Short Quotes

• Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.
• Few minds wear out; more rust out.
• The worth of a book is a matter of expressed juices.
• Living with a saint is more grueling than being one.
• Galileo called doubt the father of invention; it is certainly the pioneer.
• Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.
• Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.
• Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.
• The worst deluded are the self-deluded.
• Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.

Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes About Life

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things. — Christian Nestell Bovee

How like a railway tunnel is the poor man's life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity! — Christian Nestell Bovee

Life being full of harsh realities, we seek relief from them in a variety of pleasing delusions. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes About Love

Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection, - these are love's pretty ingredients for a kiss. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Talk less about the years to come, Live, love labor more today. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Love makes a few weeks so rich that all the rest of our lives seems poor in comparison. — Christian Nestell Bovee

We cannot reason ourselves into love, nor can we reason ourselves out of it, which suggests that love and reason have little to do with each other. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

A profusion of fancies and quotations is out of place in a love-letter. True feeling is always direct, and never deviates into by-ways to cull flowers of rhetoric. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes About Inspirational

Honesty is not only "the first step toward greatness," - it is greatness itself. — Christian Nestell Bovee

New situations inspire new thoughts. Here is the benefit of travelling, much more than in mere sight-seeing. We lose ourselves in the streets of our own city, and go abroad to find ourselves. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Alas, the transports beauty can inspire! — Christian Nestell Bovee

The beauty seen is partly in him who sees it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes About Heaven

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

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Hope is the best part of our riches. What sufficeth it that we have the wealth of the Indies in our pockets, if we have not the hope of heaven in our souls? — Christian Nestell Bovee

The loss of a beloved connection awakens an interest in Heaven before unfelt. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes About Soul

The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul. — Christian Nestell Bovee

What is taken from the fortune, also, may haply be so much lifted from the soul. The greatness of a loss, as the proverb suggests, is determinable, not so much by what we have lost, as by what we have left. — Christian Nestell Bovee

There are none so low but they have their triumphs. Small successes suffice for small souls. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes About Depended

Fame - a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Whether one talks well depends very much upon whom he has to talk to. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes About Truth

Truth comes to us from the past, as gold is washed down from the mountains of Sierra Nevada, in minute but precious particles, and intermixed with infinite alloy, the debris of the centuries. — Christian Nestell Bovee

An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The questions most furiously discussed are those which have in them a basis of truth, and yet a large admixture of errors. We inconsiderately take hold of, and mistakingly support or oppose them, as either wholly true or wholly false. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Christian Nestell Bovee Famous Quotes And Sayings

Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important 2. Promote a vision 3. Follow the golden rule 4. Admit mistakes 5. Criticize others only in private 6. Stay close to the action Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world - they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Melancholy sees the worst of things, things as they may be, and not as they are. It looks upon a beautiful face, and sees but a grinning skull. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Vanity in an old man is charming. It is a proof of an open, nature. Eighty winters have not frozen him up, or taught him concealments. In a young person it is simply allowable; we do not expect him to be above it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Every war involves a greater or less relapse into barbarism. War, indeed, in its details, is the essence of inhumanity. It dehumanizes. It may save the state, but it destroys the citizen. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards. Cheerfulness is the off-shoot of goodness. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

Complaint is. more contemptible than pitiful. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Troubles forereckoned are doubly suffered. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Patience is only one faculty; earnestness the devotion of all the faculties. Earnestness is the cause of patience; it gives endurance, overcomes pain, strengthens weakness, braves dangers, sustains hope, makes light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Winter is the night of vegetation. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Cheerfulness is an offshoot of goodness and of wisdom. — Christian Nestell Bovee

There are some kinds of men who cannot pass their time alone; they are the flails of occupied people.(Bonald, M.} There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The very cunning conceal their cunning; the indifferently shrewd boast of it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

There is a German proverb which says that Take-it-Easy and Live-Long are brothers. — Christian Nestell Bovee

We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Pure motives do not insure perfect results. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Wit must be without effort. Wit is play, not work; a nimbleness of the fancy, not a laborious effort of the will; a license, a holiday, a carnival of thought and feeling, not a trifling with speech, a constraint upon language, a duress upon words. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Marriage, by making us more contented, causes us often to be less enterprising. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Something of a person's character may be observed by how they smile. Some never smile they only grin. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Ideas are like matter, infinitely divisible. It is not given to us to get down so to speak to their final atoms, but to their molecular groupings-the way is never ending and the progress infinitely delightful and profitable. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Give me the character and I will forecast the event. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Dignity of position adds to dignity of character, as well as to dignity of carriage. Give us a proud position, and we are impelled to act up to it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

What we call conscience in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of the law. — Christian Nestell Bovee

It is some compensation for great evils, that they enforce great lessons. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Examples are few of men ruined by giving. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

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

The activity of the young is like that of railcars in motion--they tear along with noise and turmoil, and leave peace behind them. The quietest nooks, invaded by them, lose their quietude as they pass, and recover it only on their departure. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The first step toward greatness is to be honest, says the proverb; but the proverb fails to state the case strong enough. Honesty is not only "the first step toward greatness," - it is greatness itself. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The best evidence of merit is a cordial recognition of it whenever and wherever it may be found. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Many an honest man practices upon himself an amount of deceit sufficient, if practised upon another, and in a little different way, to send him to the state prison. — Christian Nestell Bovee

To cultivate a garden is to walk with God. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The beauty of a woman transcends all other forms of beauty, as well in the sweetness of its suggestions, as in the fervor of the admiration it awakens. The beauty of a lovely woman is an inspiration, a sweet delirium, a gentle madness. Her looks are love-potions. Heaven itself is never so clearly revealed to us as in the face of a beautiful woman. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Bad taste is a species of bad morals. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Even when we fancy we have grown wiser, it is only, it may be, that new prejudices have displaced old ones. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Resentments, carried too far, expose us to a fate analogous to that of the fish-hawk, when he strikes his talons too deep into a fish beyond his capacity to lift, and is carried under and drowned by it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud. — Christian Nestell Bovee

In a contest with a weaker party it is more honorable to yield than to force concession. Magnanimity becomes the strong. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

There are ceremonious bows that repel one like a cudgel. — Christian Nestell Bovee

All good writing leaves something unexpressed. — Christian Nestell Bovee

It is of very little use in trying to be dignified, if dignity is no part of your character. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties. — Christian Nestell Bovee

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

Loss of sincerity is loss of vital power. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Next to being witty, the best thing is being able to quote another's wit. — Christian Nestell Bovee

To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound. — Christian Nestell Bovee

To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Poverty is only contemptible when it is felt to be so. Doubtless the best way to make our poverty respectable is to seem never to feel it as an evil. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Excellence in art is largely the result of attention to minutiae, and--prayer. — Christian Nestell Bovee

There will always be romance in the world so long as there are young hearts in it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

No single character is ever so great that a nation can afford to form itself upon it. Imitation belittles. This appears in the instance of the Chinese. The Chinese are so many Confucii; in miniature. And so with the Jews. Moses, the lawgiver, is poorly represented by Moses, the old clothesman ; or even by Dives, the hanker. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Life Lessons by Christian Nestell Bovee

1. Christian Nestell Bovee's work emphasizes the importance of accepting life's challenges, learning from them, and using them to grow and become a better person.
2. He teaches that while it is important to be honest and authentic, it is also important to be open to change and to be willing to take risks.
3. His writings also stress the importance of having faith and perseverance, even in the face of adversity, as these qualities can lead to success.