American author (1820-1904)
Courage ennobles manhood; cowardice degrades it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It is not meet that the strong, free limbs of manhood should be fettered by the silken threads of ceremony.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The more common method of getting rid of an evil, is to merge it in a greater. Thus, if one suffers a loss of half his fortune at play, he overcomes his mortification by--losing the other half. The most ingenious expedient of this kind, was that of the indigent gentleman of rank, who married his washerwoman to get rid of her bill against him.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Ambition, in one respect, is like a singer's voice; pitched at too high a key, it breaks and comes to nothing.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature has set none.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Evils are to be traced to their sources, and struck at there. Like Barbary pirates, they are to be destroyed through the suppression of the state that sends them forth.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, Doubt (called "the father of inventions" by Galileo), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins?
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
We have two lessons to teach an enemy who despises us--to value himself less highly, and us more worthily.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
We wince under little pains, but nature in us, through the excitement attendant upon them, braces us to endure with fortitude greater agonies.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
To death we owe our life; the passing of one generation opens a way for another.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Age, that acquaints us with infirmities in ourselves, should make us tender in our reprehension of weakness elsewhere.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It is the life of democracy to favor equality.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Courage and timidity are the accompaniments of opposite tendencies of thought. The brave think only of the blows they will strike; the timid of those they may receive.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
We are far more the creatures of our ideas than of our circumstances.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The finest compliment that can be paid to a woman of sense is to address her as such.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
As well might a flower complain of the bee which its sweetness attracts, as a pretty girl of being gazed at when she goes abroad. But the complaint is seldom made in earnest.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Great crimes seldom spring from any sudden demoralization in the natures of their perpetrators. What seems a fearful precipitation of character, is usually no more than the rending of a veil from the hitherto concealed parts of it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought