American author (1820-1904)
For every great evil, apparently irremediable, there is reserved, it is probable, somewhere in the design of Providence, an effectual remedy.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Hatreds are the chimneys of the mind, serving to carry off the smoke of its pestilent humors.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The wise build their doctrines--theological and philosophical--upon a basis of probabilities, never upon the foundation of absolute certainty.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
A great destiny needs a generous diet.... What can be expected of a people that live on macaroni!
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It is not the number of facts he knows, but how much of a fact he is himself, that proves the man.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Home never appears to us so beautiful as when we are remote from it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Marriage, rightly concluded, is an incarnation of love--poetry expressed in action--a sweet embellishment of an otherwise prosaic existence.
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
In secluding himself too much from society, an author is in danger of losing that intimate acquaintance with life which is the only sure foundation of power in a writer.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
There would not be so much harm in the giddy following the fashions, if somehow the wise could always set them.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Our ideas ... must first acquire a certain strength, before we can proceed efficiently to act upon them. They have their periods of immaturity and maturity. First comes the germ of the idea; then its growth; then an enlargement of that growth; then an expansion of that enlargement; until finally the idea takes its ultimate form as a picture, a book, or a revolution.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The thing most prejudicial to health is to be always thinking of it. It is, indeed, an indispensable requisite to the enjoyment of life and health, that little attention should be paid to little symptoms. One should not think himself dead until he is so.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
We absolve a friend from gratitude when we remind him of a favor.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The business of the historian is with the truth of things, but he is too much under temptation to make his history interesting, to be always able to reject a fine story.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of sword-play of the mind. You pink your adversary and he is forthwith dead: and then you deserve to be hung for it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
There are seasons when our passions have slept so long that we know not whether they still exist in us. So does flax forget that it is combustible when the fire is away from it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought