Christian Nestell Bovee (February 22, 1820 – January 18, 1904) was an epigrammatic New York City writer. He was born in New York City.
There are ceremonious bows that repel one like a cudgel.
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.
The knowledge beyond all other knowledge is the knowledge how to excuse.
To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred.
Some one called Sir Richard Steele the "vilest of mankind," and he retorted with proud humility, "It would be a glorious world if I were.
A great destiny needs a generous diet. . . . What can be expected of a people that live on macaroni!
The beauty seen is partly in him who sees it. [a predisposition to notice the beautiful, in everything. ]
Dreamers are half-way men of thought, and men of thought are half-way men of action.
Galileo called doubt the father of invention; it is certainly the pioneer.
There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.
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.
Ambition, in one respect, is like a singer's voice; pitched at too high a key, it breaks and comes to nothing.
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.
Perhaps the heroic element in our natures is exhibited to the best advantage, not in going from success to success, and so on through a series of triumphs, but in gathering, on the very field of defeat itself, the materials for renewed efforts, and in proceeding, with no abatement of heart or energy, to form fresh designs upon the very ruins and ashes of blasted hopes. Yes, it is this indomitable persistence in a purpose, continued alike through defeat and success, that makes, more than aught else, the hero.
In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.
Neither love nor ambition, as it has often been shown, can brook a division of its empire in the heart.
I desire to go through life knowing as little of evil in it as possible. To this end, I sometimes avoid looking too closely into the nature of things, studying them only so far as they seem to be good, and abandoning interest in them as soon as their darker feature begin to appear. The good only deserves a hearty interest.
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.
A woman's love, like lichens upon a rock, will still grow where even charity can find no soil to nurture itself.
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.