Christian Nestell Bovee (February 22, 1820 – January 18, 1904) was an epigrammatic New York City writer. He was born in New York City.
Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders.
It is so natural for us to consider our presence as indispensable in the world, so long as we have much to do in it, that the wisdom of retiring wholly from employments in advanced life may be questioned. Certainly, he who does so is in danger of finding, before long, that he has only given up the occupation to which he has been accustomed, for the new business of calculating the period of his decease.
Sorrow is never more sorrowful than when it jests at its own misery.
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.
The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. Thought finds its way into action.
Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.
If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.
Character is very much a matter of health.
In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.
Women seldom forfeit their claims to respect to men whom they respect.
In a contest with a weaker party it is more honorable to yield than to force concession. Magnanimity becomes the strong.
The worth of a book is a matter of expressed juices.
As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.
A genuine passion is like a mountain stream; it admits of no impediment; it cannot go backward; it must go forward.
The use we make of our fortune determines its sufficiency. A little is enough if used wisely, and too much if expended foolishly.
To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred.
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.
Genuine religion is matter of feeling rather than matter of opinion.
A good thought is indeed a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked; next he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us. Whoever adopts and circulates a just thought, participates in the merit that originated it.
The body of the sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.