American author (1820-1904)
At present society is composed, not so much of men and women, as of the raw material of men and women, which it will be the office of a higher civilization to work up into the forms of a truer manhood and womanhood.
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
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
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The poet's is the highest type of character: other men dwell in the conventional--he chiefly abides in the universal.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Genius speaks and acts for all men. In its triumphs all are interested. They enlarge our conceptions of the worth of humanity, and extend the limits of our capacities. In the grandeur and sweep of the poet's imagination, in the stern patience and searching analysis of the student of causes--compelling, as it were, reluctant Nature to a revelation of her secrets--we see ourselves, as in a magnifying mirror, enlarged and exalted.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
If our existence is limited only to this world, religion is still of the greatest consequence, as more largely determining character, and more vastly influencing happiness, than any other single cause; and if it extends to a life beyond, it is of incalculably greater importance, as determining character and influencing happiness through illimitable periods of time. Indeed, without a belief in the being of God, without a recognition of his infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, and without faith in a divine system of rewards and punishments, wrought into the constitution of things, life is at once stripped of its majesty, and bereaved of its noblest promises.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Fortune, in the distribution of her gifts, resembles a good fellow throwing pennies into the air for children to scramble after. She does not cast to this and to that one according to their respective merits, but leaves chance and their own activity to determine who shall get the most of her bounty.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It is of little use to quarrel with particular fashions, however absurd. Fashionable follies seldom stand their ground long enough to be made the objects of serious attack. And where they give way to it, it is only to reappear in some new guise.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It is easier to die bravely than to live so.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The reason why there are so many narrow-minded people in the world is, because there is so little travelling in it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Political aspirants make too much of the people before election, and, if successful, too much of themselves after it. They use the people when they want to rise, as we treat a spirited horse when we want to mount him;--for a time we pat the animal upon the neck, and speak him softly; but once in the saddle, then come the whip and spur.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
In every moment of conscious happiness there mingles an undertone of sadness. However full of enjoyment the present, the future is always uncertain, and it is the feeling of this--the feeling that we are of the class of ephemera--perpetually recurring in the rarest and sweetest moments of existence, that constitutes, more than any other, the "one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin."
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Haste turns usually upon a matter of ten minutes too late, and may be avoided by a habit of being ten minutes too early.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Let a man restore order within himself, and chaos without ceases.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
A strong will deals with the hard facts of life as a sculptor with his marbles, making them facile and yielding to his purposes, and conquering their stubbornness by a greater stubbornness in himself.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
It is difficult to say which is the greatest evil--to have too violent passions, or to be wholly devoid of them. Controlled with firmness, guided by discretion, and hallowed by the imagination, the passions are the vivifiers and quickeners of our being. Without passion there can be no energy of character. Indeed, the passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways, and dangerous only in one--through their excess.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
When we get tired of enjoying all the pleasures within our reach, we have still a resource in thinking of others that are not.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought