Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) was an American writer and aphorist. Bovee is the author of Thoughts, Feelings, and Fancies (1857) and Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862)—epigrams from these books are widely cited in contemporary anthologies of passages.
Born in New York City, Bovee received early instruction at private schools. After getting a law degree, he was admitted to the bar, and practiced law for many years with success.
Bovee was part of an intellectual circle that comprised of such luminaries as Washington Irving, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. at the Saturday Evening Club of Boston. He also co-founded The Athenaeum Club of New York and served as a regent of the Long Island College Hospital.
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What a man knows should find its expression in what he does; the value of superior knowledge is chiefly in that it leads to a performing manhood.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Action, Knowledge
An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Riches
A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Success, Failures, Mistakes, Failure
Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism. Indeed, excessive sensitiveness is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for it is to make more of our objects, and less of ourselves.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Emotions
Next to faith in God, is faith in labor.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake, as by never repeating it.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
The beauty seen, is partly in him who sees it.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Beauty
Kindness is language which the dumb can speak, and the deaf can understand.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Kindness
Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Business
If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Virtue, Virtues
We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Unhappiness
There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Fear
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.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Love
Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Many an honest man practices on himself an amount of deceit, sufficient, if practiced on another, and in a little different way, to send him to the State prison.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Deceit
Great designs are not accomplished without enthusiasm of some sort.—It is the inspiration of everything great.—Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Enthusiasm
The great obstacle to progress is prejudice.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Difficulty, Prejudice, Obstacles
When all else is lost, the future still remains.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Tomorrow, The Future, Future
Example has more followers than reason.—We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.—A generous habit of thought and action carries with it an incalculable influence.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Example, Role models
The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Planning, Risk, Enthusiasm, Success
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
Topics: Deception, Beliefs, Deception/Lying
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