CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE QUOTES V

American author (1820-1904)

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The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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As well might a flower complain of the bee which its sweetness attracts, as a pretty girl of being gazed at when she goes abroad. But the complaint is seldom made in earnest.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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A perfect work destroys the critic's art.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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God has created too few unmixed evils to warrant the belief that death is one of them. In all things else in nature, goodness so abounds that we are authorized to infer that it does not stop even at the grave. It is only that her footprints have become invisible.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, Doubt (called "the father of inventions" by Galileo), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins?

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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We have two lessons to teach an enemy who despises us--to value himself less highly, and us more worthily.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar, of life: the one preserves, the other sweetens it.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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The reveries of the dreamer advance his hopes, but not their realization. One good hour of earnest work is worth them all.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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The rules of etiquette were established mostly by women, are chiefly for the benefit of women, and are mainly suited only to the nature of women; and a too punctilious observance of them by a man, goes to show that over-refinement has nearly unsexed him.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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One of the greatest bores in life is a too knowing fellow, who sees through all delusions, and will never let you enjoy any of them, not even your favorite ones, no matter how agreeable they may be, but must be always waking you out of some delicious dream, only to tell you, "My dear sir, you are dreaming;" as if it were not both proper and natural to dream. He forgets that many things are pleasant only while the delusions which make them so last.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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Habits influence the character pretty much as undercurrents influence a vessel, and whether they speed us on the way of our wishes, or retard our progress, their influence is not the less important because imperceptible.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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Our happiness depends chiefly upon the estimate we form of life, and the efforts we make to bring ourselves into harmony with its laws.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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Genius makes its observations in short hand; talent writes them out at length.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives it its sweetness: it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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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

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Men were created for something better than merely to make money. A close application to business, until a competence is gained, is one of the chief virtues; but to continue in trade long after this result is obtained, is one of the signs, not to be mistaken, of a sordid and ignoble nature.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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Ambition, in one respect, is like a singer's voice; pitched at too high a key, it breaks and comes to nothing.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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Very handsome women have usually far less sensibility to compliments than their less beautiful sisters.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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Some dangers are to be courted--courted and braved as a coy mistress is to be wooed, with all the more vigor as the day makes against us.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

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