Top 200 Christian N. Bovee Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Honesty is not only the first step toward greatness, it is greatness itself.”

— Christian N. Bovee

2. “Our first and last love is self-love.”

— Christian N. Bovee

3. “When all else is lost, the future still remains.”

— Christian N. Bovee

4. “No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.”

— Christian N. Bovee

5. “The first step toward greatness is to be honest, says the proverb; but the proverb fails to state the case strong enough. Honesty is not only “the first step toward greatness,” it is greatness itself.”

— Christian N. Bovee

Featured in: Strong Quotes

6. “To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.”

— Christian N. Bovee

7. “The great obstacle to progress is prejudice.”

— Christian N. Bovee

8. “Few minds wear out; more rust out.”

— Christian N. Bovee

9. “Life being full of harsh realities, we seek relief from them in a variety of pleasing delusions.”

— Christian N. Bovee

10. “A mother is the best friend God ever gave.”

— Christian N. Bovee

11. “The light in the world comes principally from two sources,-the sun, and the student’s lamp.”

— Christian N. Bovee

12. “Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great.”

— Christian N. Bovee

13. “New situations inspire new thoughts. Here is the benefit of travelling, much more than in mere sight-seeing. We lose ourselves in the streets of our own city, and go abroad to find ourselves.”

— Christian N. Bovee

14. “The Breath becomes a stone; the stone, a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.”

— Christian N. Bovee

15. “The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect may safely be left to that final neglect from which no amount of present undeserved popularity can rescue it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

16. “There is a German proverb which says that Take-it-Easy and Live-Long are brothers.”

— Christian N. Bovee

17. “To death we owe our life; the passing of one generation opens a way for another.”

— Christian N. Bovee

18. “A mother’s love is indeed the golden link that binds youth to age; and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek, or silvered his brow, who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion, or the gentle chidings, of the best friend that God gives us.”

— Christian N. Bovee

19. “Activity and sadness are incompatible.”

— Christian N. Bovee

20. “Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time.”

— Christian N. Bovee

21. “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 N. Bovee

22. “Galileo called doubt the father of invention; it is certainly the pioneer.”

— Christian N. Bovee

23. “Example has far more followers than reason.”

— Christian N. Bovee

24. “A genuine passion is like a mountain stream; it admits of no impediment; it cannot go backward; it must go forward.”

— Christian N. Bovee

25. “Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was business; but now when great fortunes are only made by business: Business is war!”

— Christian N. Bovee

26. “Books are embalmed minds.”

— Christian N. Bovee

27. “There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.”

— Christian N. Bovee

28. “Pure motives do not insure perfect results.”

— Christian N. Bovee

29. “It is easier to die bravely than to live so.”

— Christian N. Bovee

30. “It is invidious to distinguish particular men as adventurers: we are all such.”

— Christian N. Bovee

31. “Economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

32. “Neither love nor ambition, as it has often been shown, can brook a division of its empire in the heart.”

— Christian N. Bovee

33. “It is in vain that he seeks dominion abroad, who is not kingly at home.”

— Christian N. Bovee

34. “Successful minds work like a gimlet – to a single point.”

— Christian N. Bovee

35. “The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

36. “The worst deluded are the self-deluded.”

— Christian N. Bovee

37. “The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy.”

— Christian N. Bovee

38. “The greatest happiness comes from the greatest activity.”

— Christian N. Bovee

39. “The body of the sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.”

— Christian N. Bovee

40. “Hunting is a relic of the barbarism that once thirsted for human blood, but is now content with the blood of animals.”

— Christian N. Bovee

41. “Hope is the best part of our riches. What sufficeth it that we have the wealth of the Indies in our pockets, if we have not the hope of heaven in our souls?”

— Christian N. Bovee

42. “Nothing is so fragile as thought in its infancy; an interruption breaks it: nothing is so powerful, even to overturning empires, when it reaches its maturity.”

— Christian N. Bovee

43. “To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity.”

— Christian N. Bovee

44. “Cheerfulness is an offshoot of goodness and of wisdom.”

— Christian N. Bovee

45. “The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.”

— Christian N. Bovee

46. “Love’s sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words.”

— Christian N. Bovee

47. “Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion.”

— Christian N. Bovee

48. “Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.”

— Christian N. Bovee

49. “The beauty seen is partly in him who sees it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

50. “There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.”

— Christian N. Bovee