Top 200 Christian N. Bovee Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “Pleasure and pain spring not so much from the nature of things, as from our manner of considering them in particular, what we compare them to.”

— Christian N. Bovee

102. “Adhesion to one idea is monomania; to few, slavery.”

— Christian N. Bovee

103. “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 N. Bovee

104. “Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.”

— Christian N. Bovee

105. “The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it – to realize it to the full – to be a profound and inscrutable mystery.”

— Christian N. Bovee

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

— Christian N. Bovee

107. “Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

108. “Women seldom forfeit their claims to respect to men whom they respect.”

— Christian N. Bovee

109. “Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys.”

— Christian N. Bovee

110. “Hard workers are usually honest; industry lifts them above temptation.”

— Christian N. Bovee

111. “The finest compliment that can be paid to a woman of sense is to address her as such.”

— Christian N. Bovee

112. “We should round every day of stirring action with an evening of thought. We learn nothing of our experience except we muse upon it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

113. “Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.”

— Christian N. Bovee

114. “Care, admitted as guest, quickly turns to be master.”

— Christian N. Bovee

115. “Satire is an abuse of wit. It corrects few evils.”

— Christian N. Bovee

116. “Good men have the fewest fears. He has but one great fear who fears to do wrong; he has a thousand who has overcome it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

117. “There is no sense of weariness like that which closes in a day of eager and unintermittent pursuit of pleasure. The apple is eaten, but “the core sticks in the throat.” Expectation has then given way to ennui, appetite to satiety.”

— Christian N. Bovee

118. “Tis but a short journey across the isthmus of Now.”

— Christian N. Bovee

119. “Complaint is. more contemptible than pitiful.”

— Christian N. Bovee

120. “Wit is better as a seasoning than as a whole dish by itself.”

— Christian N. Bovee

121. “Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do.”

— Christian N. Bovee

122. “Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud.”

— Christian N. Bovee

123. “Ideas are like matter, infinitely divisible. It is not given to us to get down so to speak to their final atoms, but to their molecular groupings-the way is never ending and the progress infinitely delightful and profitable...”

— Christian N. Bovee

124. “In a contest with a weaker party it is more honorable to yield than to force concession. Magnanimity becomes the strong.”

— Christian N. Bovee

Featured in: Strong Quotes

125. “If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.”

— Christian N. Bovee

126. “Passion doesn’t look beyond the moment of its existence.”

— Christian N. Bovee

127. “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 N. Bovee

128. “We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful.”

— Christian N. Bovee

129. “The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.”

— Christian N. Bovee

130. “At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. You pink your adversary, and he is forthwith dead; and then you deserve to be hung for it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

131. “Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.”

— Christian N. Bovee

132. “The use we make of our fortune determines its sufficiency. A little is enough if used wisely, and too much if expended foolishly.”

— Christian N. Bovee

133. “The heart contracts as the pocket expands.”

— Christian N. Bovee

134. “We absolve a friend from gratitude when we remind him of a favor.”

— Christian N. Bovee

135. “Ambitious princes value inherited kingdoms not so much as conquered provinces.”

— Christian N. Bovee

136. “What we call conscience in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of the law.”

— Christian N. Bovee

137. “Dreamers are half-way men of thought, and men of thought are half-way men of action.”

— Christian N. Bovee

138. “Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability.”

— Christian N. Bovee

139. “There will always be romance in the world so long as there are young hearts in it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

Featured in: Romance Quotes

140. “Many an honest man practices upon himself an amount of deceit sufficient, if practised upon another, and in a little different way, to send him to the state prison.”

— Christian N. Bovee

141. “What is taken from the fortune, also, may haply be so much lifted from the soul. The greatness of a loss, as the proverb suggests, is determinable, not so much by what we have lost, as by what we have left.”

— Christian N. Bovee

142. “Love makes a few weeks so rich that all the rest of our lives seems poor in comparison.”

— Christian N. Bovee

143. “God, we are told, looked upon the world after he had created it and pronounced it good; but ascetic pietists, in their wisdom, cast their eyes over it, and substantially pronounce it a dead failure, a miserable production, a poor concern.”

— Christian N. Bovee

144. “There are some weaknesses that are peculiar and distinctive to generous characters, as freckles are to a fair skin.”

— Christian N. Bovee

145. “The next best thing to being witty one’s self, is to be able to be able to quote another’s wit.”

— Christian N. Bovee

146. “To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound.”

— Christian N. Bovee

147. “No work deserves to be criticized that has not much in it that deserves to be applauded.”

— Christian N. Bovee

148. “The loss of a beloved connection awakens an interest in Heaven before unfelt.”

— Christian N. Bovee

149. “Elements of the heroic exist in almost every individual: it is only the felicitous development of them all in one that is rare.”

— Christian N. Bovee

150. “There are ceremonious bows that repel one like a cudgel.”

— Christian N. Bovee