Top 200 Christian N. Bovee Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Fame – a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.”

— Christian N. Bovee

202. “It is with charity as with money – the more we stand in need of it, the less we have to give away.”

— Christian N. Bovee

203. “Alas, the transports beauty can inspire!”

— Christian N. Bovee

204. “Resentments, carried too far, expose us to a fate analogous to that of the fish-hawk, when he strikes his talons too deep into a fish beyond his capacity to lift, and is carried under and drowned by it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

205. “Passion looks not beyond the moment of its existence. Better, it says, the kisses of love to day, than the felicities of heaven afar off.”

— Christian N. Bovee

206. “Character is very much a matter of health.”

— Christian N. Bovee

207. “The trouble with men of sense is that they are so dreadfully in earnest all the while.”

— Christian N. Bovee

208. “In art there are two principal schools between which each aspirant has to choose – one distinguished by its close adherence to nature, and the other by its strenuous efforts to get above it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

209. “The extent of poverty in the world is much exaggerated. Our sensitiveness makes half our poverty; our fears – anxieties for ills that never happen – a greater part of the other half.”

— Christian N. Bovee

210. “It is seldom that we find out how great are our resources until we are thrown upon them.”

— Christian N. Bovee

211. “It is one of the arts of a great beauty to heighten the effect of her charms by affecting to be sweetly unconscious of them.”

— Christian N. Bovee

212. “He half retrieves a defeat who yields to it gracefully.”

— Christian N. Bovee

213. “Rejecting the miracles of Christ, we still have the miracle of Christ Himself.”

— Christian N. Bovee

214. “There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.”

— Christian N. Bovee

215. “There would not be so much harm in the giddy following the fashions, if somehow the wise could always set them.”

— Christian N. Bovee

216. “It is with a company as it is with a punch, everything depends upon the ingredients of which it in composed.”

— Christian N. Bovee

217. “There are none so low but they have their triumphs. Small successes suffice for small souls.”

— Christian N. Bovee

218. “It may almost be held that the hope of commercial gain has done nearly as much for the cause of truth as even the love of truth.”

— Christian N. Bovee

219. “Troubles forereckoned are doubly suffered.”

— Christian N. Bovee

220. “Sorrow is never more sorrowful than when it jests at its own misery.”

— Christian N. Bovee

221. “The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.”

— Christian N. Bovee

222. “It is curious to what a degree one may become attached to a fine tree, especially when it is placed where trees are rare.”

— Christian N. Bovee

223. “He that shrinks from the grave with too great a dread, has an invisible fear behind him pushing him into it.”

— Christian N. Bovee

224. “A particular disappointment is seldom more than an excrescence upon the trunk of a general good – a shower that spoils the pleasure party, but refreshes and enriches the earth.”

— Christian N. Bovee

225. “A man cannot paint portraits till he has seen faces.”

— Christian N. Bovee

226. “The activity of the young is like that of railcars in motion – they tear along with noise and turmoil, and leave peace behind them. The quietest nooks, invaded by them, lose their quietude as they pass, and recover it only on their departure.”

— Christian N. Bovee

227. “It is of very little use in trying to be dignified, if dignity is no part of your character.”

— Christian N. Bovee

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

— Christian N. Bovee

229. “A peculiar work in any art must not be too hastily judged. New styles have to create new tastes.”

— Christian N. Bovee

230. “Earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties.”

— Christian N. Bovee

231. “He has but one great fear that fears to do wrong.”

— Christian N. Bovee

232. “If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.”

— Christian N. Bovee

233. “As many suffer from too much as too little.”

— Christian N. Bovee

234. “Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.”

— Christian N. Bovee

235. “It is the life of democracy to favor equality.”

— Christian N. Bovee

236. “He must put his whole life into his work, who would do it well, and make it potential to influence other lives.”

— Christian N. Bovee

237. “We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real.”

— Christian N. Bovee

238. “We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime.”

— Christian N. Bovee

239. “We cannot reason ourselves into love, nor can we reason ourselves out of it, which suggests that love and reason have little to do with each other.”

— Christian N. Bovee

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

— Christian N. Bovee

241. “The method of the critic is to balance praises with censure, and thus to do justice to the subject and – his own discrimination.”

— Christian N. Bovee

242. “There is probably no hell for authors in the next world – they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.”

— Christian N. Bovee

243. “Give me the character and I will forecast the event.”

— Christian N. Bovee

244. “The natural wants are few, and easily gratified: it is only those which are artificial that perplex us by their multiplicity.”

— Christian N. Bovee

245. “Age, that acquaints us with infirmities in ourselves, should make us tender in our reprehension of weakness elsewhere.”

— Christian N. Bovee

246. “The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. The roads leading to distinction in separate pursuits diverge, and the nearer we approach the one, the farther we recede from the other.”

— Christian N. Bovee

247. “A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.”

— Christian N. Bovee

248. “Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire. In this way, a generous habit of thought and of action carries with it an incalculable influence.”

— Christian N. Bovee