Christian Nestell Bovee

Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.

The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor; to sketch out a map of possibilities; and then to treat them as probabilities.

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

Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Music is the fourth great material want of our natures - first food, then raiment, then shelter, then music.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

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

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater, ennoble it.

Wit must be without effort. Wit is play, not work; a nimbleness of the fancy, not a laborious effort of the will; a license, a holiday, a carnival of thought and feeling, not a trifling with speech, a constraint upon language, a duress upon words.

One who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do. He has lain down to die. The grass is already growing over him.

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

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a congenial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

One who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do. He has lain down to die, and the grass is already growing over him.

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

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.

Our first love and last love is - self-love.

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

Partial culture runs to the ornate; extreme culture to simplicity.

‘Tis but a short journey across the isthmus of Now.