Quote

We repose too much upon the actual, when we should be seeking to develop the possibilities of our being. It is true of nearly all of us, that what we have done is little compared with what we might have accomplished, or may hereafter effect.

Christian Nestell Bovee

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Christian Nestell Bovee
Age: 83 †
Born: 1820
Born: February 22
Died: 1904
Died: January 18
Poet
New York City
New York
bovee
C. N. Bovee
Might
Seeking
Repose
Done
Possibility
Compared
Much
Effects
Possibilities
Upon
Actual
True
Nearly
Littles
Accomplished
May
Develop
Little
Effect
Hereafter

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To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred.
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Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken the full heart knows no rhetoric of words.
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Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.
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Heaven lent you a soul, Earth will lend a grave.
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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.
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There are some weaknesses that are peculiar and distinctive to generous characters, as freckles are to a fair skin.
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Dishonest people conceal their faults from themselves as well as others, honest people know and confess them.
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The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.
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If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.
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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.
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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.
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Next to faith in God, is faith in labor.
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Within the sacred walls of libraries we find the best thoughts, the purest feelings, and the most exalted imaginings of our race.
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The trouble with men of sense is that they are so dreadfully in earnest all the while.
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To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.
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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.
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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.
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Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.
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In general, inquiry ceases when we adopt a theory. After that, we overlook whatever makes against it, and see and think, and talk and write, only in its favor. Indeed, when we have a snug, comfortable theory, to which we are much attached, they appear to us as a very mean set of facts that will not square with it.
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We take life too seriously: the office of wit is to correct this tendency.
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