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We take life too seriously: the office of wit is to correct this tendency.
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
Tendency
Wit
Tendencies
Correct
Seriously
Office
Take
Life
More quotes by Christian Nestell Bovee
It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.
Christian Nestell Bovee
An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching.
Christian Nestell Bovee
The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Dishonesty is a forsaking of permanent for temporary advantages.
Christian Nestell Bovee
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 Nestell Bovee
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 Nestell Bovee
A good thought is indeed a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked next he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us. Whoever adopts and circulates a just thought, participates in the merit that originated it.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Genius makes its observations in short-hand talent writes them out at length.
Christian Nestell Bovee
We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion.
Christian Nestell Bovee
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 Nestell Bovee
All good writing leaves something unexpressed.
Christian Nestell Bovee
The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.
Christian Nestell Bovee
There is nothing, says a correspondent of the New York Times, which the business world discards as unpractical and useless so much as the quiet, thinking scholar. But this is the man who makes revolutions. Politicians are mere puppets in the hands of men of thought.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Example has far more followers than reason.
Christian Nestell Bovee
The past is the sepulchre of our dead emotions.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.
Christian Nestell Bovee
The method of the critic is to balance praises with censure, and thus to do justice to the subject and--his own discrimination.
Christian Nestell Bovee
The very cunning conceal their cunning the indifferently shrewd boast of it.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.
Christian Nestell Bovee
