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The first step toward greatness is to be honest, says the proverb but the proverb fails to state the case strong enough. Honesty is not only the first step toward greatness, - it is greatness itself.

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
Strong
Step
States
Toward
Firsts
Failing
First
Steps
Proverb
Enough
Cases
Fails
Says
Honesty
Honest
Greatness
State
Case

More quotes by Christian Nestell Bovee

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Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.
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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.
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It is seldom that we find out how great are our resources until we are thrown upon them.
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Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.
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There are some kinds of men who cannot pass their time alone they are the flails of occupied people.(Bonald, M.} There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.
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A mother's love is indeed the golden link that binds youth to age and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek, or silvered his brow, who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion, or the gentle chidings, of the best friend that God gives us.
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Bad taste is a species of bad morals.
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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.
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Nature has provided for the exigency of privation, by putting the measure of our necessities far below the measure of our wants. Our necessities are to our wants as Falstaff's pennyworth of bread to his any quantity of sack.
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Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.
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In ambition, as in love, the successful can afford to be indulgent toward their rivals. The prize our own, it is graceful to recognize the merit that vainly aspired to it.
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Age, that acquaints us with infirmities in ourselves, should make us tender in our reprehension of weakness elsewhere.
Christian Nestell Bovee
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Life is indeed either a rich possession or a poor, according as it is made subservient to noble aims or ignoble pleasures.
Christian Nestell Bovee
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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 Nestell Bovee
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If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.
Christian Nestell Bovee
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It is some compensation for great evils, that they enforce great lessons.
Christian Nestell Bovee
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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.
Christian Nestell Bovee
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Passion doesn't look beyond the moment of its existence.
Christian Nestell Bovee
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Vanity in an old man is charming. It is a proof of an open, nature. Eighty winters have not frozen him up, or taught him concealments. In a young person it is simply allowable we do not expect him to be above it.
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The very cunning conceal their cunning the indifferently shrewd boast of it.
Christian Nestell Bovee