The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor.
— Christian Nestell Bovee
The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.
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.
Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.
Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.
Tearless grief bleeds inwardly.
When all else is lost, the future still remains.
Living with a saint is more grueling than being one.
Fame - a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.
Heaven lent you a soul, Earth will lend a grave.
A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.
Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.
The great artist is a slave to his ideals.
Our first and last love is self-love.
Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.
A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.
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.
There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.
Next to being witty, the best thing is being able to quote another's wit.
The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.
It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.
As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.
We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.
Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven's dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds.
Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.
Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys.
Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.
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.
The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.
Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.
We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.
Wine is a treacherous friend who you must always be on guard for.
In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.
We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.
False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.
It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon.
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.
Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.
Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.
They are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers.
