Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.
AGNES REPPLIERThe earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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We know when we have had enough of a friend, and we know when a friend has had enough of us. The first truth is no more palatable than the second.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.
AGNES REPPLIER -
A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and generally stopping before it gets there.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Everybody is now so busy teaching that nobody has any time to learn.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.
AGNES REPPLIER -
if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.
AGNES REPPLIER -
When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.
AGNES REPPLIER -
History is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others; but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories; it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.
AGNES REPPLIER -
There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities.
AGNES REPPLIER -
A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.
AGNES REPPLIER -
We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge … falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.
AGNES REPPLIER -
What strange impulse is it which induces otherwise truthful people to say they like music when they do not, and thus expose themselves to hours of boredom?
AGNES REPPLIER






