Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.
AGNES REPPLIERBooks that children read but once are of scant service to them; those that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.
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Too much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught.
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A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.
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The most charming thing about youth is the tenacity of its impressions.
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The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.
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The gayety of life, like the beauty and the moral worth of life, is a saving grace, which to ignore is folly, and to destroy is crime. There is no more than we need; there is barely enough to go round.
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Sensuality, too, which used to show itself course, smiling, unmasked, and unmistakable, is now serious, analytic, and so burdened with a sense of its responsibilities that it passes muster half the time as a new type of asceticism.
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There is a vast deal of make-believe in the carefully nurtured sentiment for country life, and the barefoot boy, and the mountain girl.
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There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join
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The dog is guided by kindly instinct to the man or woman whose heart is open to his advances. The cat often leaves the friend who courts her, to honor, or to harass, the unfortunate mortal who shudders at her unwelcome caresses.
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It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.
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Like simplicity and candor, and other much-commented qualities, enthusiasm is charming until we meet it face to face, and cannot escape from its charm.
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I do strive to think well of my fellow man, but no amount of striving can give me confidence in the wisdom of a congressional vote.
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I am eighty years old. There seems to be nothing to add to this statement. I have reached the age of undecorated facts – facts that refuse to be softened by sentiment, or confused by nobility of phrase.
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The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.
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Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
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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.
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People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism.
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Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
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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.
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It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
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Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.
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the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.
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A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal.
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Books that children read but once are of scant service to them; those that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves.
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No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.
AGNES REPPLIER