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.
AGNES REPPLIERToo much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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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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Our belief in education is unbounded, our reverence for it is unfaltering, our loyalty to it is unshaken by reverses. Our passionate desire, not so much to acquire it as to bestow it, is the most animated of American traits.
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The most charming thing about youth is the tenacity of its impressions.
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But self-satisfaction, if as buoyant as gas, has an ugly trick of collapsing when full blown, and facts are stony things that refuse to melt away in the sunshine of a smile.
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Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
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For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.
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real letter-writing … is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.
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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.
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Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.
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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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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.
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There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.
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The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.
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There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.
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There is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.
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There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.
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To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.
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This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.
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Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.
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The cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.
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While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
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Those persons are happiest in this restless and mutable world who are in love with change, who delight in what is new simply because it differs from what is old; who rejoice in every innovation, and find a strange alert pleasure in all that is, and that has never been before.
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The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses.
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Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
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Discussion without asperity, sympathy with fusion, gayety unracked by too abundant jests, mental ease in approaching one another; these are the things which give a pleasant smoothness to the rough edge of life.
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Whatever has “wit enough to keep it sweet” defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.
AGNES REPPLIER