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.
AGNES REPPLIERPeople fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
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The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.
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Cats, even when robust, have scant liking for the boisterous society of children, and are apt to exert their utmost ingenuity to escape it. Nor are they without adult sympathy in their prejudice.
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For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.
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We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.
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It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles.
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The man who never tells an unpalatable truth ‘at the wrong time’ (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly well assured.
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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.
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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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If we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.
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There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.
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Diaries tell their little tales with a directness, a candor, conscious or unconscious, a closeness of outlook, which gratifies our sense of security. Reading them is like gazing through a small clear pane of glass. We may not see far and wide, but we see very distinctly that which comes within our field of vision.
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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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Humor brings insight and tolerance.
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It is not begging but the beggar, who has forfeited favor with the elect.
AGNES REPPLIER