the most comfortable characteristic of the period [1775-1825], and the one which incites our deepest envy, is the universal willingness to accept a good purpose as a substitute for good work.
AGNES REPPLIERLaughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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I am seventy years old, a gray age weighted with uncompromising biblical allusions. It ought to have a gray outlook, but it hasn’t, because a glint of dazzling sunshine is dancing merrily ahead of me.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Woman is quick to revere genius, but in her secret soul she seldom loves it.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.
AGNES REPPLIER -
History is not written in the interests of morality.
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 -
The party which is out sees nothing but graft and incapacity in the party which is in; and the party which is in sees nothing but greed and animosity in the party which is out.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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 -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.
AGNES REPPLIER -
There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Life is so full of miseries, minor and major; they press so close upon us at every step of the way, that it is hardly worthwhile to call one another’s attention to their presence.
AGNES REPPLIER -
In the stress of modern life, how little room is left for that most comfortable vanity that whispers in our ears that failures are not faults! Now we are taught from infancy that we must rise or fall upon our own merits; that vigilance wins success, and incapacity means ruin
AGNES REPPLIER -
No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.
AGNES REPPLIER