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.
AGNES REPPLIERThe 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.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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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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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 not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
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The pessimist is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.
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Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.
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The tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them.
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Humor brings insight and tolerance.
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The English possess too many agreeable traits to permit them to be as much disliked as they think and hope they are.
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If everybody floated with the tide of talk, placidity would soon end in stagnation. It is the strong backward stroke which stirs the ripples, and gives animation and variety.
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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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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.
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There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join
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Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.
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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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Lovers of the town have been content, for the most part, to say they loved it. They do not brag about its uplifting qualities. They have none of the infernal smugness which makes the lover of the country insupportable.
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The pitfall of the feminist is the belief that the interests of men and women can ever be severed; that what brings sufferings to the one can leave the other unscathed.
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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.
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The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.
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People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.
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Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.
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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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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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English civilization rests largely upon tea and cricket, with mighty spurts of enjoyment on Derby Day, and at Newmarket.
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Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.
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Wit is a thing capable of proof.
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A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and generally stopping before it gets there.
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