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.
AGNES REPPLIERAn appreciation of words is so rare that everybody naturally thinks he possesses it, and this universal sentiment results in the misuse of a material whose beauty enriches the loving student beyond the dreams of avarice.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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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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Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.
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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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It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.
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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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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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Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.
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The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.
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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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Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.
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To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate.
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if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.
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Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
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Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
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the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring – or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps – lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.
AGNES REPPLIER