The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.
AGNES REPPLIERI do strive to think well of my fellow man, but no amount of striving can give me confidence in the wisdom of a congressional vote.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge … falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.
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It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
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The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience.
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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 -
Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.
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It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.
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Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
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The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.
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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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A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.
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It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.
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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.
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There is a vast deal of make-believe in the carefully nurtured sentiment for country life, and the barefoot boy, and the mountain girl.
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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.
AGNES REPPLIER