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 REPPLIERWe cannot learn to love other tourists,-the laws of nature forbid it,-but, meditating soberly on the impossibility of their loving us, we may reach some common platform of tolerance, some common exchange of recognition and amenity.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.
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Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature, and is purifying only in so far as there is a natural and unschooled goodness in the human heart.
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There is nothing in the world so incomprehensible as the joke we do not see.
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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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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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Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.
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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.
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The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.
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Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
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Those persons are happiest in this restless and mutable world who are in love with change, who delight in what is new simply because it differs from what is old; who rejoice in every innovation, and find a strange alert pleasure in all that is, and that has never been before.
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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.
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Who that has plodded on to middle age would take back upon his shoulders ten of the vanished years, with their mingled pleasures and pains? Who would return to the youth he is forever pretending to regret?
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A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.
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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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