Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times, because they had nobody to talk about.
AGNES REPPLIERIf we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.
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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We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.
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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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Whatever has “wit enough to keep it sweet” defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.
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What strange impulse is it which induces otherwise truthful people to say they like music when they do not, and thus expose themselves to hours of boredom?
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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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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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Love is a malady, the common symptoms of which are the same in all patients.
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A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.
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While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
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the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.
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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.
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It is not begging but the beggar, who has forfeited favor with the elect.
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Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.
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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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Too much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught.
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Wit is a thing capable of proof.
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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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to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.
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There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities.
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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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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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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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Neatness of phrase is so closely akin to wit that it is often accepted as its substitute.
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It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.
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The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world’s mirth.
AGNES REPPLIER