To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate.
AGNES REPPLIERIt 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.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.
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I 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.
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The least practical of us have some petty thrift dear to our hearts, some one direction in which we love to scrimp.
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The essence of humor is that it should be unexpected, that it should embody an element of surprise, that it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all, must be our habitual frame of mind.
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Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
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There was no escape from the letter-writer who, a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five years ago, captured a coveted correspondent. It would have been as easy to shake off an octopus or a boa-constrictor.
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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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Humor brings insight and tolerance.
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There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.
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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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People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.
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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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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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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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It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.
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Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.
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Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.
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If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes.
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fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.
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Economics and ethics have little in common.
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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.
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Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.
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The audience is the controlling factor in the actor’s life. It is practically infallible, since there is no appeal from its verdict. It is a little like a supreme court composed of irresponsible minors.
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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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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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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