An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.
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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Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.
AGNES REPPLIER -
the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.
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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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The necessity of knowing a little about a great many things is the most grievous burden of our day. It deprives us of leisure on the one hand, and of scholarship on the other.
AGNES REPPLIER -
While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
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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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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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Discussion without asperity, sympathy with fusion, gayety unracked by too abundant jests, mental ease in approaching one another; these are the things which give a pleasant smoothness to the rough edge of life.
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The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.
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We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.
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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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Books that children read but once are of scant service to them; those that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves.
AGNES REPPLIER