There is nothing in the world so incomprehensible as the joke we do not see.
AGNES REPPLIERThere is nothing in the world so incomprehensible as the joke we do not see.
AGNES REPPLIERWhile art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
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.
AGNES REPPLIEREvery misused word revenges itself forever upon a writer’s reputation.
AGNES REPPLIERWhat 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?
AGNES REPPLIERBooks 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 REPPLIERThe 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.
AGNES REPPLIERConversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times, because they had nobody to talk about.
AGNES REPPLIERHistory is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others; but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories; it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.
AGNES REPPLIERWhen 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 REPPLIERThe age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.
AGNES REPPLIEROur belief in education is unbounded, our reverence for it is unfaltering, our loyalty to it is unshaken by reverses. Our passionate desire, not so much to acquire it as to bestow it, is the most animated of American traits.
AGNES REPPLIERFor 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.
AGNES REPPLIERInnovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.
AGNES REPPLIERScience may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
AGNES REPPLIERA man who owns a dog is, in every sense of the words, its master; the term expresses accurately their mutual relations. But it is ridiculous when applied to the limited possession of a cat.
AGNES REPPLIER