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It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.

Agnes Repplier

There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.
AGNES REPPLIER

Envy Limit Natural Spurred Success Way Wish
No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.
AGNES REPPLIER

Desire Escaped Hand Man Pursuit Recognize
Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.
AGNES REPPLIER

Happiness Laughter Lawless Nature Part Spring
Love is a malady, the common symptoms of which are the same in all patients.
AGNES REPPLIER

Common Love Malady Patient Symptom
Humor brings insight and tolerance.
AGNES REPPLIER

Event Humor Insight Ironic Tolerance
Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word ‘million’ is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the language.
AGNES REPPLIER

Country Giving Language Like Million Probably Term Thinking Thousand Vocable
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.
AGNES REPPLIER

Accidental Artificial Born Conscious Effort Fate Humor Natural
It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable.
AGNES REPPLIER

Bad Enough Taste Unpardonable
There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.
AGNES REPPLIER

Appreciate Discrimination Enjoy Equal Frightful Literature Masterpiece Read Something
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.
AGNES REPPLIER

Backward Complacency Illusion Look Process Reality Relatives
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.
AGNES REPPLIER

Book Giving More Natural Principle Publication Unreadable
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.
AGNES REPPLIER

Attitude Conversation Positive Sarcastic Self Wearing
Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.
AGNES REPPLIER

Attaches Believe Cause Maximum Men Personally Sanctify Writing
A 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

Accurately Cat Dog Expresses Mater Men Mutual Relation Sense Tem Word
A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.
AGNES REPPLIER

Construction Deal Evoking Example Ingenuity Undesirable Years
Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.
AGNES REPPLIER

Cat Languid Length Sky Sleep Stretch Sweetly

It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.

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It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.

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