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.
AGNES REPPLIERThe 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.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.
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Lovers of the town have been content, for the most part, to say they loved it. They do not brag about its uplifting qualities. They have none of the infernal smugness which makes the lover of the country insupportable.
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Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.
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The soul begins to travel when the child begins to think.
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The dog is guided by kindly instinct to the man or woman whose heart is open to his advances. The cat often leaves the friend who courts her, to honor, or to harass, the unfortunate mortal who shudders at her unwelcome caresses.
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The gayety of life, like the beauty and the moral worth of life, is a saving grace, which to ignore is folly, and to destroy is crime. There is no more than we need; there is barely enough to go round.
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it is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing.
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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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The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge … falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.
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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 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.
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The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.
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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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It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable.
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A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense.
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Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.
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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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Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
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Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times, because they had nobody to talk about.
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It 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.
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We owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command; and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation.
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Necessity knows no Sunday.
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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.
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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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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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A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.
AGNES REPPLIER