Now the pessimist proper is the most modest of men. … under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.
AGNES REPPLIERFor indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.
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Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
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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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It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.
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Humor brings insight and tolerance.
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The carefully fostered theory that schoolwork can be made easy and enjoyable breaks down as soon as anything, however trivial, has to be learned.
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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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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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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.
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It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.
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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.
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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.
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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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It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles.
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Believers in political faith-healing enjoy a supreme immunity from doubt.
AGNES REPPLIER