I am seventy years old, a gray age weighted with uncompromising biblical allusions. It ought to have a gray outlook, but it hasn’t, because a glint of dazzling sunshine is dancing merrily ahead of me.
AGNES REPPLIERI am seventy years old, a gray age weighted with uncompromising biblical allusions. It ought to have a gray outlook, but it hasn’t, because a glint of dazzling sunshine is dancing merrily ahead of me.
AGNES REPPLIERThere is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.
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 REPPLIERNeed drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.
AGNES REPPLIERWhile art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
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 REPPLIERIt is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.
AGNES REPPLIERThe great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses.
AGNES REPPLIERThe soul begins to travel when the child begins to think.
AGNES REPPLIERIf everybody floated with the tide of talk, placidity would soon end in stagnation. It is the strong backward stroke which stirs the ripples, and gives animation and variety.
AGNES REPPLIERIf we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.
AGNES REPPLIERThose persons are happiest in this restless and mutable world who are in love with change, who delight in what is new simply because it differs from what is old; who rejoice in every innovation, and find a strange alert pleasure in all that is, and that has never been before.
AGNES REPPLIERit is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing.
AGNES REPPLIERThe tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them.
AGNES REPPLIERAn historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.
AGNES REPPLIERA man who listens because he has nothing to say can hardly be a source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternately absorbs and expresses ideas.
AGNES REPPLIER