Books 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 REPPLIERScience may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Those 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 REPPLIER -
Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.
AGNES REPPLIER -
History is not written in the interests of morality.
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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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The 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 REPPLIER -
Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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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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 -
The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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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Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.
AGNES REPPLIER -
We know when we have had enough of a friend, and we know when a friend has had enough of us. The first truth is no more palatable than the second.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.
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The 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 REPPLIER -
Wit is a thing capable of proof.
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The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.
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If 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 REPPLIER -
Economics and ethics have little in common.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Whatever has “wit enough to keep it sweet” defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.
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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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER