the most comfortable characteristic of the period [1775-1825], and the one which incites our deepest envy, is the universal willingness to accept a good purpose as a substitute for good work.
AGNES REPPLIERPersonally, 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.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.
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Traveling is, and has always been, more popular than the traveler.
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Art… does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.
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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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What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!
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We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.
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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.
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This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.
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the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring – or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps – lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.
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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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In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.
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Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.
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It is not begging but the beggar, who has forfeited favor with the elect.
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For 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.
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An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.
AGNES REPPLIER