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 REPPLIERWe 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.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.
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the tea-hour is the hour of peace … strife is lost in the hissing of the kettle – a tranquilizing sound, second only to the purring of a cat.
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Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
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It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
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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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It is difficult to admonish Frenchmen. Their habit of mind is unfavorable to preachment.
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There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.
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The audience is the controlling factor in the actor’s life. It is practically infallible, since there is no appeal from its verdict. It is a little like a supreme court composed of irresponsible minors.
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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.
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Humor brings insight and tolerance.
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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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Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.
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No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.
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whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.
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Our belief in education is unbounded, our reverence for it is unfaltering, our loyalty to it is unshaken by reverses. Our passionate desire, not so much to acquire it as to bestow it, is the most animated of American traits.
AGNES REPPLIER