When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.
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
-
-
A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.
AGNES REPPLIER -
A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
AGNES REPPLIER -
There 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 REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Art… does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The 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 REPPLIER -
Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Life is so full of miseries, minor and major; they press so close upon us at every step of the way, that it is hardly worthwhile to call one another’s attention to their presence.
AGNES REPPLIER