We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.
AGNES REPPLIERWoman is quick to revere genius, but in her secret soul she seldom loves it.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
-
-
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 -
We cannot learn to love other tourists,-the laws of nature forbid it,-but, meditating soberly on the impossibility of their loving us, we may reach some common platform of tolerance, some common exchange of recognition and amenity.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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!
AGNES REPPLIER -
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 -
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 -
Humor brings insight and tolerance.
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 -
What 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 REPPLIER -
In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Love is a malady, the common symptoms of which are the same in all patients.
AGNES REPPLIER -
I am eighty years old. There seems to be nothing to add to this statement. I have reached the age of undecorated facts – facts that refuse to be softened by sentiment, or confused by nobility of phrase.
AGNES REPPLIER -
History is not written in the interests of morality.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The human race may be divided into people who love cats and people who hate them; the neutrals being few in numbers, and, for intellectual and moral reasons, not worth considering.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
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 -
Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The English possess too many agreeable traits to permit them to be as much disliked as they think and hope they are.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Now the pessimist proper is the most modest of men. … under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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 -
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 -
Lovers of the town have been content, for the most part, to say they loved it. They do not brag about its uplifting qualities. They have none of the infernal smugness which makes the lover of the country insupportable.
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 -
The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.
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