No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.
AGNES REPPLIERThe well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge … falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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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.
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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.
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Like simplicity and candor, and other much-commented qualities, enthusiasm is charming until we meet it face to face, and cannot escape from its charm.
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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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There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join
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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.
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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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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.
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Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.
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The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.
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Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.
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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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Sensuality, too, which used to show itself course, smiling, unmasked, and unmistakable, is now serious, analytic, and so burdened with a sense of its responsibilities that it passes muster half the time as a new type of asceticism.
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Traveling is, and has always been, more popular than the traveler.
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Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.
AGNES REPPLIER