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.
AGNES REPPLIEROur dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
-
-
There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Love is a malady, the common symptoms of which are the same in all patients.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.
AGNES REPPLIER -
For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.
AGNES REPPLIER -
An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The necessity of knowing a little about a great many things is the most grievous burden of our day. It deprives us of leisure on the one hand, and of scholarship on the other.
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 -
Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.
AGNES REPPLIER -
A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
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, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.
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 -
If we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word ‘million’ is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the language.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It is unwise to feel too much if we think too little.
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 -
There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join
AGNES REPPLIER -
The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
AGNES REPPLIER