Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.
AGNES REPPLIERThe choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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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.
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it is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing.
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This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.
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There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.
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if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.
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But self-satisfaction, if as buoyant as gas, has an ugly trick of collapsing when full blown, and facts are stony things that refuse to melt away in the sunshine of a smile.
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Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.
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Friendship takes time.
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It is not begging but the beggar, who has forfeited favor with the elect.
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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.
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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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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.
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the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.
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Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.
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The 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.
AGNES REPPLIER