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.
AGNES REPPLIERSensuality, 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.
AGNES REPPLIERto 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 REPPLIERBargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.
AGNES REPPLIERHumor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
AGNES REPPLIERThere is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities.
AGNES REPPLIERthe 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 REPPLIERA real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.
AGNES REPPLIERCats, even when robust, have scant liking for the boisterous society of children, and are apt to exert their utmost ingenuity to escape it. Nor are they without adult sympathy in their prejudice.
AGNES REPPLIERHistory is not written in the interests of morality.
AGNES REPPLIERWhen 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 REPPLIERFor 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 REPPLIERNow 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 REPPLIERToo much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught.
AGNES REPPLIERIt is in his pleasure that a man really lives.
AGNES REPPLIERThe delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.
AGNES REPPLIERThere is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania.
AGNES REPPLIER