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It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.

Agnes Repplier

It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.
AGNES REPPLIER

Behave Fiction Novelist Office Ourselves Teach
It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.
AGNES REPPLIER

Enjoy Leisure Life Man Pleasure
We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
AGNES REPPLIER

Height Ignoring Moral Obligation Scale
We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.
AGNES REPPLIER

Hand Peace Struggle Tethered Ubuntu
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

Character Good Incident Novel Part Reading
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

Characteristics Humor Obscure Point Reflecting Silent Social
While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
AGNES REPPLIER

Art Democracy Instructing May Nonetheless Please Pleasure Tease
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

Add Age Confused Fact Nothing Reached Statement Undecorated Year
The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience.
AGNES REPPLIER

Frightful Goodness Law Masterpiece Men Pressure REquired Strong
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

Accidental Artificial Born Conscious Effort Fate Humor Natural
Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.
AGNES REPPLIER

Admire Animal Colossal Dog Friendship Homage Meanest Uncritical
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

Civilized Consideration Giving Incapable Kindness Offence Quality Unnecessary
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

Day Delight Diaries Happy Journal Men Wrote
Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.
AGNES REPPLIER

Annual Delight Guest Leisure Solace
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

Attention Hardly Life Press Step Way
An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.
AGNES REPPLIER

Historian Passion Political Rare Sting Wasp
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

Art Best Compatible Humour Life Told Worst
Too much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught.
AGNES REPPLIER

Followed Insubordination Rigidly Taught Teacher Too Much
It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.
AGNES REPPLIER

Construct Fabric Life Men Self True
A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and generally stopping before it gets there.
AGNES REPPLIER

Cat Kitten Mad Remarkable Rushing Stopping
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 REPPLIER

Construction Deal Evoking Example Ingenuity Undesirable Years
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

Boredom Impulse Music Otherwise People Stange
The carefully fostered theory that schoolwork can be made easy and enjoyable breaks down as soon as anything, however trivial, has to be learned.
AGNES REPPLIER

Break Carefully Easy Education Enjoyable Fostered Schoolwork Teaching Theory
Discussion without asperity, sympathy with fusion, gayety unracked by too abundant jests, mental ease in approaching one another; these are the things which give a pleasant smoothness to the rough edge of life.
AGNES REPPLIER

Abundant Asperity Edge Fusion Gayety Giving Jest Rough Sympathy Unracked
The man who never tells an unpalatable truth ‘at the wrong time’ (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly well assured.
AGNES REPPLIER

Discovered Life Men Political Tell Time Unpalatable Wrong
There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.
AGNES REPPLIER

Appreciate Discrimination Enjoy Equal Frightful Literature Masterpiece Read Something
I am seventy years old, a gray age weighted with uncompromising biblical allusions. It ought to have a gray outlook, but it hasn’t, because a glint of dazzling sunshine is dancing merrily ahead of me.
AGNES REPPLIER

Biblical Gray Old Ought Outlook Seventy Sunshine Uncompromising Weighted Year

It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.

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It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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