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Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.

Agnes Repplier

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.
AGNES REPPLIER

Laughter Merriment Moved Occasion Other Reason Serious Seriousness
There 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 REPPLIER

Backward Complacency Illusion Look Process Reality Relatives
When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught.
AGNES REPPLIER

Draught Kindness Milk Unpalatable
There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.
AGNES REPPLIER

Envy Limit Natural Spurred Success Way Wish
An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.
AGNES REPPLIER

Historian Passion Political Rare Sting Wasp
The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.
AGNES REPPLIER

Common Interest Mutability Nation Relation
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
To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.
AGNES REPPLIER

Being Given Human Life Pleasure Recollection Sweeten
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

Anticipate Eventual Great Law Moral Optimism Triumph
Our belief in education is unbounded, our reverence for it is unfaltering, our loyalty to it is unshaken by reverses. Our passionate desire, not so much to acquire it as to bestow it, is the most animated of American traits.
AGNES REPPLIER

Belief Loyalty Passionate Desire Reverse Unbounded Unshaken
Diaries tell their little tales with a directness, a candor, conscious or unconscious, a closeness of outlook, which gratifies our sense of security. Reading them is like gazing through a small clear pane of glass. We may not see far and wide, but we see very distinctly that which comes within our field of vision.
AGNES REPPLIER

Candor Conscious Glasses Outlook Reading Tale Unconscious Vision
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
Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
AGNES REPPLIER

Generosity Man Quintessence Woman Writing
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
A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal.
AGNES REPPLIER

Animal Cat Eye Irresistible Kitten Mirth Open Wide World Wounder
The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
AGNES REPPLIER

Common Die Disease Little Past Post Save

Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.

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Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.

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