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 REPPLIERIt has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
-
-
the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Economics and ethics have little in common.
AGNES REPPLIER -
There was no escape from the letter-writer who, a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five years ago, captured a coveted correspondent. It would have been as easy to shake off an octopus or a boa-constrictor.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Neatness of phrase is so closely akin to wit that it is often accepted as its substitute.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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 REPPLIER -
Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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 -
Woman is quick to revere genius, but in her secret soul she seldom loves it.
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 -
There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.
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 -
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