the most comfortable characteristic of the period [1775-1825], and the one which incites our deepest envy, is the universal willingness to accept a good purpose as a substitute for good work.
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.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.
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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.
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Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name.
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A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.
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The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.
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A man who owns a dog is, in every sense of the words, its master; the term expresses accurately their mutual relations. But it is ridiculous when applied to the limited possession of a cat.
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Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.
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Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.
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In the stress of modern life, how little room is left for that most comfortable vanity that whispers in our ears that failures are not faults! Now we are taught from infancy that we must rise or fall upon our own merits; that vigilance wins success, and incapacity means ruin
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The soul begins to travel when the child begins to think.
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Traveling is, and has always been, more popular than the traveler.
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Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.
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whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.
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It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable.
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Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.
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