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 REPPLIERLife 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.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and generally stopping before it gets there.
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People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism.
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The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.
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Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature, and is purifying only in so far as there is a natural and unschooled goodness in the human heart.
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If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes.
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There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.
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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.
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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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While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
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The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.
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The dog is guided by kindly instinct to the man or woman whose heart is open to his advances. The cat often leaves the friend who courts her, to honor, or to harass, the unfortunate mortal who shudders at her unwelcome caresses.
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Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times, because they had nobody to talk about.
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The pessimist is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.
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The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world’s mirth.
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Whatever has “wit enough to keep it sweet” defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.
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We cannot learn to love other tourists,-the laws of nature forbid it,-but, meditating soberly on the impossibility of their loving us, we may reach some common platform of tolerance, some common exchange of recognition and amenity.
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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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Books that children read but once are of scant service to them; those that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves.
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Necessity knows no Sunday.
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The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.
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Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
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It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.
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It is difficult to admonish Frenchmen. Their habit of mind is unfavorable to preachment.
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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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We owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command; and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation.
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A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.
AGNES REPPLIER