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 REPPLIERWit 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.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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History is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others; but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories; it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.
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It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
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Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
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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.
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The tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them.
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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.
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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.
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Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.
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Like simplicity and candor, and other much-commented qualities, enthusiasm is charming until we meet it face to face, and cannot escape from its charm.
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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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It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.
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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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Art… does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.
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There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.
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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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