The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
AGNES REPPLIERThere is no liberal education for the under-languaged.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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It is difficult to admonish Frenchmen. Their habit of mind is unfavorable to preachment.
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Who that has plodded on to middle age would take back upon his shoulders ten of the vanished years, with their mingled pleasures and pains? Who would return to the youth he is forever pretending to regret?
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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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The gayety of life, like the beauty and the moral worth of life, is a saving grace, which to ignore is folly, and to destroy is crime. There is no more than we need; there is barely enough to go round.
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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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An appreciation of words is so rare that everybody naturally thinks he possesses it, and this universal sentiment results in the misuse of a material whose beauty enriches the loving student beyond the dreams of avarice.
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We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.
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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.
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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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But self-satisfaction, if as buoyant as gas, has an ugly trick of collapsing when full blown, and facts are stony things that refuse to melt away in the sunshine of a smile.
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It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.
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It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
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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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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.
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
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The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.
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Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
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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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In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.
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to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.
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Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.
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For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.
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It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.
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Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
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The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.
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We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.
AGNES REPPLIER