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.
AGNES REPPLIERThe sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.
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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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the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.
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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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English civilization rests largely upon tea and cricket, with mighty spurts of enjoyment on Derby Day, and at Newmarket.
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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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People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
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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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Every misused word revenges itself forever upon a writer’s reputation.
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the tea-hour is the hour of peace … strife is lost in the hissing of the kettle – a tranquilizing sound, second only to the purring of a cat.
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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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There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.
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I do strive to think well of my fellow man, but no amount of striving can give me confidence in the wisdom of a congressional vote.
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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.
AGNES REPPLIER






