Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.
AGNES REPPLIERThere was no escape from the letter-writer who, a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five years ago, captured a coveted correspondent. It would have been as easy to shake off an octopus or a boa-constrictor.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
-
-
Cats, even when robust, have scant liking for the boisterous society of children, and are apt to exert their utmost ingenuity to escape it. Nor are they without adult sympathy in their prejudice.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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
AGNES REPPLIER -
When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.
AGNES REPPLIER -
There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join
AGNES REPPLIER -
Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
AGNES REPPLIER -
the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense.
AGNES REPPLIER -
There is no liberal education for the under-languaged.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name.
AGNES REPPLIER