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.
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
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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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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 REPPLIER -
The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
AGNES REPPLIER -
A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.
AGNES REPPLIER -
There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.
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 -
While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER