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.
AGNES REPPLIERNo rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
-
-
The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses.
AGNES REPPLIER -
A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.
AGNES REPPLIER -
fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.
AGNES REPPLIER -
This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The human race may be divided into people who love cats and people who hate them; the neutrals being few in numbers, and, for intellectual and moral reasons, not worth considering.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The pessimist is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.
AGNES REPPLIER -
the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.
AGNES REPPLIER -
There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join
AGNES REPPLIER -
A man who owns a dog is, in every sense of the words, its master; the term expresses accurately their mutual relations. But it is ridiculous when applied to the limited possession of a cat.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The 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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.
AGNES REPPLIER -
A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal.
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