If everybody floated with the tide of talk, placidity would soon end in stagnation. It is the strong backward stroke which stirs the ripples, and gives animation and variety.
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
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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 are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.
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The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.
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Woman is quick to revere genius, but in her secret soul she seldom loves it.
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For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.
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It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles.
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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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A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense.
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There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.
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Believers in political faith-healing enjoy a supreme immunity from doubt.
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Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
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The essence of humor is that it should be unexpected, that it should embody an element of surprise, that it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all, must be our habitual frame of mind.
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
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There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join
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Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.
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Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.
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People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.
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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.
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To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.
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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 most charming thing about youth is the tenacity of its impressions.
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The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge … falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.
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There 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.
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The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world’s mirth.
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The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.
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Traveling is, and has always been, more popular than the traveler.
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