If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes.
AGNES REPPLIERIt was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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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 -
People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.
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The necessity of knowing a little about a great many things is the most grievous burden of our day. It deprives us of leisure on the one hand, and of scholarship on the other.
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Neatness of phrase is so closely akin to wit that it is often accepted as its substitute.
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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 -
Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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 -
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 -
if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.
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We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.
AGNES REPPLIER -
the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring – or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps – lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.
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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 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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There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.
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Woman is quick to revere genius, but in her secret soul she seldom loves it.
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It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.
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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
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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 -
Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.
AGNES REPPLIER -
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.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.
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It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.
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If we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Love is a malady, the common symptoms of which are the same in all patients.
AGNES REPPLIER