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.
AGNES REPPLIEREdged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes.
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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.
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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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History is not written in the interests of morality.
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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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Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.
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Too much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught.
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There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania.
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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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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.
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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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Discussion without asperity, sympathy with fusion, gayety unracked by too abundant jests, mental ease in approaching one another; these are the things which give a pleasant smoothness to the rough edge of life.
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There is a vast deal of make-believe in the carefully nurtured sentiment for country life, and the barefoot boy, and the mountain girl.
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to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.
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Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.
AGNES REPPLIER