Agnes Repplier Quotes

the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.

No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.

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.

There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.

Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word 'million' is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the language.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.

A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and generally stopping before it gets there.

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.

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.

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.

It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.

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.

The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.

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.

History is not written in the interests of morality.

Why do so many ingenious theorists give fresh reasons every year for the decline of letter writing, and why do they assume, in derision of suffering humanity, that it has declined? They lament the lack of leisure, the lack of sentiment ... They talk of telegrams, and telephones, and postal cards, as if any discovery of science, any device of civilization, could eradicate from the human heart that passion for self-expression which is the impelling force of letters.

Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.

It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.

The gayety of life, like the beauty and the moral worth of life, is a saving grace, which to ignore is folly, and to destroy is crime. There is no more than we need; there is barely enough to go round.

Those persons are happiest in this restless and mutable world who are in love with change, who delight in what is new simply because it differs from what is old; who rejoice in every innovation, and find a strange alert pleasure in all that is, and that has never been before.

I am seventy years old, a gray age weighted with uncompromising biblical allusions. It ought to have a gray outlook, but it hasn't, because a glint of dazzling sunshine is dancing merrily ahead of me.

Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.

fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.

The tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them.

real letter-writing ... is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.

There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join

It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.

It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.

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.

An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.

There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities.

The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.

Books that children read but once are of scant service to them; those that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves.

The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.

It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.

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.

Lovers of the town have been content, for the most part, to say they loved it. They do not brag about its uplifting qualities. They have none of the infernal smugness which makes the lover of the country insupportable.

The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.

There is no liberal education for the under-languaged.

There are people who balk at small civilities on account of their manifest insincerity. ... It is better and more logical to accept all the polite phraseology which facilitates intercourse, and contributes to the sweetness of life. If we discarded the formal falsehoods which are the currency of conversation, we should not be one step nearer the vital things of truth.

The soul begins to travel when the child begins to think.

To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate.

Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.

The choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation.

The cure-alls of the present day are infinitely various and infinitely obliging. Applied psychology, autosuggestion, and royal roads to learning or to wealth are urged upon us by kindly, if not altogether disinterested, reformers. Simple and easy systems for the dissolution of discord and strife; simple and easy systems for the development of personality and power. Booklets of counsel on 'How to Get What We Want,' which is impossible; booklets on 'Visualization,' warranted to make us want what we get, which is ignoble.

No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.

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.