Agnes Repplier Quotes
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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.
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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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Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.
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There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania.
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The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.
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The man who never tells an unpalatable truth 'at the wrong time' (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly well assured.
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Economics and ethics have little in common.
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What puzzles most of us are the things which have been left in the movies rather than the things which have been taken out.
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Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.
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There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.
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Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.
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Woman is quick to revere genius, but in her secret soul she seldom loves it.
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The English possess too many agreeable traits to permit them to be as much disliked as they think and hope they are.
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Diaries tell their little tales with a directness, a candor, conscious or unconscious, a closeness of outlook, which gratifies our sense of security. Reading them is like gazing through a small clear pane of glass. We may not see far and wide, but we see very distinctly that which comes within our field of vision.
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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.
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A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.
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Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.
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What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!
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English civilization rests largely upon tea and cricket, with mighty spurts of enjoyment on Derby Day, and at Newmarket.
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Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times, because they had nobody to talk about.
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The tourist may complain of other tourists; but he would be lost without them. He may find them in his way, taking up the best seats in the motors, and the best tables in the hotel dining-rooms; but he grows amazingly intimate with them during the voyage, and not infrequently marries one of them when it is over.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.
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When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.
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It is the steady and merciless increase of occupations, the augmented speed at which we are always trying to live, the crowding of each day with more work than it can profitably hold, which has cost us, among other things, the undisturbed enjoyment of friends. Friendship takes time, and we have no time to give 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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No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.
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