Agnes Repplier Quotes

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.

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!

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

Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.

Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times, because they had nobody to talk about.

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

Neatness of phrase is so closely akin to wit that it is often accepted as its substitute.

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.

The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.

We owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command; and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation.

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.

People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.

Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.

A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense.

Believers in political faith-healing enjoy a supreme immunity from doubt.

Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.

fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.

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.

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

There is a vast deal of make-believe in the carefully nurtured sentiment for country life, and the barefoot boy, and the mountain girl.

The pitfall of the feminist is the belief that the interests of men and women can ever be severed; that what brings sufferings to the one can leave the other unscathed.

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.

Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.

Humor brings insight and tolerance.

Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.

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

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

There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.

Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.

It is not begging but the beggar, who has forfeited favor with the elect.

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.

the most comfortable characteristic of the period [1775-1825], and the one which incites our deepest envy, is the universal willingness to accept a good purpose as a substitute for good work.

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

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

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.

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.

It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.

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.

the most charming thing about youth is the tenacity of its impressions.

Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.