Agnes Repplier Quotes

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

Everybody is now so busy teaching that nobody has any time to learn.

The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.

Life is so full of miseries, minor and major; they press so close upon us at every step of the way, that it is hardly worthwhile to call one another's attention to their presence.

Necessity knows no Sunday.

The English possess too many agreeable traits to permit them to be as much disliked as they think and hope they are.

When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught.

We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.

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

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.

Friendship takes time.

Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.

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.

Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.

The human race may be divided into people who love cats and people who hate them; the neutrals being few in numbers, and, for intellectual and moral reasons, not worth considering.

History is not written in the interests of morality.

Humor hardens the heart, at least to the point of sanity.

Every misused word revenges itself forever upon a writer's reputation.

We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.

People with theories of life are, perhaps, the most relentless of their kind, for no time or place is sacred from their devastating elucidations.

It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable.

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

Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.

A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.

Wit is a thing capable of proof.

The least practical of us have some petty thrift dear to our hearts, some one direction in which we love to scrimp.

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

We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.

The carefully fostered theory that schoolwork can be made easy and enjoyable breaks down as soon as anything, however trivial, has to be learned.

A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.

While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.

There is nothing in the world so incomprehensible as the joke we do not see.

Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.

We know when we have had enough of a friend, and we know when a friend has had enough of us. The first truth is no more palatable than the second.

I do strive to think well of my fellow man, but no amount of striving can give me confidence in the wisdom of a congressional vote.

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

There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.

It 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.

Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.

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

Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.

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

The cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature, and is purifying only in so far as there is a natural and unschooled goodness in the human heart.

The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.

We may fail of our happiness strive we ever so bravely but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgment our chances and our capabilities.

We are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.

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

We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.

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