Top 204 Quotes & Sayings by Agnes Repplier

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

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 nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.

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

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

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

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.

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

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

We cannot really love anyone with with whom we never laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world's mirth.

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

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.

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.

America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed.

An appreciation of words is so rare that everybody naturally thinks he possesses it, and this universal sentiment results in the misuse of a material whose beauty enriches the loving student beyond the dreams of avarice.

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

Love is a malady, the common symptoms of which are the same in all patients.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If we could make up our minds to spare our friends all details of ill health, of money losses, of domestic annoyances, of altercations, of committee work, of grievances, provocations, and anxieties, we should sin less against the world's good-humor. It may not be given us to add to the treasury of mirth; but there is considerable merit in not robbing it.

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.

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

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

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

The essence of humor is that it should be unexpected, that it should embody an element of surprise, that it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all, must be our habitual frame of mind.

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.

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

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

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.

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

A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.

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.

Conversation in its happiest development is a link, equally exquisite and adequate, between mind and mind, a system by which men approach one another with sympathy and enjoyment, a field for the finest amenities of civilization, for the keenest and most intelligent display of social activity. It is also our solace, our inspiration, and our most rational pleasure. It is a duty we owe to one another; it is our common debt to humanity.

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

I am eighty years old. There seems to be nothing to add to this statement. I have reached the age of undecorated facts - facts that refuse to be softened by sentiment, or confused by nobility of phrase.

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!

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

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

[Mary Wortley Montagu] wrote more letters, with fewer punctuation marks, than any Englishwoman of her day; and her nephew, the fourth Baron Rokeby, nearly blinded himself in deciphering the two volumes of undated correspondence which were printed in 1810. Two more followed in 1813, after which the gallant Baron either died at his post or was smitten with despair; for sixty-eight cases of letters lay undisturbed ... 'Les morts n'écrivent point,' said Madame de Maintenon hopefully; but of what benefit is this inactivity, when we still continue to receive their letters?

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.

abroad it is our habit to regard all other travelers in the light of personal and unpardonable grievances. They are intruders into our chosen realms of pleasure, they jar upon our sensibilities, they lessen our meager share of comforts, they are everywhere in our way, they are always an unnecessary feature in the landscape.

He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion. Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.

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

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.