Agnes Repplier Quotes

180 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Agnes Repplier
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.

Agnes Repplier
In the stress of modern life, how little room is left for that most comfortable vanity which whispers in our ears that failures are not faults!

Agnes Repplier
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. It is the opening of our mental pores, and the stimulus of marshaling our ideas in words, of setting them forth as gallantly and as graciously as we can.

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

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

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

Agnes Repplier
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.

Agnes Repplier
For there is nothing so lowering to one's self-esteem as the affectionate contempt of a beloved cat.

Agnes Repplier
Our belief in education is unbounded, our reverence for it is unfaltering, our loyalty to it is unshaken by reverses. Our passionate desire, not so much to acquire it as to bestow it, is the most animated of American traits.

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

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

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

Agnes Repplier
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.

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

Agnes Repplier
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.

Agnes Repplier
The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses.

Agnes Repplier
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.

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

Agnes Repplier
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.

Agnes Repplier
It is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing.

Agnes Repplier
If a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.

Agnes Repplier
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.

Agnes Repplier
Subtlety being an intellectual asset, film directors rightly conceive that it would be lost upon their audiences.

Agnes Repplier
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.

Agnes Repplier
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.

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

Agnes Repplier
The critical power, though on a distinctly lower level than the creative, is of inestimable help in its development.

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

Agnes Repplier