Agnes Repplier Quotes

180 Sourced Quotes

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.

Agnes Repplier
Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.

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

Agnes Repplier
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.

Agnes Repplier
Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word 'million' is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the language.

Agnes Repplier
It is in his pleasures that a man really lives, it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

Agnes Repplier
No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.

Agnes Repplier
The party which is out sees nothing but graft and incapacity in the party which is in; and the party which is in sees nothing but greed and animosity in the party which is out.

Agnes Repplier
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.

Agnes Repplier
The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests, which are always liable to deflection.

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

Agnes Repplier
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.

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

Agnes Repplier
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.

Agnes Repplier
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.

Agnes Repplier
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.

Agnes Repplier
A man who listens because he has nothing to say can hardly be a source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternately absorbs and expresses ideas.

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

Agnes Repplier
Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.

Agnes Repplier
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.

Agnes Repplier
Traveling is, and has always been, more popular than the traveler.

Agnes Repplier
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.

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

Agnes Repplier
The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge... falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.

Agnes Repplier
We can reckon the cost of misdirected emotions by the price which the past has paid for them. We know the full significance of that irresponsible sympathy which... admits no difference between attack and resistance, between a war of aggression and a war of defence; which confuses moral issues, ignores experience, and insults the intelligence of mankind. The reformer whose heart is in the right place, but whose head is elsewhere, represents a waste of force; and we can not afford any waste in the conservation of honour and goodness.

Agnes Repplier
Cats, even when robust, have scant liking for the boisterous society of children, and are apt to exert their utmost ingenuity to escape it. Nor are they without adult sympathy in their prejudice.

Agnes Repplier
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!

Agnes Repplier
The pessimist, however, — be it recorded to his credit, — is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.

Agnes Repplier
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.

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

Agnes Repplier