Agnes Repplier Quotes

180 Sourced Quotes

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

Agnes Repplier
By providing cheap and wholesome reading for the young, we have partly succeeded in driving from the field that which was positively bad; yet nothing is easier than to overdo a reformation, and, through the characteristic indulgence of American parents, children are drugged with a literature whose chief merit is its harmlessness.

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

Agnes Repplier
There are people who balk at small civilities on account of their manifest insincerity.... It is better and more logical to accept all the polite phraseology which facilitates intercourse, and contributes to the sweetness of life. If we discarded the formal falsehoods which are the currency of conversation, we should not be one step nearer the vital things of truth.

Agnes Repplier
What the world asks now are state reforms and social reforms,—in other words, the reformation of our neighbours. What the Gospel asks, and has always asked, is the reformation of ourselves... Mr. [G. K.] Chesterton spoke but the truth when he said that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and not tried.

Agnes Repplier
Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.

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

Agnes Repplier
Those persons are happiest in this restless and mutable world who are in love with change, who delight in what is new simply because it differs from what is old; who rejoice in every innovation, and find a strange alert pleasure in all that is, and that has never been before.

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

Agnes Repplier
The necessity of knowing a little about a great many things is the most grievous burden of our day. It deprives us of leisure on the one hand, and of scholarship on the other.

Agnes Repplier
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.

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
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
There is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.

Agnes Repplier
Now the pessimist proper is the most modest of men.... under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.

Agnes Repplier
The audience is the controlling factor in the actor's life. It is practically infallible, since there is no appeal from its verdict. It is a little like a supreme court composed of irresponsible minors.

Agnes Repplier
The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.

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

Agnes Repplier
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.

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

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

Agnes Repplier
When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.

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

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

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

Agnes Repplier
It is not an easy thing to be happy. It takes all the brains, and all the soul, and all the goodness we possess. 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.

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

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
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