Top 150 Agnes Repplier Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania...”

— Agnes Repplier

52. “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

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

— Agnes Repplier

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

— Agnes Repplier

55. “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

56. “Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.”

— Agnes Repplier

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

— Agnes Repplier

58. “Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.”

— Agnes Repplier

59. “The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.”

— Agnes Repplier

60. “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

61. “It is unwise to feel too much if we think too little.”

— Agnes Repplier

62. “English civilization rests largely upon tea and cricket, with mighty spurts of enjoyment on Derby Day, and at Newmarket.”

— Agnes Repplier

63. “Whatever has “wit enough to keep it sweet” defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.”

— Agnes Repplier

64. “Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.”

— Agnes Repplier

65. “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.”

— Agnes Repplier

66. “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

67. “Too much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught.”

— Agnes Repplier

68. “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

69. “There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join.”

— Agnes Repplier

70. “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

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

— Agnes Repplier

72. “But self-satisfaction, if as buoyant as gas, has an ugly trick of collapsing when full blown, and facts are stony things that refuse to melt away in the sunshine of a smile.”

— Agnes Repplier

73. “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

74. “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

75. “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

76. “A man who owns a dog is, in every sense of the words, its master; the term expresses accurately their mutual relations. But it is ridiculous when applied to the limited possession of a cat.”

— Agnes Repplier

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

— Agnes Repplier

78. “If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes.”

— Agnes Repplier

79. “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

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

— Agnes Repplier

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

— Agnes Repplier

82. “Economics and ethics have little in common.”

— Agnes Repplier

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

— Agnes Repplier

84. “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

85. “We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.”

— Agnes Repplier

86. “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

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

— Agnes Repplier

88. “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

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

— Agnes Repplier

90. “Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.”

— Agnes Repplier

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

— Agnes Repplier

92. “Discussion without asperity, sympathy with fusion, gayety unracked by too abundant jests, mental ease in approaching one another; these are the things which give a pleasant smoothness to the rough edge of life.”

— Agnes Repplier

93. “The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.”

— Agnes Repplier

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

— Agnes Repplier

95. “Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.”

— Agnes Repplier

96. “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.”

— Agnes Repplier

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

— Agnes Repplier

98. “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

99. “Who that has plodded on to middle age would take back upon his shoulders ten of the vanished years, with their mingled pleasures and pains? Who would return to the youth he is forever pretending to regret?”

— Agnes Repplier

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

— Agnes Repplier