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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

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Agnes Repplier
Age: 92 †
Born: 1858
Born: April 1
Died: 1950
Died: December 15
Biographer
Essayist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Source
Talker
Inspiration
Absorbs
Inspirational
Talkers
Ideas
Listens
Nothing
Expresses
Men
Counts
Hardly
Listening
Alternately

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Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.
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In the stress of modern life, how little room is left for that most comfortable vanity that whispers in our ears that failures are not faults! Now we are taught from infancy that we must rise or fall upon our own merits that vigilance wins success, and incapacity means ruin
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world's mirth.
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We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.
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Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
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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.
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It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
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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.
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Necessity knows no Sunday.
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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.
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No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.
Agnes Repplier
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The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.
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Diaries tell their little tales with a directness, a candor, conscious or unconscious, a closeness of outlook, which gratifies our sense of security. Reading them is like gazing through a small clear pane of glass. We may not see far and wide, but we see very distinctly that which comes within our field of vision.
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A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.
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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.
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Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name.
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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