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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
Listening
Alternately
Source
Talker
Inspiration
Absorbs
Inspirational
Talkers
Ideas
Listens
Nothing
Expresses
Men
Counts
Hardly

More quotes by Agnes Repplier

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It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.
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Humor brings insight and tolerance.
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Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
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Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.
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The tourist may complain of other tourists but he would be lost without them. He may find them in his way, taking up the best seats in the motors, and the best tables in the hotel dining-rooms but he grows amazingly intimate with them during the voyage, and not infrequently marries one of them when it is over.
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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.
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Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.
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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 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.
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
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For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.
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Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
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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.
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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
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Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.
Agnes Repplier
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People with theories of life are, perhaps, the most relentless of their kind, for no time or place is sacred from their devastating elucidations.
Agnes Repplier
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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
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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
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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.
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Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.
Agnes Repplier