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Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.

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
Ideals
Achievement
Teases
Sorry
Tease
Possibility
Achievements
Democracy
Realities
Forever
Contrast
Reality
Heroic
Possibilities

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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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In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.
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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.
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Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.
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Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.
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if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.
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Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.
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It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.
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Friendship takes time.
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Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.
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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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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.
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Necessity knows no Sunday.
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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.
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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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History is not written in the interests of morality.
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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.
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the most comfortable characteristic of the period [1775-1825], and the one which incites our deepest envy, is the universal willingness to accept a good purpose as a substitute for good work.
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An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.
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We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.
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