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

More quotes by Agnes Repplier

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The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.
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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.
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History is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.
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It is unwise to feel too much if we think too little.
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Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
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A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.
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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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There is nothing in the world so incomprehensible as the joke we do not see.
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Bargaining is essential to the life of the world but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.
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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.
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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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While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
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A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and generally stopping before it gets there.
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Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.
Agnes Repplier
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Economics and ethics have little in common.
Agnes Repplier
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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
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Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
Agnes Repplier
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Books that children read but once are of scant service to them those that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves.
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An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
Agnes Repplier