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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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Agnes Repplier
Age: 92 †
Born: 1858
Born: April 1
Died: 1950
Died: December 15
Biographer
Essayist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Must
Corruption
Needs
Visible
Time
Sweet
Outlasts
Whatever
Defies
Keep
Demonstration
Order
Introduction
Hands
Outward
Enough
Wit

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Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
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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.
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The English possess too many agreeable traits to permit them to be as much disliked as they think and hope they are.
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The dog is guided by kindly instinct to the man or woman whose heart is open to his advances. The cat often leaves the friend who courts her, to honor, or to harass, the unfortunate mortal who shudders at her unwelcome caresses.
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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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We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.
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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.
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There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.
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An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.
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When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
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.
Agnes Repplier
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I wonder what especial sanctity attaches itself to fifteen minutes. It is always the maximum and the minimum of time which will enable us to acquire languages, etiquette, personality, oratory ... One gathers that twelve minutes a day would be hopelessly inadequate, and twenty minutes a wasteful and ridiculous excess.
Agnes Repplier
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
Agnes Repplier
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To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.
Agnes Repplier
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Humor hardens the heart, at least to the point of sanity.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
Agnes Repplier
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It is in his pleasure that a man really lives it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.
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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.
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Bargaining is essential to the life of the world but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.
Agnes Repplier