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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

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Agnes Repplier
Age: 92 †
Born: 1858
Born: April 1
Died: 1950
Died: December 15
Biographer
Essayist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Humans
Wit
Giving
Comic
Eludes
Thing
Foundation
Elude
Pleasure
Impetus
Working
Apprehension
Spirit
Companionship
Reason
Absurdity
Human
Largely

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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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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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Believers in political faith-healing enjoy a supreme immunity from doubt.
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The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.
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It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.
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There is no liberal education for the under-languaged.
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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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Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.
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There is nothing in the world so incomprehensible as the joke we do not see.
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To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.
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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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whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.
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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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Life is so full of miseries, minor and major they press so close upon us at every step of the way, that it is hardly worthwhile to call one another's attention to their presence.
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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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Every misused word revenges itself forever upon a writer's reputation.
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There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.
Agnes Repplier
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Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.
Agnes Repplier
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the tea-hour is the hour of peace ... strife is lost in the hissing of the kettle - a tranquilizing sound, second only to the purring of a cat.
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The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
Agnes Repplier