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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.

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
Every
Secret
Conviction
Men
Hours
Critics
Pardonable
Half
Hour
Reviewers
Woman
Intelligent
Wholesome
Easy
Reader
Unfinished
Book
Among
Sufficient
Matter
Written
Impression
Heart
Company
Lays

More quotes by Agnes Repplier

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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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It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable.
Agnes Repplier
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The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
Agnes Repplier
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People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.
Agnes Repplier
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We cannot learn to love other tourists,-the laws of nature forbid it,-but, meditating soberly on the impossibility of their loving us, we may reach some common platform of tolerance, some common exchange of recognition and amenity.
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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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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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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Too much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught.
Agnes Repplier
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A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal.
Agnes Repplier
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Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.
Agnes Repplier
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fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.
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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No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.
Agnes Repplier
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We owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation.
Agnes Repplier
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It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
Agnes Repplier
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The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.
Agnes Repplier
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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
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What strange impulse is it which induces otherwise truthful people to say they like music when they do not, and thus expose themselves to hours of boredom?
Agnes Repplier