Quote

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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Agnes Repplier
Age: 92 †
Born: 1858
Born: April 1
Died: 1950
Died: December 15
Biographer
Essayist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Always
Twenty
Languages
Wasteful
Would
Twenties
Maximum
Gathers
Time
Ridiculous
Conventions
Oratory
Personality
Minimum
Hopelessly
Minutes
Fifteen
Etiquette
Learning
Excess
Sanctity
Wonder
Twelve
Inadequate
Especial
Language
Acquire
Enable
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More quotes by Agnes Repplier

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real letter-writing ... is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.
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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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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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Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
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Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature, and is purifying only in so far as there is a natural and unschooled goodness in the human heart.
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The man who never tells an unpalatable truth 'at the wrong time' (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly well assured.
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I do strive to think well of my fellow man, but no amount of striving can give me confidence in the wisdom of a congressional vote.
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It is not begging but the beggar, who has forfeited favor with the elect.
Agnes Repplier
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There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join
Agnes Repplier
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the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.
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America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed.
Agnes Repplier
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Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
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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To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate.
Agnes Repplier
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The tourist may complain of other tourists but he would be lost without them. He may find them in his way, taking up the best seats in the motors, and the best tables in the hotel dining-rooms but he grows amazingly intimate with them during the voyage, and not infrequently marries one of them when it is over.
Agnes Repplier
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Love is a malady, the common symptoms of which are the same in all patients.
Agnes Repplier
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We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.
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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The pitfall of the feminist is the belief that the interests of men and women can ever be severed that what brings sufferings to the one can leave the other unscathed.
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