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
Wonder
Twelve
Inadequate
Especial
Language
Acquire
Enable
Attaches
Always
Twenty
Languages
Wasteful
Would
Twenties
Maximum
Gathers
Time
Ridiculous
Conventions
Oratory
Personality
Minimum
Hopelessly
Minutes
Fifteen
Etiquette
Learning
Excess
Sanctity

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Sensuality, too, which used to show itself course, smiling, unmasked, and unmistakable, is now serious, analytic, and so burdened with a sense of its responsibilities that it passes muster half the time as a new type of asceticism.
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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.
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To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate.
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It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.
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Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
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Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.
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To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.
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Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
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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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Wit is artificial humor is natural. Wit is accidental humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.
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The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses.
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Lovers of the town have been content, for the most part, to say they loved it. They do not brag about its uplifting qualities. They have none of the infernal smugness which makes the lover of the country insupportable.
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it is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing.
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Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.
Agnes Repplier
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It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.
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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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Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.
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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.
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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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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.
Agnes Repplier