Quote

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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Agnes Repplier
Age: 92 †
Born: 1858
Born: April 1
Died: 1950
Died: December 15
Biographer
Essayist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Wit
Command
Mental
Intelligent
Conversation
Clears
Another
Vistas
Nothing
Sympathetic
Good
Humour

More quotes by Agnes Repplier

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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.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
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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Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.
Agnes Repplier
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The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience.
Agnes Repplier
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Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.
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.
Agnes Repplier
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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
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Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.
Agnes Repplier
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Humor brings insight and tolerance.
Agnes Repplier
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A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.
Agnes Repplier
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Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word 'million' is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the language.
Agnes Repplier
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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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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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to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.
Agnes Repplier
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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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the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring - or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps - lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.
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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There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.
Agnes Repplier
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The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge ... falls ripe from its stem but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.
Agnes Repplier