Quote

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.

Agnes Repplier

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Agnes Repplier
Age: 92 †
Born: 1858
Born: April 1
Died: 1950
Died: December 15
Biographer
Essayist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Mind
Element
Unexpected
Reasonable
Surprise
Startle
Essence
Embody
Elements
Habitual
Humor
Frame
Must
Gravity

More quotes by Agnes Repplier

Image
There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.
Agnes Repplier
Image
While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
Agnes Repplier
Image
if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.
Agnes Repplier
Image
Woman is quick to revere genius, but in her secret soul she seldom loves it.
Agnes Repplier
Image
The English possess too many agreeable traits to permit them to be as much disliked as they think and hope they are.
Agnes Repplier
Image
Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
Agnes Repplier
Image
The soul begins to travel when the child begins to think.
Agnes Repplier
Image
A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.
Agnes Repplier
Image
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.
Agnes Repplier
Image
The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.
Agnes Repplier
Image
It is the steady and merciless increase of occupations, the augmented speed at which we are always trying to live, the crowding of each day with more work than it can profitably hold, which has cost us, among other things, the undisturbed enjoyment of friends. Friendship takes time, and we have no time to give it.
Agnes Repplier
Image
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
Image
Friendship takes time.
Agnes Repplier
Image
The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.
Agnes Repplier
Image
It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.
Agnes Repplier
Image
We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
Agnes Repplier
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.
Agnes Repplier
Image
Those persons are happiest in this restless and mutable world who are in love with change, who delight in what is new simply because it differs from what is old who rejoice in every innovation, and find a strange alert pleasure in all that is, and that has never been before.
Agnes Repplier