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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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Agnes Repplier
Age: 92 †
Born: 1858
Born: April 1
Died: 1950
Died: December 15
Biographer
Essayist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Held
Erudition
Turned
Leash
Learning
Leashes
Public
Defenseless
Knowledge
Firmly
Upon
Loose
Thing
Charming
Bloodhound
Like
Attractive
Bloodhounds

More quotes by Agnes Repplier

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fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.
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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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I am seventy years old, a gray age weighted with uncompromising biblical allusions. It ought to have a gray outlook, but it hasn't, because a glint of dazzling sunshine is dancing merrily ahead of me.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Agnes Repplier
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He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion. Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.
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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.
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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It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.
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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Love is a malady, the common symptoms of which are the same in all patients.
Agnes Repplier
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We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.
Agnes Repplier
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There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.
Agnes Repplier
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Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
Agnes Repplier
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The choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation.
Agnes Repplier
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We know when we have had enough of a friend, and we know when a friend has had enough of us. The first truth is no more palatable than the second.
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A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.
Agnes Repplier
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The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.
Agnes Repplier
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Wit is a thing capable of proof.
Agnes Repplier