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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
Thing
Charming
Bloodhound
Like
Attractive
Bloodhounds
Held
Erudition
Turned
Leash
Learning
Leashes
Public
Defenseless
Knowledge
Firmly
Upon
Loose

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It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.
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An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.
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It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles.
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What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!
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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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Wit is a thing capable of proof.
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Believers in political faith-healing enjoy a supreme immunity from doubt.
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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.
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Whatever has wit enough to keep it sweet defies corruption and outlasts all time but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.
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A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal.
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While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
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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.
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Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.
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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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Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
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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.
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There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania.
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Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.
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It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.
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Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
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