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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.

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
Calls
Occasions
Correspondingly
Laughter
Merriment
Moved
Amused
Serious
Seriousness
Often
Occasion
Reason
Freely
Invited

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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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Every misused word revenges itself forever upon a writer's reputation.
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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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Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.
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The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.
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The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.
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A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and generally stopping before it gets there.
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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 in his pleasure that a man really lives it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.
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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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A man who owns a dog is, in every sense of the words, its master the term expresses accurately their mutual relations. But it is ridiculous when applied to the limited possession of a cat.
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Woman is quick to revere genius, but in her secret soul she seldom loves it.
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We cannot learn to love other tourists,-the laws of nature forbid it,-but, meditating soberly on the impossibility of their loving us, we may reach some common platform of tolerance, some common exchange of recognition and amenity.
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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.
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The party which is out sees nothing but graft and incapacity in the party which is in and the party which is in sees nothing but greed and animosity in the party which is out.
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If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes.
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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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The soul begins to travel when the child begins to think.
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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.
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Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.
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