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

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It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.
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Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
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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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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
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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.
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Books that children read but once are of scant service to them those that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves.
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The human race may be divided into people who love cats and people who hate them the neutrals being few in numbers, and, for intellectual and moral reasons, not worth considering.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Sensuality, too, which used to show itself course, smiling, unmasked, and unmistakable, is now serious, analytic, and so burdened with a sense of its responsibilities that it passes muster half the time as a new type of asceticism.
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Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.
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Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.
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We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.
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It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
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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 not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.
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There are many ways of asking a favor but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.
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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.
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Like simplicity and candor, and other much-commented qualities, enthusiasm is charming until we meet it face to face, and cannot escape from its charm.
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