Quote

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

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The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.
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In the stress of modern life, how little room is left for that most comfortable vanity that whispers in our ears that failures are not faults! Now we are taught from infancy that we must rise or fall upon our own merits that vigilance wins success, and incapacity means ruin
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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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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.
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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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Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.
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Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.
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Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
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Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
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Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.
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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 has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.
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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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It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable.
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Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
Agnes Repplier
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Neatness of phrase is so closely akin to wit that it is often accepted as its substitute.
Agnes Repplier
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If we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.
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To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.
Agnes Repplier
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The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world's mirth.
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