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

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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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It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.
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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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But self-satisfaction, if as buoyant as gas, has an ugly trick of collapsing when full blown, and facts are stony things that refuse to melt away in the sunshine of a smile.
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History is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.
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real letter-writing ... is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.
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Bargaining is essential to the life of the world but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.
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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.
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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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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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abroad it is our habit to regard all other travelers in the light of personal and unpardonable grievances. They are intruders into our chosen realms of pleasure, they jar upon our sensibilities, they lessen our meager share of comforts, they are everywhere in our way, they are always an unnecessary feature in the landscape.
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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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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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An appreciation of words is so rare that everybody naturally thinks he possesses it, and this universal sentiment results in the misuse of a material whose beauty enriches the loving student beyond the dreams of avarice.
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The cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.
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The man who never tells an unpalatable truth 'at the wrong time' (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly well assured.
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Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name.
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The essence of humor is that it should be unexpected, that it should embody an element of surprise, that it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all, must be our habitual frame of mind.
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There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.
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The tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them.
Agnes Repplier