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Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.

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
Would
Duty
Men
Novel
Cases
Unwritten
Greater
Merit
Woman
Personally
Write
Nine
Writing
Ten
Believe
Leaving

More quotes by Agnes Repplier

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The choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
Agnes Repplier
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The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.
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There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.
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There is a vast deal of make-believe in the carefully nurtured sentiment for country life, and the barefoot boy, and the mountain girl.
Agnes Repplier
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
Agnes Repplier
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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!
Agnes Repplier
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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.
Agnes Repplier
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Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.
Agnes Repplier
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The cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.
Agnes Repplier
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fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.
Agnes Repplier
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to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
Agnes Repplier
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Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
Agnes Repplier
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Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.
Agnes Repplier
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It is not begging but the beggar, who has forfeited favor with the elect.
Agnes Repplier
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English civilization rests largely upon tea and cricket, with mighty spurts of enjoyment on Derby Day, and at Newmarket.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
Agnes Repplier