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

More quotes by Agnes Repplier

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Cats, even when robust, have scant liking for the boisterous society of children, and are apt to exert their utmost ingenuity to escape it. Nor are they without adult sympathy in their prejudice.
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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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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.
Agnes Repplier
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When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
Agnes Repplier
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Believers in political faith-healing enjoy a supreme immunity from doubt.
Agnes Repplier
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History is not written in the interests of morality.
Agnes Repplier
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Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
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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I wonder what especial sanctity attaches itself to fifteen minutes. It is always the maximum and the minimum of time which will enable us to acquire languages, etiquette, personality, oratory ... One gathers that twelve minutes a day would be hopelessly inadequate, and twenty minutes a wasteful and ridiculous excess.
Agnes Repplier
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It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.
Agnes Repplier
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There is no liberal education for the under-languaged.
Agnes Repplier
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We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.
Agnes Repplier
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Those persons are happiest in this restless and mutable world who are in love with change, who delight in what is new simply because it differs from what is old who rejoice in every innovation, and find a strange alert pleasure in all that is, and that has never been before.
Agnes Repplier
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the most comfortable characteristic of the period [1775-1825], and the one which incites our deepest envy, is the universal willingness to accept a good purpose as a substitute for good work.
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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It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.
Agnes Repplier
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When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.
Agnes Repplier
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It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.
Agnes Repplier