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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.

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
Imagine
Units
Words
Modest
Pain
Proper
Remorseless
Change
Degree
Soften
Doe
Degrees
Presume
Men
Mere
Unit
Fate
Pessimist
Circumstances
Pessimism

More quotes by Agnes Repplier

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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 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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The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.
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What puzzles most of us are the things which have been left in the movies rather than the things which have been taken out.
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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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Economics and ethics have little in common.
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.
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
Agnes Repplier
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America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed.
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If everybody floated with the tide of talk, placidity would soon end in stagnation. It is the strong backward stroke which stirs the ripples, and gives animation and variety.
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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We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.
Agnes Repplier
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Woman is quick to revere genius, but in her secret soul she seldom loves it.
Agnes Repplier
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Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.
Agnes Repplier
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This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.
Agnes Repplier
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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.
Agnes Repplier
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While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
Agnes Repplier
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A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.
Agnes Repplier
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The tourist may complain of other tourists but he would be lost without them. He may find them in his way, taking up the best seats in the motors, and the best tables in the hotel dining-rooms but he grows amazingly intimate with them during the voyage, and not infrequently marries one of them when it is over.
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.
Agnes Repplier