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The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge ... falls ripe from its stem but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.

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
Mind
Less
Processes
Reticence
Process
Falls
Digestion
Fall
Charm
Sobriety
Find
Fruit
Ordered
Wells
Value
Eaten
Well
Tree
Ripe
Need
Knowledge
Discuss
Needs
Values
Stem

More quotes by Agnes Repplier

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The dog is guided by kindly instinct to the man or woman whose heart is open to his advances. The cat often leaves the friend who courts her, to honor, or to harass, the unfortunate mortal who shudders at her unwelcome caresses.
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It is not begging but the beggar, who has forfeited favor with the elect.
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There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania.
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The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.
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it is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing.
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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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There was no escape from the letter-writer who, a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five years ago, captured a coveted correspondent. It would have been as easy to shake off an octopus or a boa-constrictor.
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A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.
Agnes Repplier
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For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.
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In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.
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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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It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles.
Agnes Repplier
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The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.
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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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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People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.
Agnes Repplier
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
Agnes Repplier
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It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.
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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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.
Agnes Repplier