Agnes Repplier Quotes - Page 4

Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.

Who that has plodded on to middle age would take back upon his shoulders ten of the vanished years, with their mingled pleasures and pains? Who would return to the youth he is forever pretending to regret?

Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name.

A man who owns a dog is, in every sense of the words, its master; the term expresses accurately their mutual relations. But it is ridiculous when applied to the limited possession of a cat.

Traveling is, and has always been, more popular than the traveler.

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.

The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.

There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania.

the audience is the controlling factor in the actor's life. It is practically infallible, since there is no appeal from its verdict. It is a little like a supreme court composed of irresponsible minors.

The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.

By providing cheap and wholesome reading for the young, we have partly succeeded in driving from the field that which was positively bad; yet nothing is easier than to overdo a reformation, and, through the characteristic indulgence of American parents, children are drugged with a literature whose chief merit is its harmlessness.

There is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.

Like simplicity and candor, and other much-commented qualities, enthusiasm is charming until we meet it face to face, and cannot escape from its charm.

No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.

Humor brings insight and tolerance.

Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.

In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.

Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.

Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.

Humor hardens the heart, at least to the point of sanity.

The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.

Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.

The soul begins to travel when the child begins to think.

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

Necessity knows no Sunday.