Agnes Repplier Quotes - Page 6

Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.

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.

The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.

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.

it is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing.

There is no liberal education for the under-languaged.

Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word 'million' is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the language.

the most charming thing about youth is the tenacity of its impressions.

It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.

It is claimed that the United States gets the cleanest and purest tea in the market, and certainly it is too good to warrant the nervous apprehension which strains and dilutes it into nothingness. The English do not strain their tea in the fervid fashion we do. They like to see a few leaves dawdling about the cup. They like to know what they are drinking.

When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught.

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.

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.

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.

People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism.

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.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.

It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.

The least practical of us have some petty thrift dear to our hearts, some one direction in which we love to scrimp.

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.

Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

The carefully fostered theory that schoolwork can be made easy and enjoyable breaks down as soon as anything, however trivial, has to be learned.

The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.

Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.