Agnes Repplier Quotes - Page 8

Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.

the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring - or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps - lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.

While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.

Lovers of the town have been content, for the most part, to say they loved it. They do not brag about its uplifting qualities. They have none of the infernal smugness which makes the lover of the country insupportable.

Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.

This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.

There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature, and is purifying only in so far as there is a natural and unschooled goodness in the human heart.

Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.

I do strive to think well of my fellow man, but no amount of striving can give me confidence in the wisdom of a congressional vote.

The gospel of cheerfulness, I had almost said the gospel of amusement, is preached by people who lack experience to people who lack vitality. There is a vague impression that the world would be a good world if it were only happy, that it would be happy if it were amused, and that it would be amused if plenty of artificial recreation - that recreation for which we are now told every community stands responsible - were provided for its entertainment.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.

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.

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.

Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.

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.

It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.

There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.

Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.

fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.

The pessimist is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.

History is not written in the interests of morality.