Quotes from Agnes Repplier

Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.

We cannot really love anybody without whom we never laugh.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.

A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal.

It is as impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.

...a land of sheltered homes and warm firesides — firesides that were waiting — waiting, for the bubbling kettle and the fragrant breath of tea.

A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever, and generally stopping before it gets there.

What puzzles most of us are the things which have been left in the movies rather than the things which have been taken out.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.

What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!

It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating little friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.

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

A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their pedestals.

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

The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.

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.

The tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them.

There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.

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

We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.

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.

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