Quotes from Agnes Repplier

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.

There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.

Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.

There is a vast deal of make-believe in the carefully nurtured sentiment for country life, and the barefoot boy, and the mountain girl.

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.

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.

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

To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.

Life is so full of miseries, minor and major; they press so close upon us at every step of the way, that it is hardly worthwhile to call one another's attention to their presence.

People with theories of life are, perhaps, the most relentless of their kind, for no time or place is sacred from their devastating elucidations.

A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.

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

The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world's mirth.

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

Whatever has "wit enough to keep it sweet" defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.

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

Everybody is now so busy teaching that nobody has any time to learn.

It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

Love is a malady, the common symptoms of which are the same in all patients.