Agnes Repplier

Essayist

1855-04-01 – 1950-11-15

Agnes Repplier was an American essayist and biographer. She was known for literary criticism and reflective essays published in major periodicals. Her work was widely read in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Quotes by Agnes Repplier

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.
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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.
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It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.
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The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world's mirth.
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The tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them.
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Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
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Art is never didactic, does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.
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To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate.
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Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.
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A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.
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Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
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The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.
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Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times because they had nobody to talk about.
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It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
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It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is impossible to find it elsewhere.
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We cannot really love anyone with whom we do not laugh.
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A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candour.
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The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.
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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!
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A man who listens because he has nothing to say can hardly be a source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternately absorbs and expresses ideas.
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