Quotes from Agnes Repplier

The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience.

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

The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.

Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.

A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.

We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.

A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense.

Wit is the salt of conversation not the food and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.

History is not written in the interests of morality.

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

We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.

real letter-writing ... is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.

Humor hardens the heart, at least to the point of sanity.

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

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

There is always a secret irritation about a laugh into which we cannot join.

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

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

to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.

Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.

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

Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.