Agnes Repplier

Pronounced Repplier.

Some quotations from John Lukacs, Remembered Past, “Agnes Repplier, Writer and Essayist”:

Every misused word revenges itself forever upon a writer’s reputation.

Suburbanites are traitors to the city.

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. It is the opening of our mental pores, and the stimulus of marshalling our ideas in words, of setting them forth as gallantly and as graciously as we can.

To cheat ourselves intellectually that we may save ourselves spiritually is unworthy of the creature that man is meant to be. And to what end? Things are as they are, and no amount of self-deception makes them otherwise. The friend who is incapable of depression depresses us as surely as the friend who is incapable of boredom bores us. Somewhere in our hearts is a strong, though dimly understood, desire to face realities, and to measure consequences, to have done with the fatigue of pretending. It is not optimism to enjoy the view when one is treed by a bull; it is philosophy. The optimist would say that being treed was a valuable experience. The disciple of gladness would say that it was a pleasurable sensation. The Christian scientist would say there was no bull, though remaining—if he were wise—on the treetop. The philosopher would make the best of a bad job, and seek what compensation he could find. He is of a class apart.