Love Quote by Agnes Repplier

Love, Repplier insists, isn’t candlelight and reverence; it’s the intimacy of shared comedy. The line turns on a quiet provocation: if you “never laugh” at someone, you’re probably not loving them so much as idealizing them. Repplier’s target is the stiff-backed version of affection that demands constant respectability, the kind that keeps people encased in sentimental glass. Laughter, in her framing, isn’t cruelty. It’s permission to be human in front of each other, to let the mask slip without fear of eviction.

The subtext is about equality. You don’t laugh at a statue; you laugh with (and yes, sometimes at) a person close enough to withstand it. The ability to tease, to notice the ridiculous habits and minor vanities, is a test of relational safety. If every interaction requires walking on eggshells, you’re managing an image, not practicing love. Repplier’s phrasing also smuggles in a warning: where laughter is absent, resentment tends to fill the space. Humor becomes a release valve, a way to metabolize disappointment before it hardens into contempt.

Context matters. Writing in an era when social codes prized propriety and emotional restraint, Repplier - a sharp essayist with a moralist’s eye for hypocrisy - uses a deceptively gentle aphorism to puncture genteel seriousness. “Wisely said” is doing sly work: she borrows the authority of a proverb while nudging the reader toward a more modern, less pious model of affection, one built on mutual recognition rather than performance.