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There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
Samuel Butler -
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
Samuel Butler
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Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
Samuel Butler -
A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.
Samuel Butler -
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
Samuel Butler -
Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
Samuel Butler -
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
Samuel Butler -
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
Samuel Butler
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It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out.
Samuel Butler -
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.
Samuel Butler -
Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.
Samuel Butler -
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
Samuel Butler -
Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
Samuel Butler -
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
Samuel Butler
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The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
Samuel Butler -
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Samuel Butler -
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Samuel Butler -
If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.
Samuel Butler -
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Butler -
And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
Samuel Butler
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The want of money is the root of all evil.
Samuel Butler -
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
Samuel Butler -
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
Samuel Butler -
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Samuel Butler