Samuel Butler Quotes
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Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
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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.
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Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.
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Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
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We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
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Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.
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The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
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The want of money is the root of all evil.
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Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
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They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
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The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
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Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
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Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.
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Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
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A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
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Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
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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.
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In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
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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.
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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.
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The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
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The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
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I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
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A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.