Samuel Butler Quotes
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What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
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A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
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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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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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I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
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And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
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The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.
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To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
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He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
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Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
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When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
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Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
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All truth is not to be told at all times.
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The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
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Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
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The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
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God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
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To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
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He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.
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The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
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The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.
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The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.