Samuel Butler Quotes
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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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To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
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Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
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Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
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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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The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
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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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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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Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
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Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
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Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
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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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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
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There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.
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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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Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
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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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Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
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Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
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There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
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Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
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Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.
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My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.