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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.
Samuel Butler -
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
Samuel Butler
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The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.
Samuel Butler -
Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
Samuel Butler -
Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler -
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
Samuel Butler -
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
Samuel Butler -
People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler -
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
Samuel Butler -
There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
Samuel Butler -
Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
Samuel Butler -
It is tact that is golden, not silence.
Samuel Butler -
The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler -
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
Samuel Butler -
The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
Samuel Butler -
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
Samuel Butler -
God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
Samuel Butler -
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.
Samuel Butler
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A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
Samuel Butler -
He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
Samuel Butler -
Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
Samuel Butler -
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
Samuel Butler