Samuel Butler Quotes
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Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
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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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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
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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 a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
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All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
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No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
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Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
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God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
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In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.
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When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
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A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
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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.
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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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In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.
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For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
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The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
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Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
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Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.
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We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.
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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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Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
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You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.