Samuel Butler Quotes
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The history of art is the history of revivals.
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For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
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I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.
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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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Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
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Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.
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Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
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People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
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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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Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.
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If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
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A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
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You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
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We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.
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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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If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
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The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
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Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
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Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
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When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
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From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
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It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
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Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.