Samuel Butler Quotes
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Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
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People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
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It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.
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God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.
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Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences, and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another.
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
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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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Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
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People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
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If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.
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Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
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Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
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Be virtuous and you will be vicious.
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The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
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To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
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The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.
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Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
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Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.
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One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.
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It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.