Samuel Butler quotes
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The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
-- Samuel Butler -
Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.
-- Samuel Butler -
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
-- Samuel Butler -
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
-- Samuel Butler -
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Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
-- Samuel Butler -
To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
-- Samuel Butler -
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
-- Samuel Butler -
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
-- Samuel Butler -
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All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
-- Samuel Butler -
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
-- Samuel Butler -
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.
-- Samuel Butler -
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
-- Samuel Butler -
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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 -
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
-- Samuel Butler -
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
-- Samuel Butler -
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
-- Samuel Butler -
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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
-- Samuel Butler -
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
-- Samuel Butler -
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
-- Samuel Butler -
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.
-- Samuel Butler -
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All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
-- Samuel Butler -
If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.
-- Samuel Butler -
It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.
-- Samuel Butler -
Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
-- Samuel Butler -
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The history of art is the history of revivals.
-- Samuel Butler -
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
-- Samuel Butler -
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
-- Samuel Butler -
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
-- Samuel Butler -
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Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
-- Samuel Butler -
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
-- Samuel Butler -
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
-- Samuel Butler -
Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
-- Samuel Butler -
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[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.
-- Samuel Butler -
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.
-- Samuel Butler -
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
-- Samuel Butler -
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
-- Samuel Butler -
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Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
-- Samuel Butler -
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
-- Samuel Butler -
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.
-- Samuel Butler -
Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
-- Samuel Butler -
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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.
-- Samuel Butler -
God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
-- Samuel Butler -
And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
-- Samuel Butler -
Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.
-- Samuel Butler -
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Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
-- Samuel Butler -
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
-- Samuel Butler -
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
-- Samuel Butler -
Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
-- Samuel Butler -
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From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
-- Samuel Butler -
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
-- Samuel Butler -
Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
-- Samuel Butler -
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
-- Samuel Butler -
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A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.
-- Samuel Butler -
Life is one long process of getting tired.
-- Samuel Butler -
He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.
-- Samuel Butler
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