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Samuel Butler (novelist) Quotes
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.
Samuel Butler
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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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Nothing will ever die so long as it knows what to do under the circumstances, in other words so long as it knows its business.
Samuel Butler
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Taking numbers into account, I should think more mental suffering had been undergone in the streets leading from St George's, Hanover Square, than in the condemned cells of Newgate.
Samuel Butler
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No one thinks he will escape death, so there is no disappointment and, as long as we know neither the when nor the how, the mere fact that we shall one day have to go does not much affect us; we do not care, even though we know vaguely that we have not long to live. The serious trouble begins when death becomes definite in time and shape. It is in precise fore-knowledge, rather than in sin, that the sting of death is to be found; and such fore-knowledge is generally withheld; though, strangely enough, many would have it if they could.
Samuel Butler
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It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.
Samuel Butler
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Painters should remember that the eye, as a general rule, is a good, simple, credulous organ — very ready to take things on trust if it be told them with any confidence of assertion.
Samuel Butler
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The true laws of God are the laws of our own well-being.
Samuel Butler
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The devil tempted Christ; yes, but it was Christ who tempted the devil to tempt him.
Samuel Butler
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Argument is generally waste of time and trouble. It is better to present one's opinion and leave it to stick or no as it may happen. If sound, it will probably in the end stick, and the sticking is the main thing.
Samuel Butler
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How thankful we ought to be that Wordsworth was only a poet and not a musician. Fancy a symphony by Wordsworth! Fancy having to sit it out! And fancy what it would have been if he had written fugues!
Samuel Butler
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In the highest consciousness there is still unconsciousness, in the lowest unconsciousness there is still consciousness. If there is no consciousness there is no thing, or nothing. To understand perfectly would be to cease to understand at all.
Samuel Butler
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X-rays. Their moral is this—that a right way of looking at things will see through almost anything.
Samuel Butler
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I should like to like Schumann's music better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.
Samuel Butler
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A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
Samuel Butler
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They say the test of this [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say Can he name a kitten? And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.
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
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If it tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were, we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes to have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water it is all wrong.
Samuel Butler
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People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Samuel Butler
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All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
Samuel Butler
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All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
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
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The evil that men do lives after them. Yes, and a good deal of the evil that they never did as well.
Samuel Butler
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Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Samuel Butler
Creative Commons
Born:
December 4, 1835
Died:
June 18, 1902
(aged 66)
Bio:
Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian-era English author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh.
Known for:
Erewhon (1872)
The Way of All Flesh
Erewhon Revisited (1901)
The fair haven
Life and habit
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Samuel Butler (poet)
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