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Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

Samuel Butler

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Samuel Butler
Age: 66 †
Born: 1835
Born: December 4
Died: 1902
Died: June 18
Farmer
Novelist
Painter
Photographer
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Translator
Writer
Notts
Cellarius
Exact
Science
Art
Life

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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Nature. As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature's most interesting productions-the works of man. Nature is usually taken to mean mountains, rivers, clouds and undomesticated animals and plants. I am not indifferent to this half of nature, but it interests me much less than the other half.
Samuel Butler
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I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
Samuel Butler
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There should be asylums for habitual teetotalers, but they would probably relapse into teetotalism as soon as they got out.
Samuel Butler
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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
Samuel Butler
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He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.
Samuel Butler
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The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
Samuel Butler
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If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.
Samuel Butler
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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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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.
Samuel Butler
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Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
Samuel Butler
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When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.
Samuel Butler
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Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
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The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.
Samuel Butler
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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