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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.

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
Shown
Temper
Score
Debate
Dispute
Gains
Scores
Anger
Disputes
Point
Controversy
Better
Exact

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
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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.
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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.
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Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
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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.
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It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
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The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
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Our own death is a premium which we must pay for the far greater benefit we have derived from the fact that so many people have not only lived but also died before us.
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The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
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Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
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Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.
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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.
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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.
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Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
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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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Let man be true and every god a liar.
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He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still.
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[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.
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Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
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Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler