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

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Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
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How often do we not see children ruined through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents?
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A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
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Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
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Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
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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.
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Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
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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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Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
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The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
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Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
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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.
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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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There are two great rules of life the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants, if he only tries. That is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the rule.
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The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence.
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
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They say the test of [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.
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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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Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
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