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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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Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
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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 is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.
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Business should be like religion and science it should know neither love nor hate.
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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.
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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
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The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
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He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Samuel Butler
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If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death by my own success.
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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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
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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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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