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We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.

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
Tone
Argument
Men
Analyse
Arguments
Temper
Manner

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
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Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds
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God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
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In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
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When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
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Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
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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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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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Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
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Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
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If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
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The history of art is the history of revivals.
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The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
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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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If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.
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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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Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
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The course of true anything never does run smooth.
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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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