Quote

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

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
Doe
Friendship
Thing
Friend
Never
Memories
Happened
Forget
Two
Cannot
Remember
Pinch

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The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable, and absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is.
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In practice it is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is sometimes extremely difficult to find this out.
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Life is one long process of getting tired.
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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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He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
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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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No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
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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.
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Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person its importance not being fully recognized for some time.
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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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The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
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Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
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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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There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
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Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
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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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Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
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Whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities, it is now one of 99 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity have been shown to be one and the same thing.
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A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.
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