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Be virtuous and you will be vicious.

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
Vicious
Virtuous

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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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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Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds
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The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
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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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We all love best not those who offend us least, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.
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In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
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God and the Devil are an effort after specialisation and division of labour.
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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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[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.
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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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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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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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If a man knows not life which he hath seen, how shall he know death, which he hath not seen?
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History is a bucket of ashes.
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God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
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The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
Samuel Butler
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Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Samuel Butler