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The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.

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
Oldest
Books
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More quotes by 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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Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Butler
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I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.
Samuel Butler
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It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
Samuel Butler
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Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
Samuel Butler
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The history of art is the history of revivals.
Samuel Butler
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
Samuel Butler
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Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
Samuel Butler
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There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know, and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing, but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.
Samuel Butler
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
Samuel Butler
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Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
Samuel Butler
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Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
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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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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.
Samuel Butler
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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.
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.
Samuel Butler
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Be virtuous and you will be vicious.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
Samuel Butler
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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