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Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

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
Use
Moderates
Good
Require
World
Seeds
Vices
Total
Condemns
Virtue
Loudly
Rather
Abstinence
Half
Moderate

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My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
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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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Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
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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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Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
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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.
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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.
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If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.
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People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
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The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
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If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
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Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.
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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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The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
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God and the Devil are an effort after specialisation and division of labour.
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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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I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.
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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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Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
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