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

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Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
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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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Be virtuous and you will be vicious.
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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.
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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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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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The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
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Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
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A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
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You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
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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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Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
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If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death by my own success.
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Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
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Since God himself cannot change the past, He is obliged to tolerate the existence of historians.
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God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
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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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A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
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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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