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

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He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still.
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If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.
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There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
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Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
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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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The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
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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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Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away.
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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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From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
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When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.
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Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
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If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.
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The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
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The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.
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Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
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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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Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
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Since God himself cannot change the past, He is obliged to tolerate the existence of historians.
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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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