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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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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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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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Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
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To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
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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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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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The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
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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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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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An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.
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There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.
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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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An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
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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.
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People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
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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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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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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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Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
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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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