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Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

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
Commonplace
Seldom
Occasions
Supreme
Men
Banality
Corny

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
Samuel Butler
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[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
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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.
Samuel Butler
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The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
Samuel Butler
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God and the Devil are an effort after specialisation and division of labour.
Samuel Butler
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There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
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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Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
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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Let man be true and every god a liar.
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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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.
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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Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
Samuel Butler
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People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
Samuel Butler
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God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
Samuel Butler