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Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.

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
Bodily
Faculty
Mental
Goodness
Trying
Men

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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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.
Samuel Butler
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The course of true anything never does run smooth.
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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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Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
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It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.
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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.
Samuel Butler
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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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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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Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.
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The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
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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.
Samuel Butler
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The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence.
Samuel Butler
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Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
Samuel Butler
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Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
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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In practice it is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is sometimes extremely difficult to find this out.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler