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People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

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
Taste
Fashion
Either
Thought
Care
Good
People
Amiable
Clever

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
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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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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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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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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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To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.
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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.
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He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright.
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Letters are like wine if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.
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It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.
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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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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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Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
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He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still.
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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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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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Friends are like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler
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If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death by my own success.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
Samuel Butler