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The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

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
Drained
Author
Works
Living
Writing
Much
Life

More quotes by 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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If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know, and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing, but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.
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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Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Samuel Butler
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The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
Samuel Butler
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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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Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime
Samuel Butler
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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.
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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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 history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
Samuel Butler
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Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
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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Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
Samuel Butler
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
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