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There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.

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
Thing
Good
Evil
May
Come

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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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Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
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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.
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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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Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
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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.
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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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No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
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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.
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Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.
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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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The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
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There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
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Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
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The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
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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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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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If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.
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People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
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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.
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