Quote

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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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
Years
Guide
Men
Guides
Hundred
Doubt
Asks
Often
Tell
Writing
Hence

More quotes by 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.
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He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
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A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
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I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.
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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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You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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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.
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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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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A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
Samuel Butler
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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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The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation.
Samuel Butler
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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.
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
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Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
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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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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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