Quote

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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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
Make
Waiting
Wishes
People
Clear
Sensible
Attention
Paying
Religion
Till
Wish
Atheist
Done
Wait
Thing
Atheism
Much
Wants
Sufficiently

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Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
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Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
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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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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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There should be asylums for habitual teetotalers, but they would probably relapse into teetotalism as soon as they got out.
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It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
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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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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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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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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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Let man be true and every god a liar.
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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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People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
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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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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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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.
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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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Words are like money there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.
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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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