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

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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
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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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The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.
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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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The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence.
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Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
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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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Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
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Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
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How often do we not see children ruined through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents?
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To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
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The course of true anything never does run smooth.
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[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.
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If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
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The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
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Friends are like money, easier made than kept.
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Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
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The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
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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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An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.
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