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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.

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
Better
Ever
Childish
Define
Deny
Realize
Realizing
Impossible

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.
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Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away.
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We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
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The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
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The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
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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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Our own death is a premium which we must pay for the far greater benefit we have derived from the fact that so many people have not only lived but also died before us.
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Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
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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's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
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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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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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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
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He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still.
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
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Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.
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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.
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People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
Samuel Butler