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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
Deny
Realize
Realizing
Impossible
Better
Ever
Childish
Define

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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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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Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
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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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If a man knows not life which he hath seen, how shall he know death, which he hath not seen?
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Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
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Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
Samuel Butler
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The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
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He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
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If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
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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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Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
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The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
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Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
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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.
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God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
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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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I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.
Samuel Butler
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Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
Samuel Butler
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You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler