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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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The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
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There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.
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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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The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
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They say the test of [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, Can he name a kitten? And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.
Samuel Butler
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The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.
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Life is one long process of getting tired.
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Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
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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.
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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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Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
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An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler
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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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Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
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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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Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
Samuel Butler
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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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To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.
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