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[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.

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
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Metaphysics
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More quotes by Samuel Butler

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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.
Samuel Butler
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It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.
Samuel Butler
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From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
Samuel Butler
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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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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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Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
Samuel Butler
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There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know, and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing, but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.
Samuel Butler
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Let man be true and every god a liar.
Samuel Butler
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Friends are like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler
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Nature. As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature's most interesting productions-the works of man. Nature is usually taken to mean mountains, rivers, clouds and undomesticated animals and plants. I am not indifferent to this half of nature, but it interests me much less than the other half.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
Samuel Butler
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Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds
Samuel Butler
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Since God himself cannot change the past, He is obliged to tolerate the existence of historians.
Samuel Butler
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Samuel Butler
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Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person its importance not being fully recognized for some time.
Samuel Butler
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Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
Samuel Butler
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There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
Samuel Butler
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Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler