Quote

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

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
Men
Fool
Wisdom
Lying
Sense
Tell
Truth
Wells
Lied
Well
Requires

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
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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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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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From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
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If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death by my own success.
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In practice it is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is sometimes extremely difficult to find this out.
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There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
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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.
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Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
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The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
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The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
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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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Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away.
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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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God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
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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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God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
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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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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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Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
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