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History is a bucket of ashes.

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
Ashes
History
Carpe
Bucket
Buckets

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.
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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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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God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
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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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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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.
Samuel Butler
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
Samuel Butler
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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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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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He is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts.
Samuel Butler
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A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel Butler
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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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The course of true anything never does run smooth.
Samuel Butler
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Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
Samuel Butler
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When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
Samuel Butler
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If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.
Samuel Butler
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Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
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Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
Samuel Butler
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In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
Samuel Butler