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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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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
People
Pay
Greater
Premium
Fact
Derived
Death
Benefit
Facts
Benefits
Also
Died
Many
Lived
Must
Dying

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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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People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
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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.
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Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.
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Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
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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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Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
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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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How often do we not see children ruined through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents?
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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.
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Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
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The history of art is the history of revivals.
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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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Words are like money there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.
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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.
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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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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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He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still.
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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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