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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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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
History
Cannot
Past
Historians
Change
Obliged
Historian
Tolerate
Since
Existence

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
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When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.
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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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In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
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Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
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The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation.
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
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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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Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
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God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
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People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
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It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.
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Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
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Words are like money there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.
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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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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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People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
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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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Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.
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Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.
Samuel Butler