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It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.

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
Present
Immediate
Futurity
Imagination
Seldom
Consolations
Hope
Forced
Deficiencies
Desire
Enjoyment
Deficiency
Seems
Fill
Recollection
Able
Expectations
Consolation
Men
Seek
Anticipation
Time
Fate
Supply

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The course of true anything never does run smooth.
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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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Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
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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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A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.
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Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
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God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
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He is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts.
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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.
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Letters are like wine if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.
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If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
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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.
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Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
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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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Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
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The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
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History is a bucket of ashes.
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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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If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.
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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.
Samuel Butler