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The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable, and absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is.

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
Sure
Alike
Men
Vice
Extremes
Vices
Absolutes
Absolute
Kill
Virtue
Detestable

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Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
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Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
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The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation.
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If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.
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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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Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
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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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The human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given imagination.
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The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
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A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
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Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
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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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No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
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We all love best not those who offend us least, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.
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Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime
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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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