Quote

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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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
Write
Condemned
Cannot
Literary
Power
Test
Writing
Cat
Men
Tests
Name
Inscription
Names
Inscriptions
Whether
Kitten

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Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
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Words are like money there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.
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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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I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
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The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
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God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
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A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
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God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
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In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
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Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
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If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
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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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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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If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death by my own success.
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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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It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.
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Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
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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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