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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
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Notts
Cellarius
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Test
Writing
Cat
Men
Tests
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Inscription
Names
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Kitten
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Literary
More quotes by Samuel Butler
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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Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
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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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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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Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.
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The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
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The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
Samuel Butler
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
Samuel Butler
He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright.
Samuel Butler
Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.
Samuel Butler
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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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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If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
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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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From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
Samuel Butler
Friends are like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler
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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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
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
Samuel Butler
God and the Devil are an effort after specialisation and division of labour.
Samuel Butler
