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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.

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
Extremely
Obligation
Duty
Practice
Difficult
Find
Hard
Sometimes
Seldom

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To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
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Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
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The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence.
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He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright.
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Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
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Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
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Since God himself cannot change the past, He is obliged to tolerate the existence of historians.
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It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
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When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
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Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime
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Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
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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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Be virtuous and you will be vicious.
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An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
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When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
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God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
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Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.
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If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.
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Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
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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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