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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
Sometimes
Seldom
Extremely
Obligation
Duty
Practice
Difficult
Find
Hard

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Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
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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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There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know, and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing, but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.
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People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
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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 is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts.
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Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
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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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The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
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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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Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
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The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
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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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If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
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The history of art is the history of revivals.
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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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Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
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God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
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