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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.

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
Whereas
Quantities
Unknown
Formerly
Mathematics
Equation
Memory
Illustration
Memories
Borrow
Science
Equations
Thing
Quantity
Inasmuch
Life
Shown
Heredity

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God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
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There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
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You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
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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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A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
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Priests are not men of the world it is not intended that they should be and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.
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Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
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A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.
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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.
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People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
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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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Since God himself cannot change the past, He is obliged to tolerate the existence of historians.
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He is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts.
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Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
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Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
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If a man knows not life which he hath seen, how shall he know death, which he hath not seen?
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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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