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

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We all love best not those who offend us least, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.
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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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Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
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If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
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A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
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The human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given imagination.
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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 oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
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The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
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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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It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.
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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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Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.
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God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
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Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
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Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
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Life is one long process of getting tired.
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The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.
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If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.
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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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