Quote

There are two great rules of life the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants, if he only tries. That is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the rule.

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
Every
Everyone
Tries
Life
Individual
Exception
Two
Rule
Ends
Rules
Firsts
General
First
Wants
Great
Particular
Trying
Less

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Life is one long process of getting tired.
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A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
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Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
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There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.
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The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation.
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Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
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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.
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There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
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If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
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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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The course of true anything never does run smooth.
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My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
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How often do we not see children ruined through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents?
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Nature. As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature's most interesting productions-the works of man. Nature is usually taken to mean mountains, rivers, clouds and undomesticated animals and plants. I am not indifferent to this half of nature, but it interests me much less than the other half.
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Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
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A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
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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 God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.
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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.
Samuel Butler
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
Samuel Butler