Quote

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.

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
Use
Easy
Dolls
Without
Prayers
Take
Seriously
Children
Atheism
Men
Comfort
Prayer
Religion

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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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Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.
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Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
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Business should be like religion and science it should know neither love nor hate.
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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
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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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God and the Devil are an effort after specialisation and division of labour.
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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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Be virtuous and you will be vicious.
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The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
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Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
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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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The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
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Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
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Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
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Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
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The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
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Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
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