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When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

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
Law
Nonsense
Talk
Obedience
Talking
Fixed
Free
Rate
Ascribing
Science
Intelligence
Disobeying
Kind
Laws
Potentiality
People
Unless
Obeying
Either
Atoms

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
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The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
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In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
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Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds
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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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Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.
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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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Our own death is a premium which we must pay for the far greater benefit we have derived from the fact that so many people have not only lived but also died before us.
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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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Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
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Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
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Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
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If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
Samuel Butler
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[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.
Samuel Butler
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Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away.
Samuel Butler
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Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler