Quotes by Samuel Butler - Page 5

Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.
Samuel Butler / Author
Funny
Father
Lease
Losing
Rate
Sweet
Life Death Men
Sweets
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The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
Samuel Butler / Author
Animal
Dog
Fool
Humorous
May
Pleasure
Great Pleasure
Him
Scold
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Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.
Samuel Butler / Author
Education
Inspirational
Fall
Prepared
Rough
World
World Your Doing
Bona
Bona Fide
Falls
Ground
Learn
Tumble
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Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.
Samuel Butler / Author
Religion
Band
Christ
Dislike
People
Profession
Wretched
Whose
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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.
Samuel Butler / Author
Men
Adapted
Becoming
Training
University
World
Best Men World
Intended
Prevent
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A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.
Samuel Butler / Author
Humor
Men
Absurd
Sense Of Humor
Sin
Nearly
Commission
Committing
Save
Sins
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Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.
Samuel Butler / Author
Compromise
Fall
Impossible
Inevitable
Tunes
Virtue
Allow
Herself
Sharp
Trifle
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All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it - and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow.
Samuel Butler / Author
Men
Animal
Humanity
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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.
Samuel Butler / Author
Religion
Health
Believe
Chastity
Christian
Family Ties
Seven
Temper
Ties
Believing
Christian Religion
Deadly
Sins
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We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.
Samuel Butler / Author
Forgiveness
Love
Done
Forgiving
Love Best Done
Offend
Forgive
Nor
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To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
Samuel Butler / Author
Deny
Impossible
Realizing
Childish
Define
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Memory and forgetfulness are as life and death to one another. To live is to remember and to remember is to live. To die is to forget and to forget is to die.
Samuel Butler / Author
Life And Death
Memories
Remember
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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.
Samuel Butler / Author
Men
Cat
Writing
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People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
Samuel Butler / Author
Chance
Lucky
People
Ratios
Unlucky
Absolutely
According
Between
Expect
Led
Ratio
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Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
Samuel Butler / Author
Dream
Bad Things
Prayer
Said
World
Things
More
Bad
He
Mr
Saying
Than
Whether
Wisely
Wrought
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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.
Samuel Butler / Author
Failure
Men
Adversity
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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.
Samuel Butler / Author
Atheist
Attention
Clear
People
Sensible
Waiting
God People Will
Wait
Much Attention
Till
Paying
Sufficiently
Wants
Wishes
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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.
Samuel Butler / Author
Character
Opinion
Wish
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An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.
Samuel Butler / Author
Men
Devil
Errors
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Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.
Samuel Butler / Author
Neighbour
Should
Worst
Neighbours
Satisfactory
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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.
Samuel Butler / Author
Death
Dying
People
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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.
Samuel Butler / Author
Etc
Lord
Mercy
Remember
Thinking
Forgetting
Hath
Let Us
Neither
Nor
Remembering
Whom
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Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognized for some time.
Samuel Butler / Author
Inspirational
Genuine
Stealing
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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.
Samuel Butler / Author
Art
Knowledge
Evil
Good And Evil
Interesting
Stronger
Youth
Anything Else
Period
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Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
Samuel Butler / Author
Time
Fall
Spring
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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.
Samuel Butler / Author
Meat
Principles
Public Opinion
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Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
Samuel Butler / Author
Money
Flesh
Long
Order
Reasonable
Subdued
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When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented.
Samuel Butler / Author
Berries
Filters
Water
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A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning the main aim of his life.
Samuel Butler / Author
Inspirational
Intelligence
Wisdom
Men
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I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific bigwigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.
Samuel Butler / Author
Science
Giving
Literature
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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.
Samuel Butler / Author
Knowledge
Science
Thinking
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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 / Author
Life
Science
Memories
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I fall asleep in the full and certain hope That my slumber shall not be broken; And that, though I be all-forgetting, Yet shall I not be all-forgotten, But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds of those I have loved.
Samuel Butler / Author
Death
Fall
Prayer
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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 / Author
Science
Law
Talking
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It is not sufficiently considered in the hour of exultation, that all human excellence is comparative; that no man performs much but in proportion to what other accomplish, or to the time and opportunities which have been allowed him.
Samuel Butler / Author
Opportunity
Success
Men
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It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
Samuel Butler / Author
Hope
Men
Fate
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There is one class of mind that loves to lean on rules and definitions, and another that discards them as far as possible. A faddist will generally ask for a definition of faddism, and one who is not a faddist will be impatient of being asked to give one.
Samuel Butler / Author
Science
Class
Giving
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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 / Author
Exception To The Rule
Trying
Two
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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 / Author
Nature
Mean
Taken
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Cat-Ideas and Mouse-Ideas. We can never get rid of mouse-ideas completely, they keep turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble-no matter how often we drive them off. The best way to keep them down is to have a few good strong cat-ideas which will embrace them and ensure their not reappearing till they do so in another shape.
Samuel Butler / Author
Cat
Ideas
Strong
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You cannot have a thing "matter" by itself which shall have no motion in it, nor yet a thing "motion" by itself which shall exist apart from matter; you must have both or neither. You can have matter moving much, or little, and in all conceivable ways; but you cannot have matter without any motion more than you can have motion without any matter that is moving.
Samuel Butler / Author
Science
Littles
Moving
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Science is being daily more and more personified and anthromorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, &c.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.
Samuel Butler / Author
Nature
Believe
Ignorance
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If [science] tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were, we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes to have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water it is all wrong. Our business is with the thickening of this crust by extending our knowledge downward from above, as ice gets thicker while the frost lasts; we should not try to freeze upwards from the bottom.
Samuel Butler / Author
Knowledge
Science
Ice
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