"[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's."
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Quote collection
Samuel Butler quotes (page 4 of 12)
222 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them."
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"It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly."
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"The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore."
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"The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions."
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"If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason."
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"Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature."
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"The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion."
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"No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction."
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"Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both."
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"God cannot alter the past, though historians can."
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"He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still."
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"Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away."
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"God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal."
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"It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper."
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"Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it."
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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."
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"It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us."
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"To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty."
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"The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust."
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