They say the test of this [literary power] is whether a man… - Samuel Butler

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They say the test of this [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

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About Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler (December 4, 1835 – June 18, 1902) was a British satirist, most famous for his novels Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh.

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Alternative Names: Cellarius

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Originators like Samuel Butler:

Samuel Butler Arthur Schopenhauer Michel de Montaigne Friedrich Nietzsche Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Additional quotes by Samuel Butler

An empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed.

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.

All thinking is of disturbance, dynamical, a state of unrest tending towards equilibrium. It is all a mode of classifying and of criticising with a view of knowing whether it gives us, or is likely to give us, pleasure or no.

They say the test of this [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say “Can he name a kitten?” And by this test I am condemned, … - Samuel Butler

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