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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 recognised for some time.

— Samuel Butler The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

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Inspirational

More quotes by Samuel Butler

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

Feeling is an art and, like any other art, can be acquired by taking pains.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

The Fair Haven (1873)

Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

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Courage is never born with a person; time and circumstances inject it into a person and bring it forth from within.

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They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort.

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I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live.

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I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.

Phil Plait

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Samuel Butler (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.