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Animals and plants cannot understand our business, so we have denied that they can understand their own. What we call inorganic matter cannot understand the animals' and plants' business, we have therefore denied that it can understand anything whatever.

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

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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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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.