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 (novelist)
Art has no end in view save the emphasising and recording in the most effective way some strongly felt interest or affection.
theend art
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.
art
To love God is to have good health, good looks, good sense, experience, a kindly nature and a fair balance of cash in hand.
health nature experience
Sketching from nature is very like trying to put a pinch of salt on her tail. And yet many manage to do it very nicely.
nature
business
Nothing will ever die so long as it knows what to do under the circumstances, in other words so long as it knows its business.
circumstances business
Argument is generally waste of time and trouble. It is better to present one's opinion and leave it to stick or no as it may happen. If sound, it will probably in the end stick, and the sticking is the main thing.
trouble sound thetimes time theend
The world will, in the end, follow only those who have despised as well as served it.
theend
We can see nothing face to face; our utmost seeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowded pocket.
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.
inspiration thetimes time
Everything matters more than we think it does, and, at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think it does. The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze, but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over, the world will wag itself right again.
rights thetimes time
Time is the only true purgatory.
thetimes time
One great reason why clergymen's households are generally unhappy is because the clergyman is so much at home or close about the house.
home
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
man death
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.
architecture literature man work character music
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