Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Samuel ButlerRead
When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
Interpretation
Consider the long-term impact of your writing to guide your decisions.
This quote emphasizes the importance of foresight in writing. Samuel Butler suggests that when faced with uncertainty, a writer should reflect on how their words will be perceived a century later, encouraging a perspective that values timelessness and impact over immediate gratification.
In practice
A writer might use this quote to motivate students during a workshop on the importance of thoughtful writing.
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
You must find your dream...but no dream lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular dream.
A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.
Not only does silence give us a chance to understand ourselves better, to get a truer and more balanced perspective on our own lives in relation to the lives of others: silence makes us whole if we let it. Silence helps draw together the scattered and dissipated energies of a fragmented existence.
Truth has to be given in riddles. People can't take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it.
Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.
Without doubt, the most common weakness of all human beings is the habit of leaving their minds open to the negative influence of other people.
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