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.
Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.
It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city.
To choose suffering makes no sense at all; to choose God's will in the midst of our suffering makes all the sense in the world.
Don't complain about growing old β many, many people do not have that privilege.
If we slide into a pattern of just thinking about today, we'll end up reacting to yesterday instead of shaping something more constructive in the world.
What is the most precious thing in the world? I see now that it is the knowledge that you have no part in injustice. Injustice is stronger than you, it always was and always will be, but let it not be done through you.
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