R.E. Butler Quotes

Jayne Anne Phillips . . . is at the height of her powers in Lark and Termite. . . . This is a major novel from one of America's finest writers.

The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.

When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented.

The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us, like the kingdom of heaven, rather than without.

Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate.

Friends are like money, easier made than kept.

The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.

Whatsoever we perpetrate, we do but row; we are steered by fate.

Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.

Since God himself cannot change the past, He is obliged to tolerate the existence of historians.

Brigands will demand your money or your life, but a woman will demand both

History is a bucket of ashes.

In practice it is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is sometimes extremely difficult to find this out.

Men of Science. If they are worthy of the name they are indeed about God's path and about his bed and spying out all his ways.

It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.

This world is like Noah's Ark. In which few men but many beasts embark.

There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

He is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period.

To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.

If a man knows not life which he hath seen, how shall he know death, which he hath not seen?

Our own death is a premium which we must pay for the far greater benefit we have derived from the fact that so many people have not only lived but also died before us.

He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright.

We all love best not those who offend us least, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence.

Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.

How often do we not see children ruined through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents?

The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation.

There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.

Love is based on inequality as friendship is on equality.

And I will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,/ Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.

All men live in suffering I know as few can know, Whether they take the upper road Or stay content on the low.

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

Hearts with one purpose alone/Through summer and winter seem/Enchanted to a stone/To trouble the living stream.

Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day.

I broke my heart in two So hard I struck. What matter? for I know That out of rock, Out of a desolate source, Love leaps upon its course.

Everything we look upon is blest.

All that could run or leap or swim Whether in wood, water or cloud, Acclaiming, proclaiming, declaiming Him.

Time drops in decay Like a candle burnt out. And the mountains and woods Have their day, have their day; But, kindly old rout Of the fire-born moods, You pass not away.

Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.

Many times man lives and dies Betweeen his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man die in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead

He Who is wrapped in purple robes, With planets in His care, Had pity on the least of things Asleep upon a chair.

There is only one romance the Soul's.

And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight.

A drunkard is a dead man And all dead men are drunk.

Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land; Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand.

I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.