Samuel Butler Quotes

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.

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.

The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.

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 recognized for some time.

Flying. Whatever any other organism has been able to do man should surely be able to do also, though he may go a different way about it.

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

The human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given imagination.

There should be asylums for habitual teetotalers, but they would probably relapse into teetotalism as soon as they got out.

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.

Man, unlike the animals, has never learned that the sole purpose of life is to enjoy it.

An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.

Memory and forgetfulness are as life and death to one another. To live is to remember and to remember is to live. To die is to forget and to forget is to die.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it - and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow.

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable, and absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

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?