Samuel Butler Quotes
Samuel Butler Quotes
- 1
A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 2
A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 3
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 4
A lawyer's dream of Heaven: Every man reclaimed his own property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 5
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 6
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 7
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 8
A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 9
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.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 10
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 11
A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 12
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 13
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 14
All of the animals except for man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 15
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 16
Be virtuous and you will be vicious.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 17
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 18
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 19
Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 20
Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
Samuel-ButlerSamuel Butler
- 21
Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 22
Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 23
Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 24
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures 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.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 25
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 26
Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 27
Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 28
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 29
For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 30
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 31
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 32
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 33
God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 34
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 35
He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 36
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 37
I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 38
I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 39
If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 40
If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.
Samuel-Butler/">Samuel Butler
- 41
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
Samuel-Butler/41.php">Samuel Butler
- 42
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.
Samuel-Butler/42.php">Samuel Butler
- 43
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
Samuel-Butler/43.php">Samuel Butler
- 44
In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.
Samuel-Butler/44.php">Samuel Butler
- 45
In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.
Samuel-Butler/45.php">Samuel Butler
- 46
Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
Samuel-Butler/46.php">Samuel Butler
- 47
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
Samuel-Butler/47.php">Samuel Butler
- 48
It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.
Samuel-Butler/48.php">Samuel Butler
- 49
It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.
Samuel-Butler/49.php">Samuel Butler
- 50
It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out.
Samuel-Butler/50.php">Samuel Butler
- 51
It is tact that is golden, not silence.
Samuel-Butler/51.php">Samuel Butler
- 52
Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
Samuel-Butler/52.php">Samuel Butler
- 53
Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
Samuel-Butler/53.php">Samuel Butler
- 54
Let every man be true and every god a liar.
Samuel-Butler/54.php">Samuel Butler
- 55
Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.
Samuel-Butler/55.php">Samuel Butler
- 56
Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.
Samuel-Butler/56.php">Samuel Butler
- 57
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
Samuel-Butler/57.php">Samuel Butler
- 58
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel-Butler/58.php">Samuel Butler
- 59
Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
Samuel-Butler/59.php">Samuel Butler
- 60
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
Samuel-Butler/60.php">Samuel Butler
- 61
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
Samuel-Butler/61.php">Samuel Butler
- 62
Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
Samuel-Butler/62.php">Samuel Butler
- 63
Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
Samuel-Butler/63.php">Samuel Butler
- 64
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
Samuel-Butler/64.php">Samuel Butler
- 65
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat.
Samuel-Butler/65.php">Samuel Butler
- 66
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
Samuel-Butler/66.php">Samuel Butler
- 67
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
Samuel-Butler/67.php">Samuel Butler
- 68
Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
Samuel-Butler/68.php">Samuel Butler
- 69
Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
Samuel-Butler/69.php">Samuel Butler
- 70
Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.
Samuel-Butler/70.php">Samuel Butler
- 71
Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.
Samuel-Butler/71.php">Samuel Butler
- 72
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
Samuel-Butler/72.php">Samuel Butler
- 73
My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
Samuel-Butler/73.php">Samuel Butler
- 74
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
Samuel-Butler/74.php">Samuel Butler
- 75
No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
Samuel-Butler/75.php">Samuel Butler
- 76
Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
Samuel-Butler/76.php">Samuel Butler
- 77
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
Samuel-Butler/77.php">Samuel Butler
- 78
One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.
Samuel-Butler/78.php">Samuel Butler
- 79
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
Samuel-Butler/79.php">Samuel Butler
- 80
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
Samuel-Butler/80.php">Samuel Butler
- 81
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
Samuel-Butler/81.php">Samuel Butler
- 82
People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
Samuel-Butler/82.php">Samuel Butler
- 83
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Samuel-Butler/83.php">Samuel Butler
- 84
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
Samuel-Butler/84.php">Samuel Butler
- 85
Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.
Samuel-Butler/85.php">Samuel Butler
- 86
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
Samuel-Butler/86.php">Samuel Butler
- 87
Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.
Samuel-Butler/87.php">Samuel Butler
- 88
Some men love truth so much that they seem in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.
Samuel-Butler/88.php">Samuel Butler
- 89
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
Samuel-Butler/89.php">Samuel Butler
- 90
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
Samuel-Butler/90.php">Samuel Butler
- 91
The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.
Samuel-Butler/91.php">Samuel Butler
- 92
The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.
Samuel-Butler/92.php">Samuel Butler
- 93
The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
Samuel-Butler/93.php">Samuel Butler
- 94
The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
Samuel-Butler/94.php">Samuel Butler
- 95
The history of art is the history of revivals.
Samuel-Butler/95.php">Samuel Butler
- 96
The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
Samuel-Butler/96.php">Samuel Butler
- 97
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
Samuel-Butler/97.php">Samuel Butler
- 98
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
Samuel-Butler/98.php">Samuel Butler
- 99
The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
Samuel-Butler/99.php">Samuel Butler
- 100
The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.
Samuel-Butler/100.php">Samuel Butler
- 101
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
Samuel-Butler/101.php">Samuel Butler
- 102
The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
Samuel-Butler/102.php">Samuel Butler
- 103
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
Samuel-Butler/103.php">Samuel Butler
- 104
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
Samuel-Butler/104.php">Samuel Butler
- 105
The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.
Samuel-Butler/105.php">Samuel Butler
- 106
The want of money is the root of all evil.
Samuel-Butler/106.php">Samuel Butler
- 107
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
Samuel-Butler/107.php">Samuel Butler
- 108
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.
Samuel-Butler/108.php">Samuel Butler
- 109
Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
Samuel-Butler/109.php">Samuel Butler
- 110
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.
Samuel-Butler/110.php">Samuel Butler
- 111
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.
Samuel-Butler/111.php">Samuel Butler
- 112
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.
Samuel-Butler/112.php">Samuel Butler
- 113
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
Samuel-Butler/113.php">Samuel Butler
- 114
There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
Samuel-Butler/114.php">Samuel Butler
- 115
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
Samuel-Butler/115.php">Samuel Butler
- 116
Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.
Samuel-Butler/116.php">Samuel Butler
- 117
Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
Samuel-Butler/117.php">Samuel Butler
- 118
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
Samuel-Butler/118.php">Samuel Butler
- 119
To himself every one is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
Samuel-Butler/119.php">Samuel Butler
- 120
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
Samuel-Butler/120.php">Samuel Butler
- 121
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.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
- 122
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
- 123
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
- 124
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
- 125
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
- 126
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.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
- 127
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
- 128
When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
- 129
Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
- 130
Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
- 131
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
- 132
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
Samuel-Butler/1">Samuel Butler
