Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler (novelist) Quotes
313 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
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.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Through perils both of wind and limb,
Through thick and thin she follow'd him
In Every adventure he undertook,
And never him or it forsook.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy—very unhappy—it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
A man's style in any art should be like his dress — it should attract as little attention as possible.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
The progress of Nature is effected by steps that are often imperceptible and blend into one another with the utmost gentleness.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally, and that, if possible, he should get the reputation of being well-to-do in the world.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Evaporation is an unseen heavenward waterfall.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Art has no end in view save the emphasising and recording in the most effective way some strongly felt interest or affection.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Cat-Ideas and Mouse-Ideas. We can never get rid of mouse-ideas completely, they keep turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble-no matter how often we drive them off. The best way to keep them down is to have a few good strong cat-ideas which will embrace them and ensure their not reappearing till they do so in another shape.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
People say that there are neither dragons to be killed nor distressed maidens to be rescued nowadays. I do not know, but I think I have dropped across one or two, nor do I feel sure whether the most mortal wounds have been inflicted by the dragons or by myself.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
To be is to think and to be thinkable. To live is to continue thinking and to remember having done so.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
All men can do great things, if they know what great things are.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Thought pure and simple is as near to God as we can get; it is through this that we are linked with God.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
I fall asleep in the full and certain hope That my slumber shall not be broken; And that, though I be all-forgetting, Yet shall I not be all-forgotten, But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds of those I have loved.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
If I die prematurely, at any rate I shall be saved from being bored by my own success.
Samuel Butler
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
...
13
Quote of the day
Divorce is the one human tragedy that reduces everything to cash.
Rita Mae Brown
Samuel Butler
Creative Commons
Born:
December 4, 1835
Died:
June 18, 1902
(aged 66)
Bio:
Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian-era English author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh.
Known for:
Erewhon (1872)
The Way of All Flesh
Erewhon Revisited (1901)
The fair haven
Life and habit
Most used words:
man
,
people
,
life
,
god
,
death
,
time
,
money
,
live
,
knowing
,
truth
,
religion
,
care
,
day
,
keep
,
opinion
Samuel Butler on Wikipedia
Samuel Butler works on Gutenberg Project
Samuel Butler works on Wikisource
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Samuel Butler Quotes
Samuel Butler Short Quotes
British Novelist Quotes
Novelist Quotes
19th-century Novelist Quotes
Related People
E. M. Forster
English Novelist
Henry Arthur Jones
English Playwright
Thomas Carlyle
Scottish Philosopher
Joseph Conrad
Polish Author
Disambiguation
Samuel Butler (poet)
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes