Samuel Butler (novelist) Quotes

313 Sourced Quotes

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

Samuel Butler
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
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Samuel Butler
'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

Samuel Butler
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Samuel Butler
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
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
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
Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.

Samuel Butler
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

Samuel Butler
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
A man's style in any art should be like his dress — it should attract as little attention as possible.

Samuel Butler
The progress of Nature is effected by steps that are often imperceptible and blend into one another with the utmost gentleness.

Samuel Butler
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
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

Samuel Butler
Evaporation is an unseen heavenward waterfall.

Samuel Butler
Art has no end in view save the emphasising and recording in the most effective way some strongly felt interest or affection.

Samuel Butler
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
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
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