Samuel Butler (novelist) Quotes

313 Sourced Quotes

Handel and Shakespeare have left us the best that any have left us; yet, in spite of this, how much of their lives was wasted.

Samuel Butler
Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases—though not often.

Samuel Butler
As the days went slowly by he came to see that Christianity and the denial of Christianity after all met as much as any other extremes do; it was a fight about names — not about things; practically the Church of Rome, the Church of England, and the freethinker have the same ideal standard and meet in the gentleman; for he is the most perfect saint who is the most perfect gentleman. Then he saw also that it matters little what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter end. It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies.

Samuel Butler
The pursuit of truth is chimerical. That is why it is so hard to say what truth is. There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.

Samuel Butler
This poem [The Ancient Mariner] would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

Samuel Butler
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
The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life.

Samuel Butler
It is said of money that it is more easily made than kept and this is true of many things, such as friendship; and even life itself is more easily got than kept.

Samuel Butler
Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

Samuel Butler
Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. If it be urged that this is impossible under the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy and that we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage.

Samuel Butler
Most artists, whether in religion, music, literature, painting, or what not, are shopkeepers in disguise. They hide their shop as much as they can, and keep pretending that it does not exist, but they are essentially shopkeepers and nothing else.

Samuel Butler
God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.

Samuel Butler
It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

Samuel Butler
A pair of pincers set over a bellows and a stew pan and the whole thing fixed on stilts.
Definition of man

Samuel Butler
Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes, and counsel should be heard on both sides.

Samuel Butler
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

Samuel Butler
The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

Samuel Butler
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities, as well as those of other people, will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing.

Samuel Butler
A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

Samuel Butler
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.

Samuel Butler
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

Samuel Butler
I should like to like Schumann's music better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.

Samuel Butler
X-rays. Their moral is this—that a right way of looking at things will see through almost anything.

Samuel Butler
In the highest consciousness there is still unconsciousness, in the lowest unconsciousness there is still consciousness. If there is no consciousness there is no thing, or nothing. To understand perfectly would be to cease to understand at all.

Samuel Butler
How thankful we ought to be that Wordsworth was only a poet and not a musician. Fancy a symphony by Wordsworth! Fancy having to sit it out! And fancy what it would have been if he had written fugues!

Samuel Butler
Argument is generally waste of time and trouble. It is better to present one's opinion and leave it to stick or no as it may happen. If sound, it will probably in the end stick, and the sticking is the main thing.

Samuel Butler
The devil tempted Christ; yes, but it was Christ who tempted the devil to tempt him.

Samuel Butler
The true laws of God are the laws of our own well-being.

Samuel Butler
Painters should remember that the eye, as a general rule, is a good, simple, credulous organ — very ready to take things on trust if it be told them with any confidence of assertion.

Samuel Butler
It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.

Samuel Butler