Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler (novelist) Quotes
313 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
X-rays. Their moral is this—that a right way of looking at things will see through almost anything.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
The devil tempted Christ; yes, but it was Christ who tempted the devil to tempt him.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
The true laws of God are the laws of our own well-being.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
No one thinks he will escape death, so there is no disappointment and, as long as we know neither the when nor the how, the mere fact that we shall one day have to go does not much affect us; we do not care, even though we know vaguely that we have not long to live. The serious trouble begins when death becomes definite in time and shape. It is in precise fore-knowledge, rather than in sin, that the sting of death is to be found; and such fore-knowledge is generally withheld; though, strangely enough, many would have it if they could.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Taking numbers into account, I should think more mental suffering had been undergone in the streets leading from St George's, Hanover Square, than in the condemned cells of Newgate.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Nothing will ever die so long as it knows what to do under the circumstances, in other words so long as it knows its business.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Youth is like spring, an overpraised season—delightful if it happen to be a favored one, but in practice…more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
We play out our days as we play out cards, taking them as they come, not knowing what they will be, hoping for a lucky card and sometimes getting one, often getting just the wrong one.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.
Samuel Butler
Source
Report...
We no more deny the essential value of religion because we hold most religions false, and most professors of religion liars, than we deny that of science because we can see no great difference between men of science and theologians.
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
1
...
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
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