Samuel Butler (novelist) - Day Quotes

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Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.

Samuel Butler
We meet people every day whose bodies are evidently those of men and women long dead, but whose appearance we know through their portraits.

Samuel Butler
The phrase "unconscious humor" is the one contribution I have made to the current literature of the day.

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
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
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
A pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise: there are such things every day but we very seldom see them.

Samuel Butler
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

Samuel Butler
The moon pull'd off her veil of light, That hides her face by day from sight (Mysterious veil, of brightness made,) That's both her lustre and her shade), And in the lantern of the night, With shining horns hung out her light.

Samuel Butler
There is no drawing the line between physics and metaphysics. If you examine every day facts at all closely, you are a physicist; but if you press your physics at all home, you become a metaphysician; if you press your metaphysics at all home, you are in a fog.

Samuel Butler
In mathematics he was greater Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater; For he, by geometric scale, Could take the size of pots of ale; Resolve by sines and tangents straight If bread or butter wanted weight; And wisely tell you what hour o' th' day The clock does strike, by algebra.

Samuel Butler
He made an instrument to know If the moon shine at full or no; That would, as soon as e'er she shone straight, Whether 'twere day or night demonstrate; Tell what her d'ameter to an inch is, And prove that she's not made of green cheese.

Samuel Butler