Samuel Butler (novelist) - Man Quotes

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The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.

Samuel Butler
Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.

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

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
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage—but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

Samuel Butler
If a man has not studied painting, or at any rate black and white drawing, his eyes are wild; learning to draw tames them. The first step towards taming the eyes is to teach them not to see too much.

Samuel Butler
Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.

Samuel Butler
The supposition that the world is ever in league to put a man down is childish. Hardly less childish is it for an author to lay the blame on reviewers. A good sturdy author is a match for a hundred reviewers.

Samuel Butler
A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his own property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

Samuel Butler
I heard a man say that brigands demand your money or your life, whereas women require both.

Samuel Butler
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.

Samuel Butler
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.

Samuel Butler