Samuel Butler People Quotations

In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.

Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.

If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.

My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

People are lucky and unlucky...according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

I believe that more unhappiness comes from this source than from any other--I mean from the attempt to prolong family connections unduly and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so

We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.

Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime

Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.

Because they did not see merit where they should have seen it, people, to express their regret, will go and leave a lot of money to the very people who will be the first to throw stones at the next person who has anything to say and finds a difficulty in getting a hearing.

When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

Our own death is a premium which we must pay for the far greater benefit we have derived from the fact that so many people have not only lived but also died before us.