Samuel Butler Quotations

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

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

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.

When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

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

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it - and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow.

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.

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

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

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.

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

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'

There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still.

If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out.

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.

The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

Life is one long process of getting tired.

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.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.

No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.

The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.

Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.

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

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.

There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.

Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.

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

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

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

The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.