Samuel Butler Quotes

If I had shown half as many dangerous tendencies when I was a boy, my father would have apprenticed me to a greengrocer, of that I'm very sure, ~ Samuel Butler

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

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand. ~ Samuel Butler

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

[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's. ~ Samuel Butler

If [science] tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were, we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes to have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water it is all wrong. Our business is with the thickening of this crust by extending our knowledge downward from above, as ice gets thicker while the frost lasts; we should not try to freeze upwards from the bottom. ~ Samuel Butler

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death. ~ Samuel Butler

Words are clothes that thoughts wear ~ Samuel Butler

Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it. ~ Samuel Butler

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

It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can
it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence. ~ Samuel Butler

Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental. ~ Samuel Butler

There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness. ~ Samuel Butler

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income ~ Samuel Butler

In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa. ~ Samuel Butler

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. ~ Samuel Butler

Whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities, it is now one of 99 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity have been shown to be one and the same thing. ~ Samuel Butler

Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. ~ Samuel Butler

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

As there can be no translation from one language into another which shall not scant the meaning somewhat, or enlarge upon it, so there is no language which can render thought without a jarring and a harshness somewhere. ~ Samuel Butler

This world is like Noah's Ark.
In which few men but many beasts embark. ~ Samuel Butler

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. ~ Samuel Butler

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

His knowledge was not far behind
The knight's, but of another kind,
And he another way came by't ;
Some call it Gifts, and some New Light.
A lib'ral art, that costs no pains
Of study, industry, or brains. ~ Samuel Butler

Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences, and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another. ~ Samuel Butler

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. ~ Samuel Butler

But independently of their money value, his works had made him a lasting name in literature. So probably Gallio was under the impression that his fame would rest upon the treatises on natural history which we gather from Seneca that he compiled, and which for aught we know may have contained a complete theory of evolution; but the treatises are all gone and Gallio has become immortal for the very last reason in the world that he expected, and for the very last reason that would have flattered his vanity. He has become immortal because he cared nothing about the most important movement with which he was ever brought into connection (I wish people who are in search of immortality would lay the lesson to heart and not make so much noise about important movements), and so, if Dr Skinner becomes immortal, it will probably be for some reason very different from the one which he so fondly imagined. ~ Samuel Butler

A credulous mind ... finds most delight in believing
strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass
with him; but never regards those that are plain and
feasible, for every man can believe such. ~ Samuel Butler

It stands to reason that he who would cure a moral ailment must be practically acquainted with it in all its bearings. ~ Samuel Butler

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

A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide. ~ Samuel Butler

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

Whatsoever we perpetrate, we do but row; we are steered by fate. ~ Samuel Butler

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it. ~ Samuel Butler

I tell you, Edward, said my father with some severity, we must judge men not so much by what they do, as by what they make us feel that they have it in them to do. If a man has done enough, either in painting, music, or the affairs of life, to make me feel that I might trust him in an emergency, he has done enough. It is not by what a man has actually put upon his canvas, nor yet by the acts by which he has set down, so to speak, upon the canvas of his life that I will judge him, but by what he makes me feel that he felt and aimed at. If he has made me feel that he felt those things to be lovable which I hold lovable myself I ask no more. ~ Samuel Butler

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

He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright. ~ Samuel Butler

I fall asleep in the full and certain hope That my slumber shall not be broken; And that, though I be all-forgetting, Yet shall I not be all-forgotten, But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds of those I have loved. ~ Samuel Butler

Nature. As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature's most interesting productions-the works of man. Nature is usually taken to mean mountains, rivers, clouds and undomesticated animals and plants. I am not indifferent to this half of nature, but it interests me much less than the other half. ~ Samuel Butler

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

Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away. ~ Samuel Butler

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

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. ~ Samuel Butler

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

I want to be able to do anything with words: handle slashing, flaming descriptions like Wells, and use the paradox with the clarity of Samuel Butler, the breadth of Bernard Shaw and the wit of Oscar Wilde, I want to do the wide sultry heavens of Conrad, the rolled-gold sundowns and crazy-quilt skies of Hitchens and Kipling as well as the pastel dawns and twilights of Chesterton. All that is by way of example. As a matter of fact I am a professed literary thief, hot after the best methods of every writer in my generation. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance. ~ Samuel Butler

I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong. ~ Samuel Butler

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. ~ Samuel Butler

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them. ~ Samuel Butler

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself. ~ Samuel Butler

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry. ~ Samuel Butler

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently. ~ Virginia Woolf

Food of Love
Eating is touch carried to the bitter end. -Samuel Butler II

I'm going to murder you with love;
I'm going to suffocate you with embraces;
I'm going to hug you, bone by bone,
Till you're dead all over.
Then I will dine on your delectable marrow.

You will become my personal Sahara;
I'll sun myself in you, then with one swallow
Drain you remaining brackish well.
With my female blade I'll carve my name
In your most aspiring palm
Before I chop it down.
Then I'll inhale your last oasis whole.

But in the total desert you become
You'll see me stretch, horizon to horizon,
Opulent mirage!
Wisteria balconies dripping cyclamen.
Vistas ablaze with crystal, laced in gold.

So you will summon each dry grain of sand
And move towards me in undulating dunes
Till you arrive at sudden ultramarine:
A Mediterranean to stroke your dusty shores;
Obstinate verdue, creeping inland, fast renudes
Your barrens; succulents spring up everywhere,
Surprising life! And I will be that green.

When you are fed and watered, flourishing
With shoots entwining trellis, dome and spire,
Till you are resurrected field in bloom,
I will devour you, my natural food,
My host, my final supper on the earth,
And you'll begin to die again. ~ Carolyn Kizer

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words. ~ Samuel Butler

Conscience is thoroughly well bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it. ~ Samuel Butler

He that complies against his will
Is of his own opinion still. ~ Samuel Butler

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

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions. ~ Samuel Butler

The greatest 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. ~ Samuel Butler

Pleasure, after all, is a safer guide than either right or duty. For hard as it is to know what gives us pleasure, right and duty are often still harder to distinguish and, if we go wrong with them, will lead us into just as sorry a plight as a mistaken opinion concerning pleasure. When men burn their fingers through following after pleasure they find out their mistake and get to see where they have gone wrong more easily than when they have burnt them through following after a fancied duty, or a fancied idea concerning right virtue. The devil, in fact, when he dresses himself in angel's clothes, can only be detected by experts of exceptional skill, and so often does he adopt this disguise that it is hardly safe to be seen talking to an angel at all, and prudent people will follow after pleasure as a more homely but more respectable and on the whole much more trustworthy guide. ~ Samuel Butler

The flesh of animals who feed excursively is allowed to have a higher flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same difference between men who read as their taste prompts and men who are confined in cells and colleges to stated tasks? ~ Samuel Butler

To me it seems that those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people than those who are not. ~ Samuel Butler

The want of money is the root of all evil. ~ Samuel Butler

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered. ~ Samuel Butler

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right. ~ Samuel Butler

And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods. ~ Samuel Butler

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. ~ Samuel Butler

To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead. ~ Samuel Butler

It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of. ~ Samuel Butler

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us. ~ Samuel Butler

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. ~ Samuel Butler

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch. ~ Samuel Butler

The major sin is the sin of being born. ~ Samuel Butler

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance. ~ Samuel Butler

The practical outcome of the foregoing was a conviction in Theobald's mind, and if in his, then in Christina's, that it was their duty to begin training up their children in the way they should go, even from their earliest infancy. The first signs of self-will must be carefully looked for, and plucked up by the roots at once before they had time to grow. Theobald ~ Samuel Butler

Be virtuous and you will be vicious. ~ Samuel Butler

Life is one long process of getting tired. ~ Samuel Butler

We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to them. ~ Samuel Butler

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

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad. ~ Samuel Butler

If, again, the most superficial introspection teaches the physiologist that his conscious life is dependent upon the mechanical adjustments of his body, and that inversely his body is subjected with certain limitations to his will, then it only remains for him to make one assumption more, namely, that this mutual interdependence between the spiritual and the material is itself also dependent on law, and he has discovered the bond by which the science of the matter and the science of consciousness are united into a single whole. ~ Samuel Butler

We can never get rid of mouse-ideas completely, they keep turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble
no matter how often we drive them off. The best way to keep them down is to have a few good strong cat-ideas which will embrace them and ensure their not reappearing till they do so in another shape. ~ Samuel Butler

Men of Science. If they are worthy of the name they are indeed about God's path and about his bed and spying out all his ways. ~ Samuel Butler

Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence. ~ Samuel Butler

The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. ~ Samuel Butler

Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before it began to live consciously on its own account? About ~ Samuel Butler

Science is being daily more and more personified and anthromorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, &c.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance. ~ Samuel Butler

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

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

The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation. ~ 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 lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers. ~ Samuel Butler

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

You cannot have a thing "matter" by itself which shall have no motion in it, nor yet a thing "motion" by itself which shall exist apart from matter; you must have both or neither. You can have matter moving much, or little, and in all conceivable ways; but you cannot have matter without any motion more than you can have motion without any matter that is moving. ~ Samuel Butler

Memory and forgetfulness are as life and death to one another. To live is to remember and to remember is to live. To die is to forget and to forget is to die. ~ Samuel Butler

An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty. ~ Samuel Butler

We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them. ~ Samuel Butler

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. ~ Samuel Butler

But, as our friend Samuel Butler says, he that is stupid in little will also be stupid in much. ~ Christopher Morley