Samuel Butler's Quotes

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.

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

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

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

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.

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

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

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.

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

Be virtuous and you will be vicious.

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.

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

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

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

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

A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.

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

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

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

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.

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

Let every man be true and every god a liar.

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.

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

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

Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.

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

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

Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.

There is no bore like a clever bore.

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

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

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

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

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.

Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.

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

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

All truth is not to be told at all times.

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

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

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

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.

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.

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

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

God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.

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

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

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.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

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

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

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

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

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.

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.

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

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

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

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

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

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

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

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