Samuel Butler Quotes

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Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.

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.

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

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

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

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

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.

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

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

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

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

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

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

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

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

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

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

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

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

All truth is not to be told at all times.

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

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.

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

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

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

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

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

Life is one long process of getting tired.

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

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

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

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

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

The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

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

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

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

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

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

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

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

The history of art is the history of revivals.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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