Samuel Butler Quotes
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The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them. ~Samuel Butler - Experts
Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbors, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them. ~Samuel Butler - Words
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable. ~Samuel Butler - Taste
For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine. ~Samuel Butler - Truth
Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint. ~Samuel Butler - Evil
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 - Enjoyment
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. ~Samuel Butler - Medicine
Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished. ~Samuel Butler - Ideas
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust. ~Samuel Butler - Media
The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds. ~Samuel Butler - Vice
The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt. ~Samuel Butler - Death and Dying
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. ~Samuel Butler - Virtue
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it. ~Samuel Butler - Conscience
A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind. ~Samuel Butler - Genius
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason. ~Samuel Butler - Reason
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought. ~Samuel Butler - Thoughts and Thinking
Union may be strength, but it is mere blind brute strength unless wisely directed. ~Samuel Butler - Alliances
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. ~Samuel Butler - Animals
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage -- but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends. ~Samuel Butler - Friends and Friendship
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. ~Samuel Butler - Excess
Birth and death are so closely related that one could not destroy either without destroying the other at the same time. It is extinction that makes creation possible. ~Samuel Butler - Birth
Eating is touch carried to the bitter end. ~Samuel Butler - Food and Eating
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. ~Samuel Butler - Forgiveness
For every why he had a wherefore. ~Samuel Butler - Questions
Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him. ~Samuel Butler - Argument
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all. ~Samuel Butler - Love
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. ~Samuel Butler - God
To live is like to love-all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. ~Samuel Butler - Life and Living
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. ~Samuel Butler - Lies and Lying
For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism. ~Samuel Butler - Pleasure
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions. ~Samuel Butler - Banality
Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away. ~Samuel Butler - Indecision
When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented. ~Samuel Butler - Water
There are two great rules of life; the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants, if he only tries. That is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the rule. ~Samuel Butler - Rules
Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence. ~Samuel Butler - Tact and Tactfulness
It is tact that is golden, not silence. ~Samuel Butler - Tact and Tactfulness
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept. ~Samuel Butler - Friends and Friendship
To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all. ~Samuel Butler - Death and Dying
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon. ~Samuel Butler - Fools and Foolishness
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy. ~Samuel Butler - Lies and Lying
There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad. ~Samuel Butler - Academia
The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is. ~Samuel Butler - Common Sense
The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday. ~Samuel Butler - Preachers and Preaching
The want of money is the root of all evil. ~Samuel Butler - Money
Then spare the rod and spoil the child. ~Samuel Butler - Punishment
A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy. ~Samuel Butler - Virtue
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death. ~Samuel Butler - Death and Dying
Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal. ~Samuel Butler - Virtue
I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry. ~Samuel Butler - Regret
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions. ~Samuel Butler - Value
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. ~Samuel Butler - Benefactors
Logic is like the sword -- those who appeal to it, shall perish by it. ~Samuel Butler - Logic
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children. ~Samuel Butler - Parents and Parenting
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it. ~Samuel Butler - Fun
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously. ~Samuel Butler - Seriousness
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance. ~Samuel Butler - Belief
Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it. ~Samuel Butler - Waste
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 - Understanding
God cannot alter the past, but historians can. ~Samuel Butler - History and Historians
We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself. ~Samuel Butler - Argument
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 - Losers and Losing
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, ''I bet that my Redeemer liveth.'' ~Samuel Butler - Faith
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. ~Samuel Butler - Work
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. ~Samuel Butler - Friends and Friendship
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places. ~Samuel Butler - Praise
A lawyers dream of heaven; every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers. ~Samuel Butler - Law and Lawyers
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right. ~Samuel Butler - Infallibility
Life is like playing the violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. ~Samuel Butler - Life and Living
Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man. ~Samuel Butler - Life and Living
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 - Consciousness
An empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed. ~Samuel Butler - Home
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well. ~Samuel Butler - Lies and Lying
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it. ~Samuel Butler - Faith
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war. ~Samuel Butler - Doctors
The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God's message to him. Let him try and be a good thief. ~Samuel Butler - Crime and Criminals
Life is one long process of getting tired. ~Samuel Butler - Life and Living
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. ~Samuel Butler - Experience
The money men make lives after them. ~Samuel Butler - Money
Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to. ~Samuel Butler - Moralists
If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this: that a man should back his own opinion against the world s. ~Samuel Butler - Christians and Christianity
Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so. ~Samuel Butler - Injustice
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore. ~Samuel Butler - Bores and Boredom
Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it. ~Samuel Butler - Wisdom
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents. ~Samuel Butler - Music
When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness. ~Samuel Butler - Amiability
For Wealth are all things that conduce, to one's destruction or their use. A standard both to buy and sell, all things from heaven down to hell. ~Samuel Butler - Wealth
In law, nothing is certain but the expense. ~Samuel Butler - Law and Lawyers
He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still. ~Samuel Butler - Agreement
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. ~Samuel Butler - Dogs
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. ~Samuel Butler - Animals
The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them. ~Samuel Butler - Books and Reading
Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon. ~Samuel Butler - Loyalty
The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions. ~Samuel Butler - Food and Eating
The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it. ~Samuel Butler - Public Opinion
I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. ~Samuel Butler - Illness
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence. ~Samuel Butler - Vice
It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy -- but he who has shown the better temper. ~Samuel Butler - Debate
If life must not be taken too seriously -- then so neither must death. ~Samuel Butler - Death and Dying
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. ~Samuel Butler - Life and Living
Opinions have vested interests just as men have. ~Samuel Butler - Opinions
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness. ~Samuel Butler - Work
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others. ~Samuel Butler - Philosophers and Philosophy
To himself everyone is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead. ~Samuel Butler - Immortality
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way. ~Samuel Butler - Lies and Lying
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God. ~Samuel Butler - Humankind
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them. ~Samuel Butler - Writers and Writing
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy. ~Samuel Butler - Cheerfulness
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced. ~Samuel Butler - Christians and Christianity
Science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance. ~Samuel Butler - Science and Scientists
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 - Opinions
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand. ~Samuel Butler - Culture
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. ~Samuel Butler - Fathers
In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved. ~Samuel Butler - Procrastination
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth. ~Samuel Butler - Truth
It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk. ~Samuel Butler - Alcohol and Alcoholism
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 - Arts and Artists
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