Samuel Butler Quotes

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
Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime
Samuel Butler
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
Samuel Butler
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
Logic is like the sword--those who appeal to it shall perish by it.
Samuel Butler
To put one's trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.
Samuel Butler
All philosophies if you ride them home are nonsense but some are greater nonsense than others.
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
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.
Samuel Butler
A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
Samuel Butler
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
Samuel Butler
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted and at seeing it practised.
Samuel Butler
Neither have they hearts to stay Nor wit enough to run away.
Samuel Butler
All animals except man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Samuel Butler
There is one thing certain namely that we can have nothing certain therefore it is not certain that we can have nothing certain.
Samuel Butler
[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.
Samuel Butler
Theist and atheist: The fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
Samuel Butler
Mention but the word "divinity," and our sense of the divine is clouded.
Samuel Butler
No matter how ill we may be nor how low we may have fallen we should not change identity with any other person.
Samuel Butler
We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to them.
Samuel Butler
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every living organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
The advantage of doing one's praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
Samuel Butler
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
It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something.
Samuel Butler
The public do not know enough to be experts yet know enough to decide between them.
Samuel Butler
Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it-torn up to irrecoverable tatters.
Samuel Butler
What runs through a person like water through a sieve.
Samuel Butler
Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable grounds.
Samuel Butler
I do not mind lying but I hate inaccuracy.
Samuel Butler
Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.
Samuel Butler
People care more about being thought to have good taste than about being thought either good clever or amiable.
Samuel Butler
If people who are in a difficulty will only do the first little reasonable thing which they can clearly recognize as reasonable, they will always find the next step more easy both to see and take.
Samuel Butler
Words are clothes that thoughts wear
Samuel Butler
Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden not silence.
Samuel Butler
Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.
Samuel Butler
You can do very little with faith but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler
All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies.
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 virtue to be serviceable must like gold be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.
Samuel Butler
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
To live is like to love - all reason is against it and all healthy instinct for it.
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
An apology for the Devil - it must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler
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
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel Butler
Faith is a kind of betting or speculation.
Samuel Butler
I can generally bear the separation but I don't like the leave-taking.
Samuel Butler
We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
Samuel Butler
Having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed ere long into an amiable indifferentism which to outward appearance differed but little from the indifferentism …
Samuel Butler
Friendship is like money easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler
To live is like to love: all reason is against it and all healthy instinct is for it.
Samuel Butler
Any fool can tell the truth but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Samuel Butler
Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
Samuel Butler
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
Parents are the last people on Earth who ought to have children.
Samuel Butler
I reckon being ill is one of the greatest pleasures of life provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.
Samuel Butler
Our self-conceit sustains and always must sustain us.
Samuel Butler