Samuel Butler Quotes - Page 2

We grow weary of those things (and perhaps soonest) which we most desire.

We want words to do more than they can. We try to do with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless there they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is to treat them as we do our neighbours, and make the best and not the worst of them.

Life is one long process of getting tired.

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

The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us like the Kingdom of Heaven rather than without.

To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious.

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

People are lucky and unlucky ... according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change is a shock; every shock is a pro tanto death. What we call death is only a shock great enough to destroy our power to recognize a past and a present as resembling one another.

Peter remained on friendly terms with Christ notwithstanding Christ's having healed his mother-in-law.

There are orphanages," he exclaimed to himself, "for children who have lost their parents--oh! why, why, why, are there no harbours of refuge for grown men who have not yet lost them?

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.

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.

I remember one incident which bears upon this part of the treatise. The gentleman who gave it to me had asked to see my tobacco-pipe; he examined it carefully, and when he came to the little protuberance at the bottom of the bowl he seemed much delighted, and exclaimed that it must be rudimentary. I asked him what he meant."Sir," he answered, "this organ is identical with the rim at the bottom of a cup; it is but another form of the same function. Its purposes must have been to keep the heat of the pipe from marking the table upon which it rested. You would find, if you were to look up the history of tobacco-pipes, that in early specimens this protuberance was of a different shape to what it is now. It will have been broad at the bottom, and flat, so that while the pipe was being smoked the bowl might rest upon the table without marking it. Use and disuse must have come into play and reduced the function its present rudimentary condition. I should not be surprised, sir," he continued, "if, in the course of time, it were to become modified still farther, and to assume the form of an ornamental leaf or scroll, or even a butterfly, while in some cases, it will become extinct.

It has been said that though 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.

All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.

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

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

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

The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.

Whatso'er we perpetrate We do but row we are steered by fate.

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.

Truth might be heroic, but it was not within the range of practical domestic politics.

The tendency of modern science is to reduce proof to absurdity by continually reducing absurdity to proof.

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.

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

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.

Our latest moment is always our supreme moment. Five minutes delay in dinner now is more important than a great sorrow ten years gone.

Man unlike the animal has never learned that the sole purpose of life is to enjoy it.

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.

A lawyer's dream of heaven - every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

I keep my books at the British Museum and at Mudies.

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

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

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.

The world is naturally averse to all truth it sees or hears but swallows nonsense and a lie with greediness and gluttony.

Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes.

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.