Best 226 quotes of Samuel Butler on MyQuotes

He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright.

History is a bucket of ashes.

How often do we not see children ruined through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents?

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

I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific bigwigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

I fall asleep in the full and certain hope That my slumber shall not be broken; And that, though I be all-forgetting, Yet shall I not be all-forgotten, But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds of those I have loved.

If a man knows not life which he hath seen, how shall he know death, which he hath not seen?

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.

If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death by my own success.

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

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.

If [science] tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were, we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes to have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water it is all wrong. Our business is with the thickening of this crust by extending our knowledge downward from above, as ice gets thicker while the frost lasts; we should not try to freeze upwards from the bottom.

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

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

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

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

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

In practice it is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is sometimes extremely difficult to find this out.

Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognized for some time.

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

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

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 death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.

It is not sufficiently considered in the hour of exultation, that all human excellence is comparative; that no man performs much but in proportion to what other accomplish, or to the time and opportunities which have been allowed him.

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.

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

Let 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.

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

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

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

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

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

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

Life is one long process of getting tired.

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

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

Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.

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.

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

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

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

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

Memory and forgetfulness are as life and death to one another. To live is to remember and to remember is to live. To die is to forget and to forget is to die.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

Men of Science. If they are worthy of the name they are indeed about God's path and about his bed and spying out all his ways.