Best 226 quotes of Samuel Butler on MyQuotes

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

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.

The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.

There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know, and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing, but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.

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.

There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.

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

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

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

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.

There is one class of mind that loves to lean on rules and definitions, and another that discards them as far as possible. A faddist will generally ask for a definition of faddism, and one who is not a faddist will be impatient of being asked to give one.

There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.

There should be asylums for habitual teetotalers, but they would probably relapse into teetotalism as soon as they got out.

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

The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.

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

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

The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence.

The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period.

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.

They say the test of [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?" And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?

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

This world is like Noah's Ark. In which few men but many beasts embark.

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.

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

To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.

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

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

To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.

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

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.

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.

We all love best not those who offend us least, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.

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.

When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

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.

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

Whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities, it is now one of 99 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity have been shown to be one and the same thing.

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

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

You cannot have a thing "matter" by itself which shall have no motion in it, nor yet a thing "motion" by itself which shall exist apart from matter; you must have both or neither. You can have matter moving much, or little, and in all conceivable ways; but you cannot have matter without any motion more than you can have motion without any matter that is moving.

Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.

Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

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.