Samuel Butler Quotes, Sayings, Remarks, Thoughts and Speeches
Samuel Butler Quotes and Sayings
- 1
A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 2
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 3
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 4
A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 5
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 6
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 7
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 8
A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 9
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 10
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 11
A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 12
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 13
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 14
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 15
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 16
All truth is not to be told at all times.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 17
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 18
And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 19
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 20
Be virtuous and you will be vicious.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 21
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 22
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 23
Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 24
Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 25
Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 26
Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 27
Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 28
Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 29
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 30
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 31
Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 32
Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 33
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 34
For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 35
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 36
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 37
God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 38
God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 39
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 40
God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 41
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 42
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 43
He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 44
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 45
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 46
I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 47
I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 48
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 49
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 50
If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 51
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.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 52
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 53
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 54
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 55
In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 56
In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 57
In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 58
Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 59
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 60
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 61
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 62
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 63
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 64
It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 65
It is tact that is golden, not silence.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 66
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 67
Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 68
Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 69
Let every man be true and every god a liar.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 70
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 71
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.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 72
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.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 73
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 74
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 75
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 76
Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 77
Life is one long process of getting tired.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 78
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 79
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 80
Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 81
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 82
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 83
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 84
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 85
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 86
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 87
Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 88
Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 89
Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 90
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 91
Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 92
My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 93
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 94
No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 95
Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 96
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 97
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 98
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 99
Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences, and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 100
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 101
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 102
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 103
People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 104
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 105
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 106
Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 107
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 108
Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 109
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 110
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 111
The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 112
The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 113
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 114
The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 115
The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 116
The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 117
The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 118
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 119
The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 120
The history of art is the history of revivals.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 121
The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 122
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 123
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 124
The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 125
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 126
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 127
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.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 128
The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 129
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 130
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 131
The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 132
The want of money is the root of all evil.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 133
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 134
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 135
Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 136
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 137
There is no bore like a clever bore.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 138
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 139
There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 140
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 141
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 142
There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 143
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 144
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.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 145
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 146
Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 147
To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 148
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 149
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 150
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.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 151
To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 152
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 153
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 154
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 155
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 156
We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 157
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 158
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.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 159
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 160
When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 161
Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 162
Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 163
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 164
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
- 165
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
Samuel Butler | Refcard PDF ↑
