Samuel Butler

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

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

— Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.

— Samuel Butler

So engrained in the human heart is the desire to believe that some people really do know what they say they know, and can thus save them from the trouble of thinking for themselves, that in a short time would-be philosophers and faddists became more powerful than ever, and gradually led their countrymen to accept all those absurd views of life, some account of which I have given in my earlier chapters. Indeed I can see no hope for the Erewhonians till they have got to understand that reason uncorrected by instinct is as bad as instinct uncorrected by reason.

— Samuel Butler

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

— Samuel Butler

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

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

— Samuel Butler

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

— Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

— Samuel Butler

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

— Samuel Butler

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

— Samuel Butler

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

— 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

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

— Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

The world is naturally averse to all truth it sees or hears

— Samuel Butler

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

— Samuel Butler

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

— Samuel Butler

Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.

— Samuel Butler

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.

— Samuel Butler

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

— Samuel Butler

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

— Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

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

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

— Samuel Butler

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

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

— Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

— Samuel Butler

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

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.

— Samuel Butler

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

— Samuel Butler

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

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

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