Samuel Butler (novelist)

And should we not be guilty of consummate folly if we were to reject advantages which we cannot obtain otherwise, merely because they involve a greater gain to others than to ourselves?

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Happily common sense, though she is by nature the gentlest creature living, when she feels the knife at her throat, is apt to develop unexpected powers of resistance, and to send doctrinaires flying, even when they have bound her down and think they have her at their mercy.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

As a matter of course, the basis on which he decided that duty could alone rest was one that afforded no standing-room for many of the old-established habits of the people. These, he assured them, were all wrong, and whenever any one ventured to differ from him, he referred the matter to the unseen power with which he alone was in direct communication, and the unseen power invariably assured him that he was right.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

But 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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

It is far safer to know too little than too much. People will condemn the one, though they will resent being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

We know so well what we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we not? I fancy that there is some truth in the view which is being put forward nowadays, that 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 (novelist)

Youth is like spring, an overpraised season.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

A pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise: there are such things every day but we very seldom see them.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Taking numbers into account, I should think more mental suffering had been undergone in the streets leading from St George’s, Hanover Square, than in the condemned cells of Newgate.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

How is it, I wonder, that all religious officials, from God the Father to the parish beadle, should be so arbitrary and exacting.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

One great reason why clergymen’s households are generally unhappy is because the clergyman is so much at home or close about the house.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

To me it seems that those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people than those who are not.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

There are two classes of people in this world, those who sin, and those who are sinned against; if a man must belong to either, he had better belong to the first than to the second.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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 (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

A man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe surgical operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly kill him, or that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as such tidings must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greatest number of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but the strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men they are, the more complete, as a general rule, is their prostration.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

An empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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 (novelist)

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Stowed away in a Montreal lumber roomO God! O Montreal!

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar — He has neither vest nor pants with which to cover his limbs.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

It is the manner of gods and prophets to begin: "Thou shalt have none other God or Prophet but me." If I were to start as a God or a prophet I think I should take the line: "Thou shalt not believe in me. Thou shalt not have me for a God. Thou shalt worship any d_____d thing thou likest except me." This should be my first and great commandment, and my second should be like unto it.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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 (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The devil tempted Christ; yes, but it was Christ who tempted the devil to tempt him.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

We can see nothing face to face; our utmost seeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowded pocket.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The limits of the body seem well defined enough as definitions go, but definitions seldom go far.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

We meet people every day whose bodies are evidently those of men and women long dead, but whose appearance we know through their portraits.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

I do not like books. I believe I have the smallest library of any literary man in London, and I have no wish to increase it. I keep my books at the British Museum and at Mudie's, and it makes me very angry if anyone gives me one for my private library.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

If a man would get hold of the public era, he must pay, marry, or fight.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

I should not advise anyone with ordinary independence of mind to attempt the public ear unless he is confident that he can out-lung and out-last his own generation; for if he has any force, people will and ought to be on their guard against him, inasmuch as there is no knowing where he may not take them.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

We do not know what death is. If we know so little about life which we have experienced, how shall be know about death which we have not — and in the nature of things never can?

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is an inflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is another matter. If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragable certainty for everything that they have taken hitherto as paper money on the credit of the bank of public opinion, is there money enough behind it all to stand so great a drain even on so great a reserve?

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

By a merciful dispensation of Providence university training is almost as costly as it is unprofitable. The majority will thus be always unable to afford it, and will base their opinions on mother wit and current opinion rather than on demonstration.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

We play out our days as we play out cards, taking them as they come, not knowing what they will be, hoping for a lucky card and sometimes getting one, often getting just the wrong one.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large. The individual will not so much care how much he may suffer in this world provided he can live in men’s good thoughts long after he has left it. The world at large does not so much care how much suffering the individual may either endure or cause in this life, provided he will take himself clean away out of men’s thoughts, whether for good or ill, when he has left it.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Life is the gathering of waves to a head, at death they break into a million fragments each one of which, however, is absorbed at once into the sea of life and helps to form a later generation which comes rolling on till it too breaks.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The true laws of God are the laws of our own well-being.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Intellectual over-indulgence is the most gratuitous and disgraceful form which excess can take, nor is there any the consequences of which are more disastrous.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable; absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullnesses of it and the pomposities of it.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

God does not intend people, and does not like people, to be too good. He likes them neither too good nor too bad, but a little too bad is more venial with him than a little too good.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Sin is like a mountain with two aspects according to whether it is viewed before or after it has been reached: yet both aspects are real.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Morality turns on whether the pleasure precedes or follows the pain. Thus, it is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first, and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Morality is the custom of one’s country and the current feeling of one’s peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

To love God is to have good health, good looks, good sense, experience, a kindly nature and a fair balance of cash in hand.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Is there any religion whose followers can be pointed to as distinctly more amiable and trustworthy than those of any other? If so, this should be enough. I find the nicest and best people generally profess no religion at all, but are ready to like the best men of all religions.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of both.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

If we are asked what is the most essential characteristic that underlies this word, the word itself will guide us to gentleness, to absence of such things as brow-beating, overbearing manners and fuss, and generally to consideration for other people.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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 (novelist)

To be is to think and to be thinkable. To live is to continue thinking and to remember having done so.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

We are so far identical with our ancestors and our contemporaries that it is very rarely we can see anything that they do not see. It is not unjust that the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children, for the children committed the sins when in the persons of their fathers.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

All thinking is of disturbance, dynamical, a state of unrest tending towards equilibrium. It is all a mode of classifying and of criticising with a view of knowing whether it gives us, or is likely to give us, pleasure or no.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

In the highest consciousness there is still unconsciousness, in the lowest unconsciousness there is still consciousness. If there is no consciousness there is no thing, or nothing. To understand perfectly would be to cease to understand at all.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

An energy is a soul — a something working in us.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Animals and plants cannot understand our business, so we have denied that they can understand their own. What we call inorganic matter cannot understand the animals’ and plants’ business, we have therefore denied that it can understand anything whatever.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Feeling is an art and, like any other art, can be acquired by taking pains.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Moral influence means persuading another that one can make that other more uncomfortable than that other can make oneself.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

When we go up to the shelves in the reading-room of the British Museum, how like it is to wasps flying up and down an apricot tree that is trained against a wall, or cattle coming down to drink at a pool!

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

All eating is a kind of proselytising — a kind of dogmatising — a maintaining that the eater’s way of looking at things is better than the eatee’s.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

We can no longer separate things as we once could: everything tends towards unity; one thing, one action, in one place, at one time. On the other hand, we can no longer unify things as we once could; we are driven to ultimate atoms, each one of which is an individuality. So that we have an infinite multitude of things doing an infinite multitude of actions in infinite time and space; and yet they are not many things, but one thing.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Thought pure and simple is as near to God as we can get; it is through this that we are linked with God.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The mere fact that a thought or idea can be expressed articulately in words involves that it is still open to question; and the mere fact that a difficulty can be definitely conceived involves that it is open to solution.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Words impede and either kill, or are killed by, perfect thought; but they are, as a scaffolding, useful, if not indispensable, for the building up of imperfect thought and helping to perfect it.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so. You may break the written law at a pinch and on the sly if you can, but the unwritten law — which often comprises the written — must not be broken. Not being written, it is not always easy to know what it is, but this has got to be done.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

[Ideas] are like shadows — substantial enough until we try to grasp them.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

All things are like exposed photographic plates that have no visible image on them till they have been developed.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Always eat grapes downwards — that is, always eat the best grape first; in this way there will be none better left on the bunch, and each grape will seem good down to the last.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

My notes always grow longer if I shorten them. I mean the process of compression makes them more pregnant and they breed new notes.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

There is nothing less powerful than knowledge unattached, and incapable of application. That is why what little knowledge I have has done myself personally so much harm. I do not know much, but if I knew a good deal less than that little I should be far more powerful.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

In art, never try to find out anything, or try to learn anything until the not knowing it has come to be a nuisance to you for some time. Then you will remember it, but not otherwise. Let knowledge importune you before you will hear it. Our schools and universities go on the precisely opposite system.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Every new idea has something of the pain and peril of childbirth about it; ideas are just as mortal and just as immortal as organised beings are.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes, and counsel should be heard on both sides.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

A man’s style in any art should be like his dress — it should attract as little attention as possible.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

They say the test of this [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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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 (novelist)

If you tie Handel’s hands by debarring him from the rendering of human emotion, and if you set Bach’s free by giving him no human emotion to render — if, in fact, you rob Handel of his opportunities and Bach of his difficulties — the two men can fight after a fashion, but Handel will even so come off victorious.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Handel and Shakespeare have left us the best that any have left us; yet, in spite of this, how much of their lives was wasted.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Honesty consists not in never stealing but in knowing where to stop in stealing, and how to make good use of what one does steal.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Sketching from nature is very like trying to put a pinch of salt on her tail. And yet many manage to do it very nicely.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Art has no end in view save the emphasising and recording in the most effective way some strongly felt interest or affection.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

An artist’s touches are sometimes no more articulate than the barking of a dog who would call attention to something without exactly knowing what. This is as it should be, and he is a great artist who can be depended on not to bark at nothing.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Painters should remember that the eye, as a general rule, is a good, simple, credulous organ — very ready to take things on trust if it be told them with any confidence of assertion.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

After having spent years striving to be accurate, we must spend as many more in discovering when and how to be inaccurate.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The composer is seldom a great theorist; the theorist is never a great composer. Each is equally fatal to and essential in the other.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

If a man has not studied painting, or at any rate black and white drawing, his eyes are wild; learning to draw tames them. The first step towards taming the eyes is to teach them not to see too much.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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 (novelist)

It is said of money that it is more easily made than kept and this is true of many things, such as friendship; and even life itself is more easily got than kept.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Nothing is so cruel as to try and force a man beyond his natural pace.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

I doubt whether any angel would find me very entertaining. As for myself, if ever I do entertain one it will have to be unawares. When people entertain others without an introduction they generally turn out more like devils than angels.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

People say that there are neither dragons to be killed nor distressed maidens to be rescued nowadays. I do not know, but I think I have dropped across one or two, nor do I feel sure whether the most mortal wounds have been inflicted by the dragons or by myself.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

There are some things which it is madness not to try to know but which it is almost as much madness to try to know.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

He who would propagate an opinion must begin by making sure of his ground and holding it firmly. There is as little use in trying to breed from weak opinion as from other weak stock.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Ideas and opinions, like living organisms, have a normal rate of growth which cannot be either checked or forced beyond a certain point. They can be held in check more safely than they can be hurried. They can also be killed; and one of the surest ways to kill them is to try to hurry them.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally, and that, if possible, he should get the reputation of being well-to-do in the world.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Many, if not most, good ideas die young — mainly from neglect on the part of the parents, but sometimes from over-fondness. Once well started, an opinion had better be left to shift for itself.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Argument is generally waste of time and trouble. It is better to present one’s opinion and leave it to stick or no as it may happen. If sound, it will probably in the end stick, and the sticking is the main thing.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

He [the Philosopher] should have made many mistakes and been saved often by the skin of his teeth, for the skin of one’s teeth is the most teaching thing about one. He should have been, or at any rate believed himself, a great fool and a great criminal. He should have cut himself adrift from society, and yet not be without society.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Most artists, whether in religion, music, literature, painting, or what not, are shopkeepers in disguise. They hide their shop as much as they can, and keep pretending that it does not exist, but they are essentially shopkeepers and nothing else.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Genius...has been defined as a supreme capacity for taking trouble...It might be more fitly described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds and keeping them therein so long as the genius remains.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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 recognised for some time.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Dullness is so much stronger than genius because there is so much more of it, and it is better organised and more naturally cohesive.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

All men can do great things, if they know what great things are.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Surely the glory of finally getting rid of and burying a long and troublesome matter should be as great as that of making an important discovery. The trouble is that the coverer is like Samson who perished in the wreck of what he had destroyed; if he gets rid of a thing effectually he gets rid of himself too.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The supposition that the world is ever in league to put a man down is childish. Hardly less childish is it for an author to lay the blame on reviewers. A good sturdy author is a match for a hundred reviewers.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

I am the enfant terrible of literature and science.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

If people like being deceived — and this can hardly be doubted — there can rarely have been a time during which they can have had more of the wish than now. The literary, scientific and religious worlds vie with one another in trying to gratify the public.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The greatest poets never write poetry. The Homers and Shakespeares are not the greatest — they are only the greatest that we can know. And so with Handel among musicians. For the highest poetry, whether in music or literature, is ineffable — it must be felt from one person to another, it cannot be articulated.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

If a person would understand either the Odyssey or any other ancient work, he must never look at the dead without seeing the living in them, nor at the living without thinking of the dead. We are too fond of seeing the ancients as one thing and the moderns as another.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Nothing will ever die so long as it knows what to do under the circumstances, in other words so long as it knows its business.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Italians, and perhaps Frenchmen, consider first whether they like or want to do a thing and then whether, on the whole, it will do them any harm. Englishmen, and perhaps Germans, consider first whether they ought to like a thing and often never reach the questions whether they do like it and whether it will hurt. There is much to be said for both systems, but I suppose it is best to combine them as far as possible.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him. To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and branches of education.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

I should like to like Schumann’s music better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Every one should keep a mental waste-paper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it — torn up to irrecoverable tatters.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

They [my thoughts] are like persons met upon a journey; I think them very agreeable at first but soon find, as a rule, that I am tired of them.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The evil that men do lives after them. Yes, and a good deal of the evil that they never did as well.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

There are two classes, 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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Everything matters more than we think it does, and, at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think it does. The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze, but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over, the world will wag itself right again.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Time is the only true purgatory.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

He is greatest who is most often in men’s good thoughts.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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 (novelist)

The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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 (novelist)

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

This poem [The Ancient Mariner] would not have taken so well if it had been called “The Old Sailor.”

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

A little boy and a little girl were looking at a picture of Adam and Eve. "Which is Adam and which is Eve?" said one. "I do not know," said the other, "but I could tell if they had their clothes on."

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The pursuit of truth is chimerical. That is why it is so hard to say what truth is. There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Truth consists not in never lying but in knowing when to lie and when not to do so.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Our choice is apparently most free, and we are least obviously driven to determine our course, in those cases where the future is most obscure, that is, when the balance of advantage appears most doubtful.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

You can have all ego, or all non-ego, but in theory you cannot have half one and half the other — yet in practice this is exactly what you must have, for everything is both itself and not itself at one and the same time.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

As a general rule philosophy is like stirring mud or not letting a sleeping dog lie. It is an attempt to deny, circumvent or otherwise escape from the consequences of the interlacing of the roots of things with one another.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

It is with philosophy as with just intonation on a piano, if you get everything quite straight and on all fours in one department, in perfect tune, it is delightful so long as you keep well in the middle of the key; but as soon as you modulate you find the new key is out of tune and the more remotely you modulate the more out of tune you get.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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 (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

I am not sure that I do not begin to like the correction of a mistake, even when it involves my having shown much ignorance and stupidity, as well as I like hitting on a new idea.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

To himself every one is an immortal: he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

To try to live in posterity is to be like an actor who leaps over the footlights and talks to the orchestra.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

The world will, in the end, follow only those who have despised as well as served it.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

When I am dead I would rather people thought me better than I was instead of worse; but if they think me worse, I cannot help it and, if it matters at all, it will matter more to them than to me.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

I felt comparatively happy, but I can assure the reader that I had had a far worse time of it than I have told him; and I strongly recommend him to remain in Europe if he can; or, at any rate, in some country which has been explored and settled, rather than go into places where others have not been before him. Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

When he had left the room, I mused over the conversation which had just taken place between us, but I could make nothing out of it, except that it argued an even greater perversity of mental vision than I had been yet prepared for. And this made me wretched; for I cannot bear having much to do with people who think differently from myself.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

No one with any sense of self-respect will place himself on an equality in the matter of affection with those who are less lucky than himself in birth, health, money, good looks, capacity, or anything else. Indeed, that dislike and even disgust should be felt by the fortunate for the unfortunate, or at any rate for those who have been discovered to have met with any of the more serious and less familiar misfortunes, is not only natural, but desirable for any society, whether of man or brute.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

For property is robbery, but then, we are all robbers or would-be robbers together, and have found it essential to organise our thieving, as we have found it necessary to organise our lust and our revenge. Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who tampers with the banks while the flood is flowing.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

But the main argument on which they rely is that of economy: for they know that they will sooner gain their end by appealing to men’s pockets, in which they have generally something of their own, than to their heads, which contain for the most part little but borrowed or stolen property.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

It is here that almost all religions go wrong. Their priests try to make us believe that they know more about the unseen world than those whose eyes are still blinded by the seen, can ever know--forgetting that while to deny the existence of an unseen kingdom is bad, to pretend that we know more about it than its bare existence is no better.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

But I did not yield at once; I enjoyed the process of being argued with too keenly to lose it by a prompt concession; besides, a little hesitation rendered the concession itself more valuable.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

They were gentlemen in the full sense of the word; and what has one not said in saying this?

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

It is a distinguishing peculiarity of the Erewhonians that when they profess themselves to be quite certain about any matter, and avow it as a base on which they are to build a system of practice, they seldom quite believe in it. If they smell a rat about the precincts of a cherished institution, they will always stop their noses to it if they can.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Strange fate for man! He must perish if he get that, which he must perish if he strive not after. If he strive not after it he is no better than the brutes, if he get it he is more miserable than the devils.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

“To be born,” they say, “is a felony--it is a capital crime, for which sentence may be executed at any moment after the commission of the offence. You may perhaps happen to live for some seventy or eighty years, but what is that, compared with the eternity you now enjoy? And even though the sentence were commuted, and you were allowed to live on for ever, you would in time become so terribly weary of life that execution would be the greatest mercy to you.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

It is hard upon the duckling to have been hatched by a hen, but is it not also hard upon the hen to have hatched the duckling?

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

No Erewhonian believes that the world is as black as it has been here painted, but it is one of their peculiarities that they very often do not believe or mean things which they profess to regard as indisputable.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

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 (novelist)

Their view evidently was that genius was like offences--needs must that it come, but woe unto that man through whom it comes. A man’s business, they hold, is to think as his neighbours do, for Heaven help him if he thinks good what they count bad. And really it is hard to see how the Erewhonian theory differs from our own, for the word “idiot” only means a person who forms his opinions for himself.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

“It is not our business,” he said, “to help students to think for themselves. Surely this is the very last thing which one who wishes them well should encourage them to do. Our duty is to ensure that they shall think as we do, or at any rate, as we hold it expedient to say we do.”

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

We find it difficult to sympathise with the emotions of a potato; so we do with those of an oyster. Neither of these things makes a noise on being boiled or opened, and noise appeals to us more strongly than anything else, because we make so much about our own sufferings. Since, then, they do not annoy us by any expression of pain we call them emotionless; and so qua mankind they are; but mankind is not everybody.

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

“Silence,” it has been said by one writer, “is a virtue which renders us agreeable to our fellow-creatures.”

— Samuel Butler (novelist)