Samuel butler quotes

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.

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

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.

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

There is no bore like a clever bore.

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.

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

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.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

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

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

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

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

The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

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

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

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

No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.

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

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds

Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.

The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

God and the Devil are an effort after specialisation and division of labour.

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.

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

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

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

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

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

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.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

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

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

Let man be true and every god a liar.

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.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

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

The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

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

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.

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

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

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.

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

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

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

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.

Life is one long process of getting tired.

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

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

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.

[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.

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

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

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.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

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.

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

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

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.

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

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

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.

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.

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

Be virtuous and you will be vicious.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

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

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.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

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.

Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

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

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

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

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

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

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

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.

Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.

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

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

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

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

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

Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.

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.

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.

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.

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.

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.

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.