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 Quote
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
- Samuel Butler Quote
A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
- Samuel Butler Quote
All of the animals except for man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it.
- Samuel Butler Quote
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
- Samuel Butler Quote
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures 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 Quote
Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
- Samuel Butler Quote
For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
- Samuel Butler Quote
God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.
- Samuel Butler Quote
God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
- Samuel Butler Quote
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
- Samuel Butler Quote
I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
- Samuel Butler Quote
In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Let every man be true and every god a liar.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
- Samuel Butler Quote
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
- Samuel Butler Quote
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in
continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.
- Samuel Butler Quote
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
- Samuel Butler Quote
The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
- Samuel Butler Quote
The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.
- Samuel Butler Quote
The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
- Samuel Butler Quote
The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
- Samuel Butler Quote
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
- Samuel Butler Quote
The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.
- Samuel Butler Quote
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
- Samuel Butler Quote
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
- Samuel Butler Quote
The want of money is the root of all evil.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.
- Samuel Butler Quote
There is no bore like a clever bore.
- Samuel Butler Quote
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.
- Samuel Butler Quote
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.
- Samuel Butler Quote
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
- Samuel Butler Quote
There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.
- Samuel Butler Quote
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
- Samuel Butler Quote
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.
- Samuel Butler Quote
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
- Samuel Butler Quote
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
- Samuel Butler Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
- Samuel Butler Quote
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
- Samuel Butler Quote
