Samuel Butler quotes:

Send

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.
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
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.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
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.
The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
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.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
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 and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.
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.
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.
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
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.
Let every man be true and every god a liar.
No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
The want of money is the root of all evil.
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
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.
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
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.
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.
The history of art is the history of revivals.
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
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.
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
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.
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.
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
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.
One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
Life is one long process of getting tired.
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
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.
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.
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.
Truth might be heroic, but it was not within the range of practical domestic politics.
For as whipp'd tops and bandied balls,The learned hold, are animals;So horses they affirm to beMere engines made by geometry"
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
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.
A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented.
In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
This world is like Noah's Ark. In which few men but many beasts embark.
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
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.
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
Our own death is a premium which we must pay for the far greater benefit we have derived from the fact that so many people have not only lived but also died before us.
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
There should be asylums for habitual teetotalers, but they would probably relapse into teetotalism as soon as they got out.
The mistakes made by doctors are innumerable. They err habitually on the side of optimism as to treatment, of pessimism as to the outcome
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
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and seeing it practiced
One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once
One who is proud of ancestry is like a turnip there is nothing good of him but that which is underground
Peter remained on friendly terms with Christ notwithstanding Christ's having healed his mother-in-law.
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.
Words are clothes that thoughts wear

Send