Samuel Butler Quotes

A virtue to be serviceable must like gold be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.
Samuel Butler
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable grounds.
Samuel Butler
Loyalty is still the same Whether it win or lose the game True as a dial to the sun Although it be not shined upon.
Samuel Butler
To put one's trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.
Samuel Butler
Our latest moment is always our supreme moment. Five minutes delay in dinner now is more important than a great sorrow ten years gone.
Samuel Butler
People care more about being thought to have good taste than about being thought either good clever or amiable.
Samuel Butler
Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden not silence.
Samuel Butler
We grow weary of those things (and perhaps soonest) which we most desire.
Samuel Butler
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
You can do very little with faith but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler
All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us like the Kingdom of Heaven rather than without.
Samuel Butler
Our self-conceit sustains and always must sustain us.
Samuel Butler
No matter how ill we may be nor how low we may have fallen we should not change identity with any other person.
Samuel Butler
People are lucky and unlucky ... according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
Samuel Butler
All progress is based upon the universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
The advantage of doing one's praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
Samuel Butler
All philosophies if you ride them home are nonsense but some are greater nonsense than others.
Samuel Butler
The greatest 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
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Samuel Butler
What runs through a person like water through a sieve.
Samuel Butler
No matter how ill we may be nor how low we may have fallen we should not change identity with any other person.
Samuel Butler
People are lucky and unlucky ... according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
Samuel Butler
All progress is based upon the universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
The advantage of doing one's praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
Samuel Butler
All philosophies if you ride them home are nonsense but some are greater nonsense than others.
Samuel Butler
The greatest 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
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Samuel Butler
What runs through a person like water through a sieve.
Samuel Butler
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every living organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
Samuel Butler
I reckon being ill is one of the greatest pleasures of life provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.
Samuel Butler
Any fool can tell the truth but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Samuel Butler
To live is like to love - all reason is against it and all healthy instinct for it.
Samuel Butler
Man unlike the animal has never learned that the sole purpose of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
Life is one long process of getting tired.
Samuel Butler
Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
Samuel Butler
We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
Samuel Butler
I do not mind lying but I hate inaccuracy.
Samuel Butler
A lawyer's dream of heaven - every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
Samuel Butler
The public do not know enough to be experts yet know enough to decide between them.
Samuel Butler
To live is like to love: all reason is against it and all healthy instinct is for it.
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
It has been said that though God cannot alter the past historians can - it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.
Samuel Butler
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel Butler
An apology for the Devil - it must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler
It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something.
Samuel Butler
All animals except man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
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
Friendship is like money easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler
Whatso'er we perpetrate We do but row we are steered by fate.
Samuel Butler
Faith is a kind of betting or speculation.
Samuel Butler
You can do very little with faith but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
There is one thing certain namely that we can have nothing certain therefore it is not certain that we can have nothing certain.
Samuel Butler
The tendency of modern science is to reduce proof to absurdity by continually reducing absurdity to proof.
Samuel Butler
If life must not be taken too seriously - then so neither must death.
Samuel Butler