Samuel Butler Quotes

This world is like Noah's Ark. In which few men but many beasts embark.

Spare the rod and spoil the child.

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

Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate.

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.

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.

I fall asleep in the full and certain hope That my slumber shall not be broken; And that, though I be all-forgetting, Yet shall I not be all-forgotten, But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds of those I have loved.

Man, unlike the animals, has never learned that the sole purpose of life is to enjoy it.

It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.

An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.

Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.

Friends are like money, easier made than kept.

The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us, like the kingdom of heaven, rather than without.

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 recognized for some time.

Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

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.

Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud.

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.

The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.

The course of true anything never does run smooth.

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

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it - and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow.

The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable, and absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is.

Flying. Whatever any other organism has been able to do man should surely be able to do also, though he may go a different way about it.

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