Quotes By Samuel Butler

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.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.

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.

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

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

All truth is not to be told at all times.

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

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

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

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

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

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

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

We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.