Quotes By Samuel Butler

Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences, and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another.

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.

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.

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

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.

Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

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.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

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.

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

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.

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.