Samuel Butler quotes

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was an English novelist, essayist, and satirist. Best known for his novel "Erewhon" (1872), Butler's work explored themes of Victorian society, Darwinism, and the nature of progress. He possessed a keen wit and a knack for social commentary that made his writings both insightful and entertaining. In addition to his novels, Butler also wrote philosophical essays like "The Way of All Flesh" (1903), which challenged conventional religious and societal norms. A progressive thinker ahead of his time, Butler continues to captivate readers with his thought-provoking ideas and incisive observations about human nature.

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

Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.

- Samuel Butler

People are always in good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

- Samuel Butler

Morality is the custom of one’s country and the current feeling of one’s peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.

- Samuel Butler

Logic is like the sword—those who appeal to it shall perish by it.

- Samuel Butler

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

- Samuel Butler

It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.

- Samuel Butler

I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong.

- Samuel Butler

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

- Samuel Butler

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.

- Samuel Butler

Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

- Samuel Butler

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.

- Samuel Butler

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

- Samuel Butler

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

- Samuel Butler

A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.

- Samuel Butler

Life is like giving a concert on the violin while learning to play the instrument.

- Samuel Butler

The world is naturally averse to all truth it sees or hears but swallows nonsense and a lie with greediness and gluttony.

- Samuel Butler

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

- Samuel Butler

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.

- Samuel Butler

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

- Samuel Butler

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

- Samuel Butler

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.

- Samuel Butler

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

- Samuel Butler

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

- Samuel Butler

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

- Samuel Butler

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.

- 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

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

- Samuel Butler

Let every man be true and every god a liar.

- Samuel Butler

No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.

- Samuel Butler