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Quotes from The Note-Books of Samuel Butler — Samuel Butler

1835–1902 England

← All quotes by Samuel Butler

121 quotes

All things are like exposed photographic plates that have no visible image on them till they have been developed.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

Moral influence means persuading another that one can make that other more uncomfortable than that other can make oneself.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

After having spent years striving to be accurate, we must spend as many more in discovering when and how to be inaccurate.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

Dullness is so much stronger than genius because there is so much more of it, and it is better organised and more naturally cohesive.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

I am the enfant terrible of literature and science.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

Intellectual over-indulgence is the most gratuitous and disgraceful form which excess can take, nor is there any the consequences of which are more disastrous.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

Thought pure and simple is as near to God as we can get; it is through this that we are linked with God.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

We are not won by arguments that we can analyse, but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

If I die prematurely, at any rate I shall be saved from being bored by my own success.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

Sketching from nature is very like trying to put a pinch of salt on her tail. And yet many manage to do it very nicely.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

The composer is seldom a great theorist; the theorist is never a great composer. Each is equally fatal to and essential in the other.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

Time is the only true purgatory.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable; absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullnesses of it and the pomposities of it.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

Is there any religion whose followers can be pointed to as distinctly more amiable and trustworthy than those of any other? If so, this should be enough. I find the nicest and best people generally profess no religion at all, but are ready to like the best men of all religions.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

To be is to think and to be thinkable. To live is to continue thinking and to remember having done so.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it you are lost.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

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

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Samuel Butler (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.