186 quotes
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
The true laws of God are the laws of our own well-being.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
He is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
An energy is a soul — a something working in us.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
Always eat grapes downwards — that is, always eat the best grape first; in this way there will be none better left on the bunch, and each grape will seem good down to the last.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
The evil that men do lives after them. Yes, and a good deal of the evil that they never did as well.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
He who would propagate an opinion must begin by making sure of his ground and holding it firmly. There is as little use in trying to breed from weak opinion as from other weak stock.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
A man's style in any art should be like his dress — it should attract as little attention as possible.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
To try to live in posterity is to be like an actor who leaps over the footlights and talks to the orchestra.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
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)
They were gentlemen in the full sense of the word; and what has one not said in saying this?
Erewhon (1872)
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)